How to – Rose care for the autumn

Feeding your roses

Feed with liquid tomato feed will help to produce more flowers next spring. Then in a few weeks add a feed of a product called Top Rose

Blackspot on your roses

Black spot is a fungal disease, and the best way to stop it, or cut back on the effects it has ob flowering is to use cultural methods which are as follows.

Firstly, in the autumn rake up and burn all the old fallen leaves. Secondly, spray the bare stems and the soil under the roses with diluted Jeyes Fluid (make sure you drench the stems, so that the Jeyes Fluid runs into all the cracks in the stems to kill all the over wintering spores).

Thirdly, once you have removed all the old leaves, mulch the soil under the roses with a fresh compost, bark mulch or well rotted horse manure. This stops the overwintering spores in the soil from being splashed back onto the fresh spring growth by rain drops.

Pruning your roses

Once your roses have finished flowering in the autumn this is normally after the first couple of frosts or cold nights. Start by removing the dead and diseased stems, cut back to live wood or remove the whole stem. Then cut the rose back by approximately 20 percent in the autumn this stops the rose rocking around with the winter winds. Then in the spring as the buds break cut the stems back by a further 20 percent.