Are you concerned about pests and diseases that can affect your roses? Read our tips.
Air Circulation – Allow your roses enough room t0 breathe and don’t plant them too close together, overcrowding them.
Vigour – Natural vigour gives resistance to disease. Feed and water the roses well and plant them in good soil.
Selection – Choose varieties with good, natural resistance. The newer varieties are tested to be disease resistant and may be an easier option to grow successfully. Shrub type roses typically need few chemicals applied to them yet bloom beautifully. Whereas Hybrid Tea roses are more susceptible to disease and need to be sprayed before the growing season begins.
Observation – Get to know your plants, wander around the garden observing. Look for early warning signs of stress to the plant (a precursor to disease), disease that appears, or insects.
Cleanliness – Don’t leave old leaves, wood or plant material lying around. Disease often starts on the leaves that are damaged (and therefore weak), or on bits of broken plant on the ground.
Humidity – Too much humidity at night provides the environment for disease to start. It is best not to water in the evenings.
Age – As roses age they become more prone to diseases. Think about changing plants after 10 years or so if they begin to decline.
Prevention – There are some sprays that act as a preventative is applied before any disease is seen. We regularly spray our roses with the following chemicals and recommend these for home use too. Rose Clear, Bug Clear, Uncle Toms Rose Tonic, Liquid Seaweed and Sulphur Rose Tonic.
Rose Care Products
For many years Harkness Roses have followed the maxim that ‘nature knows best’. We believe in working with nature, and in using products that are natural and are kind to the environment.
This philosophy stretches way back to Jack Harkness, who ran the company from the early 1960s until his retirement in the 1980s, he had a great empathy with all things natural and would always find the most natural and least damaging way to manage our rose production. His ethos is still with us today, and we hope our customers can manage to grow healthy roses with the help of these environmentally safe but effective products.
Rose Food:
Bug & Fungus Killer :
Pests and diseases don’t have to ruin your roses. 🌹
