How to Save Roses After Winter: Tips for Caring for Blackened and Rotting Bushes

It is especially important to properly prepare roses for winter and open them in a timely manner in the spring.

Sometimes it happens that roses do not survive the winter well and look blackened, dried out or rotted.

Don’t rush to throw away such bushes – they can be saved if you correctly determine the cause of the damage and carry out the necessary measures, says Anastasia Kovrizhnykh .

Freezing is the freezing of shoots or freezing of entire bushes due to improper or insufficient covering of roses for the winter.

This can happen in severe winters without snow, when the soil freezes to a great depth. To avoid this, you need to cover the roses in an air-dry way, installing arches and covering them with dense agrofibre.

If freezing has already occurred, then you need to cut off all damaged shoots to healthy tissue and treat the cuts with garden pitch or brilliant green.

Damping off is the rotting of the roots or shoots of roses due to excess moisture and stuffiness under cover.

This can happen if the roses were covered too early in the fall or aired too late in the spring. A rose can also rot if it is planted in a lowland where water accumulates during rains or snowmelt.

To prevent damping off, you need to remove all the leaves from the roses before covering them, ventilate the bushes at positive temperatures and transplant the rose to a higher place.

If rotting has already occurred, then you need to remove all rotten parts of the plant and treat the remaining parts with an antifungal agent.

Desiccation is the drying out of rose shoots or buds due to a lack of moisture under cover.

This can happen if the roses were not watered before covering or if it was too hot under the cover. To prevent drying out, you need to water the roses well before covering, do not use black polyethylene for covering and air the bushes in a timely manner in warm weather.

If drying has already occurred, then you need to water the roses generously and cut off all dried parts down to living tissue.

To help roses that have not survived the winter well: advice from experienced gardeners, you can add magnesium sulfate. This mineral fertilizer improves plant nutrition and increases their resistance to stress.

To do this, dissolve 20 g of magnesium sulfate in 10 liters of water and spray the rose bushes with this solution. You can also add magnesium sulfate to the soil when fertilizing roses with complex fertilizers.

In addition, to help roses recover from winter, you need to provide them with proper care.

This includes watering, weeding, loosening the soil, removing weeds and dried flowers, and protecting against pests and diseases.

It is also necessary to carry out formative pruning of roses depending on their variety and type. Pruning promotes shoot renewal, improved flowering and disease prevention.

By following these simple rules, you can save your rose bushes and enjoy their beauty and fragrance all season long.

Earlier we talked about spring care for strawberries.