Roses are red, my love . . .
FEBRUARY: WITH THE MONTH OF LOVE HERE, TAKE TIME TO UNDERSTAND FLOWERS’ MEANING
Best garden cut roses are hybrid-tea because they have long, straight stems.
No matter how much we promote roses of other colours, in February the rose that everyone wants is a red rose.
On Valentine’s Day (February 14), the gift that counts is a bunch of red roses. There is an abundant supply of them, but how about growing your own red roses? This means you’ll always have the perfect cut roses to give to friends or to decorate the home at Christmas or Valentine’s Day.
The best garden cut roses are hybrid-tea because they have long, straight stems and urnshaped buds that open into a classically elegant bloom.
Among the large collection of red roses, there are powerfully fragrant varieties like Alec’s Red, Ecstasy, Ilse Roos, Mister Lincoln, Oklahoma, Papa Meilland, and Red ‘n Fragrant.
All you need is one or two of these fragrant blooms amidst a bunch of other less fragrant varieties to perfume a room.
Two new red hybrid teas introduced this year are Chante Hinds, a lightly fragrant shoulder-high rose that produces an abundance of blooms, and Savage Jooste Centenary, which has bright red petals with a silvery-white reverse, making it stand out among others. The latter is an eco-chic disease resistant rose that grows neatly upright to shoulder height, producing three to four blooms to a stem.
Forever Delight is a floribunda version of the classic Double Delight. It is an eco-chic rose and the blooms also have a cream base, with a scarlet blush over the petal edges that intensifies as the blooms unfold. Although it is not fragrant, it produces blooms almost non-stop.
Plant the roses as a group to make a statement, or in a container, or with other fragrant roses.
Another favourite is the floribunda Crimson Velvet Dress that unlike others, produces clusters of perfect hybrid-shaped blooms. They cover the eco-chic bush from top to bottom; as graceful as a woman dancing in a swirling red dress.
Using red roses in the garden
Red roses add drama, excitement and warmth to your garden and to make a statement, plant three or more bushes close together, between 50cm to 60cm apart.
Red roses combine well with silvery foliage plants like lamb’s ear, cotton lavender (Santolina), Helichrysum, and lavender. Another good border plant is catmint (Nepeta mussinii), which has delicate spikes of mauve flowers.
Rose care for February
With the intermittent rain, it is now very important that the new leaves are protected from black-spot fungus. Spraying fortnightly with our recommended Ludwig’s Insect Spray and Chronos provides such protection. The good rains will have dissolved latent fertiliser in the soil which will have been used up by the bushes or washed away. Bushes with light green leaves are deficient in nitrogen. Granular fertiliser such as Vigorosa is absorbed quickly and one can see a change in the leaf colouring within a week. Where water-neglected roses have flourished owing to the good rains, it is important to water them well during the non-rainy days or dry periods. If the roses are producing very short stems with flower buds, I recommend pinching out all or most of the tight buds. The energy that would have gone into making the blooms is converted to make more leaves and the next crop of flowers would be normal size.
Any effort spent now in the appropriate care for the roses in your garden will be rewarded with super colour and blooms into winter.