We know South Africans love their gardens! This magazine inspires the home enthusiast with practical ideas for maintaining and enhancing their gardens, patios and backyards. New plants and products are mentioned first in The Gardener and there is also a special focus on indigenous gardening in South Africa.
May 2010 Keep them blooming By Ludwig Taschner
There are two months to go before pruning and there is no reason why your roses should not flower until the secateurs come out. To achieve this continue to spray once every two weeks to keep black spot away. This time last year I visited a lot of rose gardens and there was no doubt that spraying made a huge difference. The plants were covered in foliage and still flowered well. In gardens where the roses weren’t sprayed the varieties blessed with black spot resistant foliage, such as 'South Africa', 'Clocolan', 'Deloitte & Touche' and 'My Granny', were dominant and the others were basically denuded with a few blooms at the tips.
If the roses have lost their leaves do not cut them back for the sake of tidiness; to do so would force blind shoots to sprout from the cut points and this will exhaust the plant's stored reserves. Any sprouting that takes place from leafy tips, however, is assisted by photosynthesis and adds to the store of food and still allows a show of blooms.
Roses in the Lowveld and coastal regions of KwaZulu-Natal should be covered with leaves and blooming profusely, especially if a light pruning and clean up was carried out in March. In these areas it is most important to keep on fertilising and spraying in order to enjoy the best roses of the year during late autumn and winter.
May is a good month to plant roses. They will be able to set out new roots, even if there is early frost, and this allows them to get established much more quickly in spring, and be producing good blooms before next winter.
ROSE OF THE MONTH
'Beauty from Within'
The glowing, deep golden centre gives this beautiful rose its name. As the tight, urn shaped buds slowly unfold the rose acquires an orange hue that changes to deep pink on the petal edges as the bloom matures. The slow maturing process ensures colour for a good 12 days, even in midsummer, from the first show of colour in the bud through to its stately half-open shape. It can be cut for the home at this stage, when it will still provide a lovely sight in a vase for another week to 10 days. The upright-growing bush is vigorous and has a very neat appearance. The straight stems are produced almost throughout the year. The leaves are dark green and hardy. 'Beauty from Within' will hold it own in mixed rose beds, and to soften the appearance of bed or group of these roses simply plant one or more specimens of 'Deloitte and Touche' in front of it.
