It's Rose Planting Time!

by Ann Hooper

New roses are planted in early spring when the forsythia blooms, or about six weeks before the last frost is expected in your Hardiness Zone.

If you ordered your new roses by mailorder, they’ll arrive bareroot and dormant at, or close to, the proper planting time in your area.  If you prefer to choose your own plants at your local garden center, they’ll be potted and already beginning to leaf at planting time. 

Once planted, there’s no difference in the growth and performance of bareroot plants versus potted ones, but the planting procedures vary slightly.

Bareroot roses should be unpacked the very moment they arrive and placed in buckets of water with their roots submerged.  A rose plant with dry roots is a dead rose plant, so keep the roots in water until you’re ready to plant.  A few drops of chlorine bleach in the water will keep bacteria from growing.

Potted roses can be kept outside, in a sheltered place and well watered, until you’re ready to plant them in the garden. 

Whether bareroot or potted, your rose requires a superb planting hole.  A little extra effort now will allow your rosebush to grow strongly for many years, so don’t skimp!  Dig the hole to about two feet across and two to three feet deep.  Remove all the soil and put it aside to be mixed with sand and compost if your soil is heavy or with loam and compost if your soil is sandy.  You may want to add a little lawn lime if your soil is acid, and/or a small amount of bone meal, neither of which travel in soil and won’t do the plants any good if you wait and apply them to the surface of the soil later on.

To plant a bareroot rose, make sure that your planting hole is larger in diameter than the spread of the roots.

Backfill the planting hole with the amended soil until the plant can be situated properly.  All that lovely, friable soil is going to be a marvelous place for new rose roots to grow without encumbrance!  In cold climates, the bud union—that knob that the canes grow from—or the crown of the plant (where the roots and the canes come together) should be planted two to four inches below the final level of the soil.  In tropical climates, the bud union should be well above ground so it’s not vulnerable to soil pests, and own-root roses (those without a bud union) should be planted so that the canes are above ground and the roots below.

Once you’ve determined that you’ve added enough soil to the hole that the plant can be placed at the correct depth, use that soil to create a cone in the bottom of the hole that corresponds with the shape of the root spread of the bareroot plant.  This is important because it ensures that the roots will be entirely encased in that good soil, without any gaping air pockets.

Remove the bareroot plant from its bucket of water.  Rose roots should not be pruned, except maybe for a tiny snippet removed from the end of each one to promote new growth.  Do, however, prune off any dangling, broken roots.

Now, you have to do this.  It’s going to be painful for you, but your rose will love it!  Using a very sharp pruner, remove at least half the length of each cane.  That’s right, you’re throwing away half of the plant.  Just do it.  Cut just above an outward-facing budeye (one of those little lumps on the canes.)

By shortening the canes, you’re helping the plant preserve its stored energy so it can survive until its feeder roots develop, and you’re ensuring that the new canes that grow will be strong and sturdy.

So get over it and place the shortened plant on top of the soil cone and gently backfill the hole.  Don’t tamp the soil with your hands, and absolutely do not use your feet!  But do water the hole with a gentle stream from the hose.  This compacts the soil around the roots, eliminating big air pockets, but leaving just the right amount of oxygen in the soil.  Keep watering and adding soil until the hole is filled to the same level as the rest of the bed.

When planting a potted rose, prepare the hole and amend the soil, as above, and then fill the hole with the amended soil until you can place the rose, pot and all, in the hole at the correct depth.  The canes have already been shortened, so you don’t have to prune.

The plant has been growing in its pot for a very short time, and while it has developed some fragile feeder roots, it hasn’t grown enough of a root system to hold the soil together outside the pot.  So, to prevent those new roots from being damaged or destroyed in the process of transplanting, you’re going to keep the roots and potting soil intact by removing the pot from the rose, rather than removing the rose from the pot.

Insert a utility knife in one of the pot’s drainage holes and cut all the way around to remove the bottom of the pot.  Once the bottomless pot is situated in the hole, use the utility knife to cut the side of the pot, from bottom to top, and gently spread and remove the split pot, leaving the roots and the potting soil intact.  Backfill the hole quickly, before the rootball falls apart.  Water and backfill as above, to compact the soil.

Now your newly planted roses will get off to a great start!