Growing Roses Organically

Growing roses organically is not so very difficult if you follow a few of the simple rules below : 

Compost

Get used to using compost as it is the key to great roses. Compost tea is the ideal solution to a wide variety of rose feeding problems and once you get the hang of making it, this is the way to go with organic culture. Compost and compost tea encourage the proliferation of beneficial microorganisms that will combat most rose problems. 

Container Grown and organic roses are no more difficult. I use a weekly dose of fish emulsion to feed the rose and every two week application of compost tea in an attempt (likely futile) to keep the microorganisms alive in my containers. I note that chlorinated city water kills off all beneficial bacteria and fungi in container grown plants. 

Compost Tea

I do water my rose leaves with compost tea to try to keep the beneficial bacterial and fungal populations high on the leaves. The hope here is that I’ll manage to have enough good guys to fight off most of the bad guys. 

Plant Choice Importance

Plant choice is important. Given the choice of a rose that is susceptible to fungal infections such as blackspot or one that resists this disease, then the choice is obvious. Go with disease-resistant roses. 

Avoid Chemicals

Avoid chemicals at all costs. A single dose of fungicide will wipe out all microorganisms on leaf surfaces. This means that the fast-reproducing bad guys will appear again before the slower-reproducing beneficials. By wiping out everybody, you’re guaranteeing the bad guys will reappear first and the leaves will be without protection. Use the fungicides recommended in articles on blackspot and mildews for growing roses organically. 

Drips from the leaf surfaces that hit the soil will also kill off bacteria and fungi in the soil. These are the ones that are fighting disease off in the soil and helping to feed the plant. Fungicides are a quick way to set your plant on a slippery downhill slope. 

Chemical Fertilizers

Avoid chemical fertilizers. The reliance on artificial sources of nitrogen is like feeding sugar candy as a main course. There’s a lot of activity afterwards but it really isn’t nutrition. Numerous studies have shown that plants fed artificial nitrogen have leaves that contain more sugars in them than organically fed plants. 

This extra sugar attracts more pests (pests prefer sweet leaves to normal leaves). So growing roses organically means relying on compost and organic fertilizers to feed the soil first and let the soil organisms feed the roses. 

Organic Insect Control & Growing Roses Organically

Use organic methods of insect control. There is a growing library of articles up on the sites that deal with a wide variety of pests using organic methods. From strong water jets for knocking aphids off bushes (when they hit the ground they become food for beetles). To soap to kill off others. To rotenone and diatomaceous earth for other pests along with iron phosphate controls for slugs, there are no rose pests that resist organic controls (you just have to figure out what the pest is and which control to use). 

All of the articles on this site and my other sites are environmentally based and doing a search will find you a ton of information you can use for growing roses organically. 

Growing Daffoldils

information about daffodils  - the planting, growing, collecting, propagation and just about anything else you can think of.  

 
To begin with their scientific name is Narcissus. And yes, they were named after Narcissus, that poor, long-suffering lover of his own image. 

Along with tulips, hyacinths and crocus, these bulbs are the mainstays of the spring-bulb color explosion. 

It is pretty easy to understand why they are so popular: they are hardy, pest free, disease free, naturalize well, live for years with no work, multiply if left alone, and come in a wide variety of flower colors, heights, sizes and flower shapes. 

You can grow them in the garden, in containers or force them indoors. 

Daffodil Pictures

This is a video of the different classes of daffodils you can grow in your garden.  

Starting, Planting and Transplanting

You can even start them yourself from seed. 

You can transplant daffodils if they get "in the wrong place". 


Planting Daffodils - the two main rules to remember about planting these bulbs are described right here. 

Doug's garden and what I'm doing with these bulbs. I'll continue to update this page as the adventure continues. 

Poisonous Bulbs

Squirrels and deer rarely, if ever, bother them and while pests will chew tulips to the ground, this bulb keeps blooming away. (they taste vile which is a good thing because they are poisonous.)

Recommended Varieties

If you're counting, you'll find the experts think there is somewhere around 26 species of wild narcissus. Now that depends of course on which expert you'ree talking to because they don't all agree on the divisions between plants. What we do know is that our garden narcissus have been hybridized for so long their specific parentage is almost impossible to determine. The divisions right now are: 

* Trumpet narcissi  including the old fashioned ‘King Alfred’ 

* Narcissus large-cupped 
* Small cupped narcissi 
* Split-corona narcissi 
* Triandrus narcissi 
* Cyclamineus narcissi 
* Narcissus jonquilla 
* Tazetta narcissi 
* Poeticus narcissi 
* Narcissus bulbocodium 
* Narcissus canaliculatus 
* Narcissus lobularis 
* Narcissus nanus 
* Narcissus odorus 
* Double narcissi 


Daffodil 'Dutch Master'

Growing Tips

And no matter what kind you want to force into early bloom, I'll assume you know how to put it into the pot (pointy end up) cover it with dirt (leave the neck uncovered) but you don't know about pre-chilling requirements. 

Here's the scoop on forcing daffodil bulbs and their requirements. 


Here's two tips on moving bulbs and reblooming care. 

This bulb comes in a wide variety of colors, ranging from the traditional yellow through white, orange-reds, oranges and salmon-pinks. You’ll also see different colors between the corona (the trumpet or cup shape) and the perianth (the petals) 

All are quite hardy, to at least minus 10C, with the exception of the Tazetta species. 


Daffodil 'Bridal Crown' 

Plant according to the size of the bulb and full instructions for planting are here 

This bulb improves every spring in the garden landscape but sometimes you do have to do some maintenance to keep them happy. 

You can plant them in containers, in natural settings, in formal settings, in rock gardens, you can use them as cut flowers if you can stand to take them out of your garden and you can easily force them for really early spring color. 

This is the easiest bulb to grow and succeed with. If you can't grow this bulb, I'd recommend you try silk. (Well, clay soils will kill them because they do need good drainage.) 

Questions and Answers