Amending the Soil For Struggling Hybrid Tea Roses
We have Tom in Massillon again. ‘I’ve talked about this before, I have a problem with my hybrid tea roses. It seems like they just quit. I used to have beautiful roses. This year, they’re not growing at all. I lost five over the winter, which has never happened before. And they’re just barely growing. They should be like four feet tall. But one is blooming, but very small blooms. The others are just barely growing. And I planted a new one and got just a few shoots, and then it died.’
I know we’ve talked about it before, and I’m really wondering if your soil might need some conditioning. It would be kind of an undertaking, but it would almost be worthwhile to dig up your roses here, maybe towards the fall, and amend your soil and put like fresh compost in, that kind of stuff. Because it almost sounds like there may be stunted or there’s something going on in the soil.
I know a lot of times with hybrid teas, they can tend to sputter out over the years, but it sounds like you’ve been, I know you’ve been doing everything right and fertilizing them. So how’s your soil? Have you ever dug down in there and looked at it?
Because a lot of times if it’s really compacted or anything like that, it can cause a slow downfall with plants, especially with roses too, if their roots are compact and stuff. So I would like to see pictures of them too, honestly.
Because I know we’ve talked before and I know that you’ve fertilized them and done everything right, and they’re in a decent amount of sun, getting good sun.
I mean, honestly, and I know hybrid teas are tricky. And if they’re older varieties, sometimes they just kind of go downhill after a while. They’re very finicky. Yeah, hit or miss sometimes, unfortunately. But I mean, to me, with sight unseen, it sounds like something’s going on in the soil to me more than anything.
Soil Amending
I would recommend amending your soil. I mean, ideally, it would be good to be able to get them out of there and really work in the soil with some compost or sweet peat, just something, a soil conditioner. Any kind of organic matter is going to help enrich that because roses like really rich soil.
If you don’t want to dig them up, putting a top dressing of compost or the sweet peet, anything like that would be a good idea too. And you can just kind of work it down into the soil. And that really does help create good microorganisms. And that’s really what you’re wanting. So soil amending would probably be my best guess.
If you’re going to dig them up, you want to wait till fall. But you can amend your soil now. You can do it now just by doing a top dressing with the Sweet Peet or soil. There’s a Fox Farm soil conditioner that I love, or just an organic compost. Anything like that’s going to be really good. There is just general bag compost, compost manure. But that one I would kind of stay away from because that can burn the roots. So I would go with more of a soil conditioner or Sweet Peet.
If you want to come in, we can bring in a picture and we can kind of steer you more in a better direction too, because there might be something else going on that we don’t know that we kind of need to take a look at. You’re not going to go wrong there either way. That’s always going to help your soil.
I would always be so frustrated trying to do my best as an amateur gardener. And then you just don’t know. There’s a billion things that can go wrong. And roses are very tricky. But the hybrid teas, I always say to everybody, I just enjoy them when they’re at the store because they are just a lot of work. And I mean, I usually do kind of go back to the soil with a lot of things. That’s where if you’re having ongoing problems and you’re seeing stuff decline over a certain period, it’s usually something going on underneath.
The hybrid teas, they’re awesome roses, but like I do call them grandma roses because I feel like it is something that you have to have an immense amount of time to take care of them. A lot of people who are retired, they love them and they’re beautiful, awesome roses. I’ve seen some really pretty rose gardens, you know, from customers and stuff.
I had one way back in the day when I lived down South, I had one beautiful rose bush. I don’t even know what kind it was, but it was bigger roses. It was just stunning. And it was, I think that it was in the perfect place. Everything was perfect for it. And it was just beautiful. I was sad when I moved away, I was, you know, almost considering digging it up and taking it with me. But yeah, I thought, that’s not good. And it might not make it. It was very happy where it was. So I left it there.
Sometimes that everything like is perfect for, you know, like you have a perfect spot. It’s tough to have a spot like that. So you’re always most of the time going to run into like, at least a minor speed bump, you know, but it’s nothing that’s like you can’t fix.But man, when you find like a nice spot for something, you don’t have to do anything.
Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).