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anybody know about roses?

AverageWhiteBloke

AverageWhiteBloke

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Joined
27 Oct 2009
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2,906
Location
Cumbria
I know very little about terrestial gardening. Decided to have a dabble and dig a bed and put some rose bushes in but the soil is very poor. You only get down the depth of the spade and it all gets very gravel and clay. Was thinking about putting something in with the soil but there's a myriad of different types in the garden centre. What should I go for?
 
Ah, I think I've pretty much done most things wrong so far reading the link. I'll get a back of compost and mulch. Was a spur of the moment thing. Been putting a fence up and needed some soil do dug the bed over to rob some.
 
May sound a stupid question but is manure just horse sh*t?
 
Yes, but not fresh from the horse, it needs to be well rotted down before use. Roses are quite happy in clay soil.
 
Hi all,
The soil should be fine with some more humus, like "sparkyweasel" says they actually tend to do better in clay soils. If you can't get rotted cow or horse manure, I'd probably get a few bags of "green waste" compost from your local re-cycling centre, usually really cheap, and just dig in into the bed.

I don't like bare soil, so I've under-planted all mine with hardy Geraniums and Alchemilla mollis. This sort of thing: <http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardens/Hyde-Hall/About-HydeHall/Plant-of-the-month/July/Geranium-Rozanne-%28%E2%80%98Gerwat%E2%80%99%29>.

I'm not sure what kind of roses you are after, but "Hybrid Teas" are good for cut flowers, but tend to be horrible plants, and the Floribunda roses are a bit of a mixed bag. The "David Austin" "English Roses" are quite good for most situations, and they come in a range of colours. I only really like roses as big shrubs ("Buff Beauty" etc) or Ramblers ("Albéric Barbier"), but some-one bought me "Harlow Carr" as a present, and it is a really good garden plant: <Harlow Carr - David Austin Roses>.

cheers Darrel
 
Hmm I can see there is a bit more to this than I thought! I had four in a row originally, not even in a bed. Two of which just sort of died off. When I was looking for a bit of soil to steal to patch in around my new concrete fence posts I dug a strip over with the roses already in and planted another two from the garden centre. No idea what type they were just grew in pots and went for the healthiest looking! Whoever had this house before me must have made the garden as oppose to it being just natural if that makes sense.
You get through the soil about no more than a foot and hit a gravel base, probably to help with drainage I suppose, then you hit clay. So far I bought a bag of compost and mixed that in with the soil then topped the whole bed off with mulch. If anything my garden is quite bad for draining, moss tends to grow on it more than grass which I rake off with a sacryfier (if that's the word I'm looking for :) ) The garden faces east so only gets any decent sunlight early morning. By midday, except in mid summer, the sun is shaded down that side which I guess is why the garden tends to hold water. I know when I was digging the posts for the fence it had been dry, in fact hot for 4/5 days and the soil underneath was still very wet.
 
Just a word of warning if you do decide to get any "green waste" compost from your local recycling centre they do not heat treat it enough to kill the weeds.
We trialled it a big nursery where I worked and it was a disaster with the amount of weeds coming up.
We also trialled some which had been mixed with treated sewage :sick: same result but some superb tomatoes came up :lol:
 
Ian brown was the lead singer. John squires is probably the best guitarist of our time. Hope this helps.
 
Oi get out of my thread with your sh@t jokes. I've got some roses to grow here! Bet no one even got the tomatoes joke ;) it has the same survival properties as sweet corn :facepalm: :D
 
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