10 expert tips for more flowers next summer
Start checking for greenfly on roses as soon as they start to produce new leaves and blast them off with a jet of water from a hose to keep on top of them.
Bend and tie in the stems of your ramblers and climbers as horizontally as you can. This helps the plant make more flowering stems along each main stem.
It's very hard to kill a rose, so don't be scared to get pruning! Cut back stems that are too long at the end of February. Make a sloping cut just above an outward-facing bud to create the classic ‘goblet-shaped’ rose bush. If you leave pruning until March you'll have longer to wait for flowers in the summer. After pruning your roses, clear away old leaves hanging on to the plant or lying at the bottom. Gather and bin them. This helps prevent disease from striking early in summer. Mulch your roses after a good rain in spring. Apply a thick mulch around the base of the plant but keep it from touching the stems. Resist the temptation to hoe off weeds that are very close to the base of your roses – it’s almost impossible not to damage the stems! Apply a granular rose fertiliser such as Toprose or Miracle Gro Rose and Shrub Granular Plant Food at the base of each rose bush, once in early May and once after the first flush of flowers has finished. Water it in. Promptly deadhead flowers from your roses as soon as they lose their vibrant colour. This will instantly improve the look of the younger flowers still on the bush and will help the rose produce new flowers in less time. Apply a liquid tomato fertiliser at quarter strength every other time you water roses growing in containers from late spring onwards, to encourage more flowers and healthy growth. Support young roses with obelisks if the young stems are bending under the strain of supporting the flowers. This often happens with rose varieties that produce large, double flowers.