"Allegra" wrote in message
news:4INja.341058$L1.97804@sccrnsc02...

"JimS." in a good mood said

Uh, I assume that means compost that you have *made yourself*, as
opposed
to, er, 'your own compost...' !!!
:O

JimS.
Seattle


Hello Jim,

It means just that and the reason for mentioning
that was because I am still truly angry at a co-op
that shall remain nameless that offered "home-made
compost" guaranteed to be organic, blah, blah, blah...
so, the one here who believes just about anything
anyone tells her when she hears "organic" wrote a
check for a goodly amount and spent the next two
years picking up from cigarette filters to you name
it from the center of the " home-made organic"
compost.

If you make your own I suppose you don't put into it
cigarette filters because you are smart enough not
to smoke...we won't go into the "organic" part of
it ;) Lets say that I don't have the space to donate
to make compost, for who knows what reason our
zoo no longer sells the zoo-doo that was nothing
short of magnificent for the roses, and I don't care
if Gaia in person tries to sell me any "home made
compost" I ain't buying. You can quote me.

Jim, do you work for the government by any chance?
I am asking because it would seem that only the people
who follow the D.C. double speak would think of
calling feces "compost", specially if it is sold for
80 billion dollars?

Allegra

Oh my.. well that was a bit more than my smart-ass comment was poking
at....can't think of anything much more annoying than finding cigarette
butts in "compost". They'd certainly never come from compost that I made-
no matter what exactly it is that we're referring to :-0

Nopers, I don't work for the government, but the (mis)Management of my
company certainly takes back seat to nobody when it comes to double-speak.
I've become fluent, I'm afraid. Hey, it's a living...

You know the Seattle Woodland Park zoo does still sell ZooDoo. On your
recommendation as to how great it is for roses, maybe I will just have to go
buy some. I could swear I even saw it packaged and for sale last week at
one of the better nurseries. Only thing I'm afraid of-- if I go by there
again, I'll come back with another rose. And I still haven't figured out
where to put the one I bought last week. oops.

JimS.
Seattle

"JimS." told


You know the Seattle Woodland Park zoo does still sell ZooDoo. On your
recommendation as to how great it is for roses, maybe I will just have to go
buy some. I could swear I even saw it packaged and for sale last week at
one of the better nurseries. Only thing I'm afraid of-- if I go by there
again, I'll come back with another rose. And I still haven't figured out
where to put the one I bought last week. oops.

JimS.
Seattle

Well, that does it. When we are going to Tacoma to visit
Robin we are coming back with a couple of bags of the stuff.
Trust me on this one, the roses think of it as chocolate made
in Belgium, turned into French truffles. No joke.

I don't know what happened at our zoo. When I called the
last time they put me on hold and discard and no one seemed
to have the answer. So I just gave up. But if the one in Seattle
has it, I will make sure to get some. I cannot tell you how clean
and efficient it is in the garden. And it works. At some point
early on you could hire someone ( I did have a small Alfa
Romeo with barely enough space for the kids and myself in
those days, both kids in the front seat sharing a single seat belt)
with a little pickup and they would fill the pickup for like
$10.00 or whatever donation you wanted to give. Ah, those
were the days....now a single bag of Whitney's is about $3.00
multiply that for 100 roses (the newer fifty and the others coming
are not getting any this year) and we have to think twice about
it...Thanks for the tip. And stay away from the nurseries!

Allegra

"Emil" wrote in message ...
Hi guys,

The roses in my front yard don't look that great. My Lovers Lane (planted
last year) is especially bad. It barely has any branches that are more than
4 inches. I know that one problem is the minimum sun they recieve. See, not
being in denial is a good thing. :-)

So, what can I add to the soil on those roses, and on all the roses I have.
I see Home Depot has some nitrogen I can add, how about that stuff? I use
mostly Supersoil or GroMulch (the yellow bags).

Perhaps the best thing you can add isn't commercially available.
Sorry.

Most roses and other plants that are also heavy feeders are also
mycorrhizal. I have found a form of Elaphomyces with wild rose in
Clackamas County, Oregon. But I can only presume this would also
associate with commercial roses.

Why add mycorrhizae instead of fertilizer? The answer is simply that
mycorrhizal fungi act as their own little fertilizer plants, producing
nitrogen and associating with nitroge-fixing bacteria. But adding too
much nitrogen to the soil causes the plant to dis-associate with
mycorrhizal fungi, and the mycorrhizae die-out quickly afterwards.

With trees, this can be devastating. I have heard bad reports of
fertilized tree stands which have missed a year...and had tremendous
tree fatalities as a result. Once you start feeding plants, be
prepared to do so long-term.

Elaphomyces granulatus was described by Dr. Alexander H. Smith as the
most common underground fungus in the world. It certainly is commonly
found with a wide variety of plants: pines, firs, rhododendron, oaks,
a host of other species.

The problem with mycorrhizal (especially ectomycorrhizal) fungi is
that most have never been reliably cultivated to date. And many are
species specific, i.e. associated with just one species of tree or
shrub instead of the widely associating E. granulatus.

Daniel B. Wheeler
www.oregonwhitetruffles.com

Wow,
So many responses! Thanks for everybodys suggestions.
Most likely I will replant the roses in the front portion of the yard. I
planted a bunch of iceplant ground cover there last year, I'll put the roses
in between. So many suggestions on what to do, maybe I'll try 1 method, then
another, then another, then another!

