Organic Way to grow Roses in India

Roses are beautiful. Roses are dream of every gardener. The one thing that keeps gardeners back is Roses buds falling, Roses not blooming etc. how to grow rose plant in India is a common question indeed. Actually, it is easy but few pointers are to be set clearly in mind.

The queen of flowers is the rose, so needs pampering and when it blooms it brightens up the garden and the mood with its royal appearance. Need to create complete understanding – else the queen of flowers rarely shows up.

There are multiple varieties and colours but common problem is buds falling. Once we bring from nurseries often we find complaints about rose bud falling and the struggle faced while growing roses in India.

We must not start gardening with roses, to be honest. Because rose needs special care. Once we are through with basics gardening, we should start roses. When we talk about how to grow rose plant, the basics should be in place. Though the basic requirement for Roses is complete direct sunlight of 4-6 hours. No exception.

So what is the soil required for rose gardening?

Rose is one of the most nutrient guzzler and it demands phosphorus, potassium, calcium and micronutrients in excess compared to nitrogen.

Keeping the demands in mind we prepare the potting mix for roses.
Get around 50-60% of the mix a well drained soil and sand mix prepared from previous years and used in garden well solarized before application for at least a week to kill pathogens.

Rest 40-50% of the mix has be a rich organic matters which has to be slow and steady nutrient releasing one. For this I would love to have fully matured cow dung manure plus few handfuls of steamed bone dust and wood ash. Few more things you can add is well rested used tea leaves for at least 15 days and well dried and diced peels of bananas and oranges. Mixed them together to form a homogeneous mix in advance to get microbes present in cow dung manure to act on peels and leaves we added.

Before final repotting combining both soil and organic matters together is done and repotted discarding previous mixes as much possible exposing roots of the roses.

Root treatment & Pruning of roses

Annual exposing of roots after rains and pruning dead and useless stems helps plant to rejuvenate and grow fresh new branches from near the base of plant.

We have asked the naive question, how to grow rose plant in India to Saurav Saran ji who has grown 24 varieties of roses he gives us a clear picture.

He says, when rose buds come near to flowering top dressing with vermicompost is better choice compared to cow dung manure. Here too adding those additives like bone dust, wood ash, tea leaves and dried peels have to be done. Top dressing of top two inch soil is done to keep your plants well nourished and grow secondary shoots and flower.

After top dressing weekly foliar feeding will benefit your roses with micronutrient and potassium rich feed. It can be well digested and highly diluted mustard oilcake water or well stabilized leaf litter extract mix.

Pests & Diseases of Roses

The prominent challenge when we consider how to grow rose plant is that roses suffer most in later stages by pest and diseases due to micronutrient’s deficiencies. So be vigilant and keep everything handy for application which material have given you better results. Apply them before problems raise their head.

After flowering season is over you have to care more to keep rose bush strong and sturdy applying top dressing every second month and foliage feeding as per your wish. Highly diluted foliar feed can be done more frequently to boost it’s nutritional status.

Rainy season is the most difficult time for roses as the water logging of potting soil doesn’t help much so then resort to foliar spray with complete nutrition will be order of the day to counter leaching of nutrients from the pot.

Organic ways to prepare soil for roses is very important. Though you can opt chemical fertilizers, but why to adopt chemical when the most natural way to prepare soil is so easy. Roses come in so many colours and types. Learning rose gardening is an ongoing process but basic is almost same.

Input By : Saurav Saran, gardening expert