Tips for Growing Roses

Roses have been highly prized throughout history for their wonderful smell and beauty; and they are of course popular symbols of love. Roses are the national flower of the United States and England, and presently they come in thousands of different varieties. Below are some tips for growing roses; along with information about the new genetically engineered blue roses that will soon be released commercially.

First, it is important to keep the pH level of the soil in your rose bed between 6.5 and 6.8. Roses like well-draining soil. But still they prefer deep waterings over more frequent shallower waterings. Roses are quite prone to getting a disease called powdery mildew. To help avoid this, try to keep from watering the bushes late in the evenings. You should water your roses about twice a week.

Give your roses enough space to breathe. Packing them too close together can also cause powdery mildew disease to develop. Pay attention to the space requirements listed for the variety of roses you’re planting.

Four to six hours of sun per day is ideal for roses; and it is better if they get sun in the morning rather than the afternoon.

Roses do not like locations that are too windy, but there should be a lot of circulating air. Add compost and peat moss to the soil and mix it well into the surface about 10 to 12 inches deep. This will help the soil drain better and also add aeration.

When planting rose bushes, dig a hole several inches bigger than the pot containing the rose plant. Then if the plant is in a fiber pot, trim the lid down to the soil level and put the pot in the hole. You should remove plastic pots entirely and set the plant in so that the bud union is about 2 inches below the soil. Add more soil to fill the hole and then water well. Add mulch right after planting to help retain water.

Certain types of hybrid roses produce more than one bud per shoot. To increase the size of your blooms, nip these additional buds by pulling them off as soon as you see them. Disbudding in this way will allow the stronger buds to grow to maximum potential.

Add water from over the heads of the plants initially, but when the foliage starts to appear, water only the soil from that point on. Try to keep water off the leaves to prevent diseases.

In late summer, you should not use fertilizer containing nitrogen.

Roses come in colors of red, pink, yellow, white, burgundy, blue, orange, green, purple, and even black. Concerning the blue rose, it has an interesting history; and recently there was an important discovery made about it.

In the 1840s, certain flower societies in Belgium and Britain offered a cash prize of 500 thousand francs to anyone who could produce a truly blue rose. No one claimed the prize. Although people have been growing roses for more than 5,000 years not one person has ever succeeded in producing an authentic blue rose until now. The Suntory Corporation recently announced that they had partnered with Floragine Ltd. to produce the world’s first blue rose, soon to be released commercially, which will thrill flower aficionados everywhere.

The main problem with producing blue roses was getting delphinidin (an anthocyanin in flowers that produces blue pigment) to take up residence in the genes of roses. This is why "blue" roses were occasionally made by simply dying white roses blue. But the molecular geneticists at Suntory and Florigene solved the delphinidin problem by cloning the delphinidin gene from a pansy flower and installing it into the rose. They also had to use another gene from an iris, as well as a new manmade gene the scientists created to work as a “silencer” to another gene which previously stifled the delphinidin synthesis. This newly created gene was the real breakthrough for Suntory scientists and thus it solved the ten year old problem of getting delphinidin into a common rose. Although the color of the new blue roses is actually closer to purple, the scientists are confident they possess the ability to produce a wider range of blues in the future, since the new roses have almost 100% delphinidin in their petals. They claim the roses have the breeding potential to produce colors ranging from baby blue all the way to Navy blue.

Suntroy and Florigene Ltd. partnered up and began their research on blue roses in 1990. Although it took them until recently to succeed, their initial experiments produced the popular blue carnation in 1995, which went on to sell 10 million flowers in 2003 in countries around the world. They dubbed the carnation “Moondust” and originally marketed it in North America, Australia and Japan. The new blue rose is expected to get a large chunk of the 25 million market for cut flowers.

You may be wondering when you will be able to grow blue roses for yourself. Well, you’ll have to wait a bit. They won’t be released commercially until 2007 or 2008. But you can still grow a few “fake” blues if you don’t mind them being a little more purple than blue. Rose varieties with the word ‘blue’ in the name have been on the market for quite a while, and they just may hold you over until the genuine blues become available. Here are a few pseudo-blue varieties:

• Blue Girl - This type has lavender blossoms and is quite fragrant; it reblooms quickly and produces up to 40 petals.
• Shocking Blue - Deep lavender colored blooms, good for cut flowers, extremely fragrant.
• Neptune - Comes in lavender with purple tinges. Large green leaves and very resistant to disease; has powerful rose fragranced blooms.
• Blue Curosia, Stranger, Allure and Bluebird are other types of pseudo-blue roses.