Give the rose-bed a sunny, protected situation, using a soil of good garden loam, clay, and old, well-rotted manure, made deep and mellow. If the plants are the small mail-order size set one foot apart each way, planting according to directions for transplanting, and make the soil very firm and hard about their roots. Cultivate frequently, or mulch with lawn clippings, working them in as they decay. Liquid manure must not be given until the plants are growing vigorously, when it may be applied once or twice a week. More plants are injured by the injudicious use of fertilisers than in any other way.
If two-year-old plants are purchased, set from eighteen inches to two feet apart each way. See that each plant has a zinc or wooden label securely fastened to it, or, what is better, make a list in their regular order, or a diagram of the bed in a note-book. This permanent memorandum will enable you to be sure of the name of any particular Rose.
Cut Roses with a liberal amount of the stem, and only enough pruning will be needed to keep them in good shape and remove any weak growth. It is a good plan to cut them down to a bud that will be likely to throw a good shoot. Hardy Perpetuals or monthly Roses often fail to give more than a few early spring flowers at the tips of the branches. If the plants are in good condition, and the branches of some length, peg the ends down to the ground with a clothes-pin or stick, as the tendency in Rose growth is for new wood to start from the highest point. Bending the end down brings the highest point at the middle of the branch, which will then break and bloom.
Roses, especially the old hardy kinds, will often refuse to bloom, though well cared for and sufficiently pruned. In such cases root-pruning may be resorted to by cutting down on two sides of the plant with the spade and severing a part of the roots. This will often induce bloom when all other methods fail. Plants occasionally run to roots as well to tops.
So many and varied are the insect enemies that a hardy Rose, with even fair foliage, is rare during the season of bloom, unless ceaseless warfare has been waged from the first swelling of the buds. Slugs, rose thrip or hopper, and rose-bugs make the life of the rose-grower a weariness. On this account alone I would recommend discarding the June Roses in favour of the Teas, which are fairly free from these pests. Their dark-green, healthy foliage is a striking contrast to the worm-eaten, rusty foliage of the hardy Rose. The only weakness they show is an occasional tendency to mildew, and this may be avoided by giving an airy, sunny situation, setting far enough apart to insure free circulation of air, and watering early that the foliage may dry before the chill of night. The remedy is flowers of sulphur dusted over the leaves.
TRAINING A CLIMBING ROSE
Rose-slugs are small green worms that feed on the foliage, lying on the under side of the leaves, which they roll around them or draw together with a slight web. The remedy is to spray the under side of the foliage with kerosene emulsion, or with hot water heated to 140°, being careful to reach every part, or to go over the plant leaf by leaf, pinching the leaves between the fingers and crushing them. The rose hopper, or thrip, is a small, yellowish-white insect feeding on the under side of the leaves, sucking their juice and causing them to turn yellow. The best remedy is the whale-oil solution sprayed on the under side. For rose bugs, or beetles, spraying with Paris green is quite effective, but it must be used promptly, as the amount of injury they can do in a short time is remarkable. After using an insecticide, the plants should be thoroughly sprayed with clear water, and if treated with Paris green label them, that no one may be poisoned by eating the rose-leaves. Roses for pillows should not be gathered from plants that have had any kind of poison used on them.
Roses kept in the house during winter are sometimes attacked with green lice. They may be treated with tobacco in some of its forms, or with hot water—dipping the entire plant in a pail of water heated to 130°. I prefer the hot-water treatment, as it leaves the plant clean and invigorated. Few, if any, plants are injured by it, and most are benefited. Where there is any question of the effect on a particular plant a single branch may be dipped as an experiment. It is difficult to make any choice of Roses where all are so beautiful. American Beauty is probably the most popular crimson Rose to-day. The Bride stands first among the whites. Kaiserin Augusta Victoria is a most desirable hardy white, and the new rose, Virginia R. Coxe—also offered under the name of Gruss an Teplitz—is one of the most desirable reds; a profuse and constant bloomer with loose-petalled, medium-sized flowers of the richest scarlet, shading to glowing velvety crimson. Among the climbers Mrs. Robert Perry is the finest, an immense, pure, creamy white, quite hardy, and a free and constant bloomer, valuable for cut flowers.
If one has room for a hundred varieties it is easy to select that number with the certainty that there need not be a poor Rose among the number.