april flowers

[pilvikki]

[yogi]

Looks like Roses. Am I seeing correctly?

[pilvikki]

yes indeed! they do best in the spring before the heat hits them. tomorrow i take a picture of some of the others as they're opening up.

[yogi]

I'm not sure what will happen in our new home, but roses up north tended to get black spots on their leaves. The flowers seemed ok, but the stems and leaves got ugly toward the end of summer.

[Kellemora]

We have to wait until after the May Showers before we get any appreciable blooms to view!

[pilvikki]

it depends on the variety: i have 2 that i need to pluck the spotty leaves off, but 2 others get lots of aphids instead. the aphids are easier to pick off...

[Kellemora]

I no longer have all the beds of flowers in my yard that I used to.
Heck, I can't even seem to keep the weeds at bay anymore. They are winning!

[pilvikki]

"my gardening" comprises of... let me see.... 26-30 pots (trying to count, but get mixed up) . i top them with lava pellets and roof tile bits, which keeps the weeds down to manageable. i e. to a few. also keeps the cats out them, especially if you put the curved side of tile bits down, as in a U. hah!

last year i had the odd bloom on roses so that i had at least one rose every month, right through the winter. this winter was strange with the temperature jumping up and down. maybe that's they took took february off.

[yogi]

My garden here in Missouri has gone to pots. The soil is atrocious and 90% clay, so it seems. Now that the potted plants seem to have stabilized I'll be moving them to strategic locations around the front porch. I put three rose bushes in the clay out back where they get full sun all day long. We will see how well they do.

[pilvikki]

um... clay...? i'd not bet on longevity there; roses need good drainage (i drowned one last year when the pot bottom hole got plugged and i didn't notice). they also need acidic soil, so i'd work a lot of peat moss and mulch and horse poop into the ground.

oh, here you go, i didn't think of the raised bed, although it's obvious once you do, lol:

http://www.rose-gardening-made-easy.com ... nners.html

[yogi]

There are also a lot of rocks in the soil which would normally not be a good thing. In my case I think they help drain the soil. I might have to add acid to the soil. Wish I had a ph meter to check it out.

[pilvikki]

you can get one with the ph readings from the drug store. they come in those tiny litmus papers that change colour. otherwise keep piling on coffee grinds and tea leaves.

[yogi]

Those papers are for pee-ing on to see if you are pregnant or not. I've seen meters with actual ph numbers on the dial, but that was many years ago. I suppose if I were ambitions I could look it up on the Internet and buy one. Do you know the approximate range for composted manure? We seem to have a lot of that around here.

[pilvikki]

http://preparednessmama.com/testing-you ... out-a-kit/

there you go, lol!

[yogi]

Very interesting article. I can do that.

However ... this is my kind of ph meter: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Luster-Leaf- ... r/35395614

Although most references differ, roses generally enjoy a pH of 6.0 through 6.9, with about 6.5 being ideal. In other words, the soil should be just slightly acidic. For pH outside this range, the availability of nutrients to the plant is greatly affected.

[pilvikki]

well, aren't i the daft bunny! i have one of those... it also reads the humidity in the soil and i got it when i tried to root some roses... which did not work very well - because i didn't pay attention to said meter.

what a ...

[yogi]

I planted three bushes without the pH meter to assist me, and they all seem to be growing. Of course, that's only the first two weeks. We'll see what happens about September.

[pilvikki]

what kind are they? and you know, with the ph their colours change, too...

[yogi]

Most all roses are hybrid these days and guaranteed not to reproduce nor live very long. The kind we have were on sale at WalMart and my wife picked them up on a whim. We have three bushes at the moment and one of them will produce red flowers. That's all I know.

[pilvikki]

well, my oldest here are 4 years old and so far so good, even though they must suffer from summer heat and winter frost sitting out there in their pots. i'm thinking of taking the boring pots and giving them a new paint job: one side white and one black, then rotate them according to weather. that's IF the weather decides to settle into any kind of 'normalcy' instead of bouncing around like a rabbit on speed.

meanwhile, the house we had in canada had a metal tag on it: 1961. it had been badly neglected along the way, but still bloomed very dark red flowers. it was beautiful.