Thanks again,
Emil


"Emil" wrote in message
...
Hi guys,

The roses in my front yard don't look that great. My Lovers Lane (planted
last year) is especially bad. It barely has any branches that are more
than
4 inches. I know that one problem is the minimum sun they recieve. See,
not
being in denial is a good thing. :-)

So, what can I add to the soil on those roses, and on all the roses I
have.
I see Home Depot has some nitrogen I can add, how about that stuff? I use
mostly Supersoil or GroMulch (the yellow bags).

Emil
Zones 9-10

In Emil wrote:
So, what can I add to the soil on those roses, and on all the roses I
have. I see Home Depot has some nitrogen I can add, how about that
stuff? I use mostly Supersoil or GroMulch (the yellow bags).

Don't give up Emil. Use a seaweed emulsion. I get great results...
thicker stems and longer lasting blooms are just the start. And the
same applies to my bushes that are a little unlucky with sun.

Jane Lumley wrote in message ...
In article m, Shiva
writes
On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 10:28:13 -0800, "Emil"
wrote:

Hi guys,

The roses in my front yard don't look that great. My Lovers Lane (planted
last year) is especially bad. It barely has any branches that are more than
4 inches. I know that one problem is the minimum sun they recieve. See, not
being in denial is a good thing. :-)

Emil, it is a losing proposition, growing roses in not enough sun.
They can be fussy as it is. Can't you get them some more sun? If not
cutting down trees, then by trimming lower branches? Or MOVE them, it
is not hard. Sun is the big basic.

All true, but it IS possible to cosset them on four hours or so of sun
per day, or in dappled sun - it doesn't have to be a blazing desert.

I think they need more everything when they're struggling - more water,
more mulch, more rotted manure, more, and more frequent food and more
antifungal sprays in poor conditions. I've spoken before about Vitax Q4
- I get much better leaf and bloom results with this than with fish
blood and bone, and I find Osmocote nearly worthless - and if a rose is
looking sick it gets rose chicken soup - a foliar feed with liquid
seaweed.

Even so, of course they do better with more light.

I should like to endorse the use of Vitax Q4. FT writer, Robin Lane
Fox recommended it some years ago. Good for roses though I wouldn't
recommend it for apple trees as it produces leaf curl.

Stephen Quigley

In article , Stephen
Quigley writes
Jane Lumley wrote in message news:UPAKpBB7Zgj+Ew6W
...
In article m, Shiva
writes
On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 10:28:13 -0800, "Emil"
wrote:

Hi guys,

The roses in my front yard don't look that great. My Lovers Lane (planted
last year) is especially bad. It barely has any branches that are more than
4 inches. I know that one problem is the minimum sun they recieve. See, not
being in denial is a good thing. :-)

Emil, it is a losing proposition, growing roses in not enough sun.
They can be fussy as it is. Can't you get them some more sun? If not
cutting down trees, then by trimming lower branches? Or MOVE them, it
is not hard. Sun is the big basic.

All true, but it IS possible to cosset them on four hours or so of sun
per day, or in dappled sun - it doesn't have to be a blazing desert.

I think they need more everything when they're struggling - more water,
more mulch, more rotted manure, more, and more frequent food and more
antifungal sprays in poor conditions. I've spoken before about Vitax Q4
- I get much better leaf and bloom results with this than with fish
blood and bone, and I find Osmocote nearly worthless - and if a rose is
looking sick it gets rose chicken soup - a foliar feed with liquid
seaweed.

Even so, of course they do better with more light.

I should like to endorse the use of Vitax Q4. FT writer, Robin Lane
Fox recommended it some years ago. Good for roses though I wouldn't
recommend it for apple trees as it produces leaf curl.

Stephen Quigley

Thank you, Stephen! A mystery solved. I have a Zephirine Drouhin
growing into an apple, and the leaves of the apple have been curling.
Of course - it's Zephirine's Vitax.

I didn't realise Robin Lane-Fox had recommended Vitax. A brilliant
gardener, IMHO.
--
Jane Lumley

Unique Too wrote:

When I only had a few plants in pots I used water from the canal. I could see
a big difference when I used this water instead of tap water. I still use in
on newly potted plants, seems to give them an extra boost. There must be extra
nutrients in this type of water, whether from the fish or fertilzer runoff from
everyones lawn.

I wonder if this may be partly due to chlorinated water versus
unchlorinated water in addition to the extra nutrients from pond water
or canal water....

I recently received a Charley's Nursery catalog and have been
contemplating their chlorine filter attachment for spigots.

Susan
s h simko at duke dot edu

bannana peels



"Emil" wrote in message
...
Wow,
So many responses! Thanks for everybodys suggestions.
Most likely I will replant the roses in the front portion of the yard. I
planted a bunch of iceplant ground cover there last year, I'll put the
roses
in between. So many suggestions on what to do, maybe I'll try 1 method,
then
another, then another, then another!

Thanks again,
Emil


"Emil" wrote in message
...
Hi guys,

The roses in my front yard don't look that great. My Lovers Lane
(planted
last year) is especially bad. It barely has any branches that are more
than
4 inches. I know that one problem is the minimum sun they recieve. See,
not
being in denial is a good thing. :-)

So, what can I add to the soil on those roses, and on all the roses I
have.
I see Home Depot has some nitrogen I can add, how about that stuff? I
use
mostly Supersoil or GroMulch (the yellow bags).

Emil
Zones 9-10