Woohoooo – I just got home from buying the roses. Next task, planting my roses for 2014.

So on Saturday, May 10, I went to Dural, NSW to buy some roses. I first went to Swanes Nursery to buy the following bareroot roses – Firefighter, Jubilee Celebration, Soeur Emmanuelle and Nahema. After that I then went to GreenERoses to buy the following roses which were not available at Swanes – Honey Bouquet and Valencia.

So having gotten back home at around 11 am – I then started the process of planting my new roses.

Soaking the Bareroot Roses

First thing I did was to soak the bareroot roses. Most of my research say that bareroot roses should be soaked before planting – the planting instruction from Swanes also says to soak at least one hour. The reasoning behind this is that bareroot roses go through a long process where they are picked, pruned, prepared, stored and delivered to the nurseries. Any of these can take from several days specially the storing portion where they are supposedly stored in cold temperatures to keep them dormant. Soaking them before planting will refresh them better. For my part, I decided to soak them for one whole day.

For the soaking solution, there are different opinions on what to use, others say plain water is better, others mix Vitamin B1, some mix rooting hormones while others use a seaweed solution. For my part, I decided to use a Seasol solution; I mixed 1.5 capfuls of Seasol to about 6 liters of water.

Now that the soaking solution is ready, I proceeded to open the bareroot roses. As you can see in the pictures, the bareroot roses from Swanes comes in pink packages to help keep them wet. I first cut off plastic wrapper which reveals another layer of rolled up paper.

Cutting off this layer of paper reveals the packaging material used to keep the roses wet, I slowly loosen the material off to remove the whole plant. Swanes intruction says to discard the packaging material so off to the compost pile it goes.

 

 

 

 

 

One thing I noticed in looking at the bareroot rose is that the roots seem to have been pruned already. I’ve seen pictures of bareroot roses with a big mass of roots, the roses from Swanes is quite different.

 

 

 

 

 

I then soaked the bareroo roses with the water reaching near the bud union. It will stay soaked until Sunday morning.

Planting The Potted Roses

With the bareroot roses all soaking now, my next task is planting the potted roses from GreenERoses. I’ve decided to plant Valencia into the ground while Honey Bouquet would go to a big pot I have. I first water them to replenish them afterwhich I proceeded on preparing their planting site.

Ground Preparation

I live about 800 meters from the beach so I have sandy soil(?). I’m not really sure that I can call it soil because if I pick them up, they look and feel exactly like the sand I see in the beach – they’re almost greyish-white in color.

 Here’s a freshly dugged site. You can see that the top 1-2 inches is dark colored humus which is due to old leaves decomposing. But below that is pure powdery sand. The blackish parts you see at the bottom are the humus that fell from my shovel, otherwise it’s almost pure greyish white sand.

 

 Here’s another photo of the mound I dugged up. This looks almost like what my daughter creates in the beach.

 

 

 

Obviously this needs some soil amendment and off I go to amend – I’ve done this before for my existing roses – basically my soil amendment consists of coir, compost and commercially-bought premium garden soil.

Soil Amendment Materials

For my soil amendments, I’m sure most people would know and use compost and garden soils, there are however two other products they might not be familiar with – Coir and Cat Litter. Coir is a byproduct of the coconut industry, it’s from the coconut husk. Coir is highly recommended as a soil amendment and a good alternative to peat since coir is a byproduct of an easily renewable source (Coconut) whereas peat comes from peat bogs that took millions of years to develop. Coir also takes a long time to decay (about 10 years), is nutrient and PH neutral and is cheap.

It usually comes in very dry blocks that quickly expand when it becomes wet. Here you see how it looks like freshly unwrapped – it’s packed very very tightly.

 

 

 

All you then need to do is to soak it in water. As to how much it’s really up to you but I usually just hose it down slowly by which the coir product absorbs some water. After a few minutes, some excess water will run-off until the coir basically floats on water; I’ll stop and let the coir further absorb the water.

 

 

Here’s how it looks like after absorbing enough water to soften it and allow you to break it apart.

It looks like sawdust but it’s not dusty.

See how much it fills up my bucket.

 

 

 

Another soil amendment product I used last year was normal clay cat litter. For sandy soil, adding some clay helps a lot in water and nutrient retention, however trying to find where to buy clay for soil amending purposes might be too hard – turns out just go to your local supermarket and buy cat litter. Just remember to buy those made from 100% clay and not those mixed with chemicals. The one I use is the Coles homebrand – I buy both normal and clumping version.

Planting the Potted Roses

I basically dig up a hole of about 12 inches deep and 18 inches wide. I then mix the following in a bucket – 6 shovels of sandy soil, 2 shovels of compost, 2 shovels of garden soil and 2 shovels of coir. I then use this to backfill the hole when I plant.

I proceed to plant the Valencia rose as I do other potted plants. Basically remove from pot, gently tease out any roots that are encircling at the bottom and the sides, and plant as normal. I water the planting hole halfway through the process to settle the soil and then once more once I’m done.

 

 

 

 

For the Honey Bouquet, I decided to plant it in a big container I had. The planting process is similar to the Valencia above, except in a pot and using a commercial potting mix instead of my amended garden soil.

 

 

 

 

 

Planting The Bareroot Roses

So the next day, May 11, after one whole day of soaking, the bareroot roses are now ready for planting. Planting bareroot roses after the soaking process is almost similar to planting potted plants, dig a hole, put them and cover :). The slight difference is in making sure that there are no air pockets under the roots;
- some people create a small mound that will fit under the roots
- others just plant and backfill as normal but they water a couple of times in the middle of backfilling to make sure that the soil goes through all air pockets
- others use sticks to direct the soil in between the root space

I use a combination of the first two; this plus the fact I have newly-amended sandy soils means any air pocket spaces are quickly filled in when I water. I’m not sure about those who have heave clay, I imagine heavy stick clay might not easily move and fill up spaces compared to sandy soil.

Here are my the roses I planted as bareroots:

Soil Enrichment

After planting, I then spread out some Gro-cubes I bought from Swanes. These are basically compressed lucerne hay which is said to be very helpful to growing roses. It releases nutrients and a growth hormone. On top of this, I then spread a mulch mixture of garden compost, composted sheep manure and some more coir. The main purpose of this mulch is to enrich the soil with organics. I will leave them as is until spring wherein I will top-up with bark chip mulch to help with moisture retention.