We may be well into autumn now, with winter well in sight but for the avid home gardener it’s not quite time to hang up your tools and retire in front of a fire to await the passing of the colder season. Now is the time to start making the final adjustments to your garden before the frost and chill of winter make further work impossible.
Plants will be growing more slowly in many cases and the ground is still malleable enough to be worked making it the perfect time to trim back unwanted growth and dig up those uninvited guests into the garden.
Getting Your Roses in a Row
For aspiring rose growers, this is also the ideal time of year to plant your rose seeds if you aspire to enjoy roses in the coming year. It’s quite possible to enjoy roses grown in a container and artificial conditions all year round say in a greenhouse. But if you want the particular quality that comes only with proper soil grown roses, autumn is the time to plant them.
You might consider growing your roses directly from seed, especially if you aspire to cross breed and create your own rose varieties later. Be warned however that roses, like humans, inherit the genes of the plants that came before them and that the seed that grows may not look exactly like the plant it came from. Seed also have a fairly poor germination rate and you may need to plant many seed in order to get a few viable plants.
To counter this, you may want to consider buying in partially grown plants from garden centres. You might consider bare-root or containerised roses, the difference being that the bare-root roses have grown naturally in the soil before being uprooted and packed for transport. Containerised roses are, of course grown in a container and their root growth limited by the availability of space.
Growing Roses – How to.
The Royal Horticulture Society has been growing roses, amongst practically everything else in British gardens for nearly a century and a half. As might be expected their guide on how to grow Roses is an excellent primer for people looking to add roses into their garden. They also offer several distance learning courses in association with ADL that are ideal for people who are looking to learn more about horticulture.
Another good read for those adventuring to grow their roses from seed and cultivate their own varieties is this article by the Santa Clarita Valley Rose Society. Written by Master Consulting Rosarian Kitty Belendez, it’s a fascinating look at the basics of growing rose plants from seed for anyone who has ever wondered how it is done.
In all cases, planting now in autumn is the best option before the frosts of winter come. Frost is particularly deadly to young plants so if you cannot give them a few weeks of growth prior to the likely onset of properly cold weather it may be best to wait until warmer weather rather than wasting the plants. You just won’t get as good growth in that first year as you would have done planting in autumn.
