Spider wrote:
On 28/04/2010 23:29, Ian B wrote:
The garden has half a dozen rose bushes in it, in various states.
This one is about the saddest looking. It had severe problems with
black spot last year, such that I now informally know it as Typhoid
Mary. http://img594.imageshack.us/i/iansrose.jpg/

So this year I read up about pruning for about thirty seconds on the
internet, then hacked savagely at all the bushes in the hope of
creating some improvement. They're all sprooting now, but the big
problem with this one is that it only has one, or if you're generous
and squint your eyes a bit, two canes coming out of the bud union
(which also, as you can see, is rather a long way above the ground
for some reason). The rest is just a big lump of gnarly old bark.

Is there anything I can do to improve its prospects and get some
more, I believe they're called "basal breaks", or is it the Gordon
Brown of the rose garden that is just clinging on until somebody
does the kind thing and puts it out of its misery? It produced one
little red rose last year, which was impressive considering all the
leaves it lost (and it had not many to start with) in my attempts to
control the spread of the spot. Ian



I've seen much sicker roses go on to thrive! By all means cut out all
the dead basal wood; leaving it will never help the rose, and may be
detrimental. Lightly fork in some of your chicken poo fertiliser,
then give it a generous watering. Then mulch thickly around it, but
not too close to the stem as this can cause rotting. Having said
that, you could afford to build up the soil/mulch level until the bud
union is buried. The mulch will help keep the root area cool and
moist. and suppress weeds. More importantly, it will help prevent
spores of the black spot fungus re-infecting the plant. Since you
have a serious black spot problem in your garden, you should invest
in a proprietory rose fungus treatment.

If the rose doesn't produce buds by the beginning of June, give it a
high potash feed, such as a proprietory rose or tomato fertiliser. This
will help to ripen the wood and induce flowering.

It may be a red rose, but I wouldn't give it the Gordon Brown
treatment just yet!

Following the various excellent advice, I've sprinkled the ground with
chicken poo and forked, well hoed in fact, round all the bushes including
Gordon to break up the ground. It's also raining nicely today so that's
helpful too. I haven't got any mulch but I'll look into that, although the
web's explanation of what mulch is seems astonishingly vague. I've got
shedloads of leaves from the massive lime trees overhead, well piles of them
anyway. Would they do? My neighbour Ron insists that all the lime leaves
ruin his soil, but he's very old and getting a bit vague and thinks Mr
Attlee is the Prime Minister.

I'll also look at getting some fungicide. One of the other bushes which had
been a bit similar last year but has been doing better this year has some
strangely wilting leaves in a couple of places which is worrying me a bit.
I'm hoping it's a delayed reaction from last week when I mistook one of its
lateral roots for nettle roots while I was landscaping (that is, moving the
slabs around a bit) and had hauled about five foot out of the ground before
I realised where it was pointing to. It had a lot of black spot too last
year so I was pleased it was coming out all over this year after the harsh
pruning.

Anyway, they've all got lots of chicken poo, and now I'm just looking
forward to the henhouse stench dissipating a bit.

Thanks all!

Ian