Winterizing Your Roses
By Norman Buynak
Just like people, roses don't care too much for the cold of the winter either. To get the best possible blooms for next spring you need to give them a little extra attention before the cold hits. You should prepare your roses for winter usually sometime in late October through November depending on when the cool weather arrives in your area (Mid to late October for North Dakota). It also helps to add some mulching around plants to reduce the risk of wind and cold damage and to prevent that dreaded expanding soil from plants pushing through.
The All-American Rose Selections has a few key guidelines to help with the winterizing of rose plants.
- Stop fertilizing six weeks before the first frost.
- Allow seed pods to develop instead of clipping spent flowers.
- Continue watering during dry autumn weather to help keep plants fortified during the dry winter.
- Prune dead or diseased canes.
- Cover the plants just above the swollen point where the stem joins the rootstock.
- Mound, mulch or compost after a few frosts but before the ground freezes. Where temperatures stay below freezing during winter, enclose the plant with a sturdy mesh, filling the enclosure with chopped leaves, compost, mulch, dry wood chips, pine needles or straw. Piling a 12-inch mound of soil around each rose bush also works. This prevents injury to stems and limits potential for occasional ground thawing.
- After the ground freezes, prevent wind from whipping plants by removing any remaining leaves and cutting back long canes to about 18 inches.
- Avoid transplanting rose bushes to a new location until spring rolls around.
If you as a avid rose grower follow these few simple steps you can be assured a good rose crop for many seasons to follow.
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