Sunday, December 7, 2008

How to transplant a rose

Nicole and I will be redesigning our garden this spring. One thing we're planning on doing is moving one of our tall climbing rose bushes between our two composters (thanks to Graham for the second one, courtesy of someone in Hamilton!). The idea is to use a climbing rose to go over the two composters and a smaller white rose to hide the one side of the composter from view out of our back window. In addition to hiding the black composters, the roses' proximity to the compost will likely mean healthy plants. I'm slightly concerned about airflow on the one between the composters, but we'll have to see. Instructions on moving roses can be found here. The synopsis?

  • DO one rose bush at a time only.
  • DO Be Organized
  • DO have the new bed or location ready before digging the plant
  • DO have all tools and equipment ready.
  • DO have water at hand.
  • DO work quickly.
  • DO ask for help if you have many bushes to be moved.
  • DO prune the plants by 1/3 to 2/3; remember, the bush will be shocked when dug up and will be unable to sustain its original amount of leaves.
  • DO cover or hill up all transplanted roses for several days.
  • DO NOT try to transplant more than one bush at a time.
  • DO NOT transplant on a cold, windy, or hot day.
  • DO NOT expose the roots for a long time to air, sun, wind or cold and certainly not to freezing rain.
  • DO NOT leave newly transplanted bushes uncovered.
  • DO NOT fertilize during transplanting (except bone meal).

And, a breakdown of rose terms.

2 comments:

David said...

Hey folks! I'll be checking on this gardening blog often - you folks sure seem to gather a lot of gardening wisdom/practice, and I'll be needing that this spring! Do composters work in the winter? All our stuff just freezes.

- said...

Hi Dave!

Composters will work in the winter, but only to freeze the crap out of things. Freezing helps break down the cell walls in most organic material which means that when they thaw it breaks down quicker. So, it will build up in the winter, but will drop massively at the first spring thaw. I usually still take my spade and hack the henk out of stuff in the winter. It makes the breakdown in the spring even quicker.