Last October, I moved in with my partner, into his house in Solvang, CA. Beautiful property, but many many sadly neglected plants hanging on by a thread to their existence. So I chose to try and save them, after all they were planted here by his grandma. So I have been working on them, with fertilizer and regular water. Singing them lullabies, reading them inspirational poetry, performing native american dances, casting voodoo spells...ok those last four I was making up, but you get the idea, LOL!
So here are what they look like after many months of fussing over them.
Resuscitated Roses! They LIVE!!! LOL!
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- Close up of one of the prettiest and most shapely roses.
- recovery rose 2.jpg (39.64 KiB) Viewed 2047 times
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- Another shot of the biggest rose bush.
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- This is the fullest and biggest of the rose bushes.
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This one almost died because of MY fault! Sven bought this mini rose for me for Valentine's Day, and as many of you know, these store bought flowers need to be repotted right away. So I repotted it, and used soil my brother gave me, but he didn't tell me it had fertilizer already in it. I added more fertilizer, plus rooting hormone, and almost killed the poor little thing. I finally realized what happened, so began flushing the soil as best I could, and tried to just keep it from dying, and finally yesterday I saw this pretty blossom on it! YAY! It forgave me for being stupid!!
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- Sven's rose.jpg (45.81 KiB) Viewed 2046 times
Now that you know they're alive 
, you'll want to read Sunset's advice on pruning roses so that you'll be ready when the roses are. One way to give rose bushes a fighting chance against common diseases (I see black spot in one of the photos) is to increase air circulation in each bush, and proper pruning will do this.
The roses can also be "dead-headed" as each flower begins to fail: cut back to a five-leaf branch on the same stem as the rose bloom itself. This way, if you have roses that bloom multiple times per season, the plant's energy can keep going into rose production rather than into rose-hip production (unless you specifically want the rose hips for jam or another purpose). If you have one-time bloomers, it'll keep the plants from looking "tired." The rose hips are the equivalent of seed pods, but propagation of roses is usually accomplished by stem cuttings and grafting.
I'm happy for you that the plants have bloomed! They're obviously happy, too. Well done!
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
, you'll want to read Sunset's advice on pruning roses so that you'll be ready when the roses are. One way to give rose bushes a fighting chance against common diseases (I see black spot in one of the photos) is to increase air circulation in each bush, and proper pruning will do this.The roses can also be "dead-headed" as each flower begins to fail: cut back to a five-leaf branch on the same stem as the rose bloom itself. This way, if you have roses that bloom multiple times per season, the plant's energy can keep going into rose production rather than into rose-hip production (unless you specifically want the rose hips for jam or another purpose). If you have one-time bloomers, it'll keep the plants from looking "tired." The rose hips are the equivalent of seed pods, but propagation of roses is usually accomplished by stem cuttings and grafting.
I'm happy for you that the plants have bloomed! They're obviously happy, too. Well done!
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9