With the arrival of Spring comes the arrival of bare-root roses to my door.

I can’t help it. It’s bigger than I am. I need new roses every year. And, purchasing bare-root roses is generally less expensive than buying a potted rose at your local garden center.

Here in Connecticut, rosarians will find our garden centers’ roses pretty small-ish this Spring. I know the ones we planted at Woodland Gardens were potted up in March, but March and April were so cold and overcast that the roses just sat in their plastic-covered rose house and shivered. We were finally able to take the cover off the rose house last Saturday when the weather began to warm up. These roses are now very happy to be out in the open and are beginning to jump.

Starting in Containers

I have been growing roses in containers for many years for the Connecticut Rose Society’s annual rose sale. The thing I have discovered is that roses grow much faster in a pot than they do in the ground.

Think about it…we just had the coldest four month period ever in Southern New England. The soil is just beginning to warm up. Even the weed seeds are just barely sprouting, and they are near the surface. When we dig a great big hole to plant our new bare root rose, the soil way down there is probably about 45 degrees… especially this year. That rose is going to try to sprout and to put down new roots and will shiver the whole time.

Put your rose in a container, though, and it will grow amazingly fast! Why? The dark soil in the pot will collect heat from the sun! Put that potted rose on black landscape fabric or a dark driveway, and it will absorb more heat. Warm, damp soil encourages rapid root growth. This also encourages excellent top growth. I call this “Cooking My Roses.”

When to Plant Roses

I am advising customers to leave these roses in their pots until at least Father’s Day weekend. Why? Because I want these babies to be well-rooted in before anyone dumps them out of their pots. It’s relatively easy to figure out when our roses are well-rooted. The soil will dry out quickly and there will be tremendous top growth.

Root growth is very important as it supplies the life-blood to the plant. Those great big roots that anchor our roses form tiny little white feeder roots that do the lion’s share of hydrating and feeding our roses. These little white roots are very delicate and if you dump the rose out of the container before the roots have filled it, the unsecured potting soil will fall off dragging these important roots with it. This can severely damage your plant and at the very least, set it back.

You can place the potted rose where you will eventually plant it. Just water it every day and make sure it’s in full sun and your new rose will be very happy until transplant day. You should be able to lift the whole rootball out of the pot the day it goes into the garden.

Spring

I am ‘cooking’ a bunch of new roses this Spring in anticipation of a new garden we will be putting in later this season. (My roto-tiller husband Bob is currently busy with a wainscoting project in our dining room, so the new garden will have to wait until that project is complete…ahhh…priorities!)

Meanwhile, I brought home landscape fabric and Fafard High Porosity potting soil from the garden center. I potted all my bare-root roses up after hydrating them in buckets for a week or so. They are now growing well in anticipation of their beautiful new home later this summer! ‘Cooking’ your roses in containers means that they will grow much faster and will be a much larger plant this season than a newly planted-in-the-garden bare-root rose will be.

I think this is a great way to start a new rose garden, especially in my part of the country! I hope you are enjoying Spring wherever you are. Please go purchase more roses…they will make you very happy! Just be sure to ask the friendly person at your local nursery how long those roses have been potted up. If need be, just ‘cook’ them a little longer before you plant them. They will be happier and you will be thrilled with the results.