How To Prepare Roses For Winter

Published September 22, 2012

If you live in a state where winters are cold and snow covered, now’s the time to prepare those beautiful rose bushes for a long winters nap so they can be just as lovely next growing season.

Follow these tips so you get gorgeous roses again and again:

By now you should have stopped feeding your roses with granular fertilizer. August 15th is the cut off time for those. By doing this, you are telling them that it’s time to start storing up strength for harsh winters and not focus on growth and bloom production.

Discontinue dead heading now. Between the first and second week of September is the best time to stop removing those dead blooms. Once the buds are spent, you can pull those off and scatter them around your flowerbed. This tells your roses that it’s time to store up energy rather than producing new buds.

Pay close attention to your soils moisture throughout winter. Light watering throughout winter is essential to help keep your bushes hydrated for a great spring bounty.

Keeping the moisture in your soil also helps prevent blockage of ice caps caused by the freezing and thawing during winter. Adding epsom salts provides magnesium to your bushes that helps create new basal breaks in spring.

Use this checklist after your rose bushes have gone dormant for winter:

– Clear all debris and old mulch away from your rose bushes. Mix 2 – 3 tablespoons of super phosphate into the soil around the base of your bushes. The phosphate moves slowly through the soil and helps keep the roots strong throughout winter.

– Mound all of your rose bushes. The best and easiest way to do this is by using a rose collar around the base. Fill the collar 2/3 full with garden soil and water lightly to settle the soil. Add a little more soil if it settles too much. Top it off with mulch. Water lightly again to settle the mulch.

– Prune any hybrid tea and grandiflora rose bushes down to half their current height. Lower growing, and bushy florabunda rose bushes, shrub and miniature rose bushes need a little thin pruning. This helps prevent cane damage such as break off clear down to the base of the bush or smashing down due to strong winds or heavy snow fall.

– Once the leaves have dried out a bit, you can strip those off, as desired.

– Mound up around climbing and shrub rose bushes as well. Use collars if desired, and use the above directions for filling. Wrap the canes of climbing rose bushes with a light fabric to protect them from harsh, cold winds. If your climbing rose bushes are connected to a trellis or privacy type fence, you may not need the fabric.

– Garden soils can be mixed with play sand to create mounded soil due to it’s better drainage capabilities. This helps keep moisture flowing through the mounds so that it gets down into the root zones rather than holding it on top where it can cause mold and other fungus problems.