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In autumn, nature prepares to go to sleep. In plants, the movement of juices slows down, foliage flies around. However, for gardeners and gardeners, autumn is a crucial time for preparing a personal plot for the next season. It is especially important to properly prepare plants that do not tolerate cold and need shelter for the winter.
Curly roses require careful care and protection. How the plants endured the winter depends on their health, appearance and flowering. Even in shelter, roses freeze or rot. The question of how to cover climbing roses for the winter is relevant for gardeners. I would like to preserve a beautifully flowering plant, indispensable for the decoration of walls, arbors, arches, fences. Many gardeners refuse to grow climbing roses just because of the difficulty of caring for and preparing the plant for winter.
Preparing climbing roses for winter in late summer – early autumn
At the end of the summer, some actions should be taken to prepare the climbing plant for the upcoming cold weather. First of all, under climbing roses, they stop loosening the soil and reduce watering to a minimum, and then stop it altogether.
Then the composition of mineral dressings is changed: nitrogen is removed to prevent the growth of shoots of climbing roses, which will not have time to ripen before the cold weather and, most likely, will die. The last top dressing, carried out at the end of August, includes superphosphate (25 g), potassium sulfate (10 g), boric acid (2,5 g). All components are diluted in 10 liters of water and rose bushes are watered, using 0,5 liters for each.
The most effective type of top dressing for climbing roses is foliar application. The plant absorbs mineral fertilizers not only by roots, but also by leaves and bark. For foliar top dressing, the volume of the proposed fertilizers is reduced by 3 times. After 2 weeks, feeding the plants should be repeated.
Autumn care for climbing roses is aimed at stopping the vegetative season of the plant. Since among the many varieties of climbing roses, there are those that bloom until the very cold.
The next stage of preparation of climbing roses will begin in mid-October. There is a pruning of plants and their removal from supports for subsequent shelter. The purpose of pruning: to form a crown of plants, to get abundant flowering in the next season and to maintain the health of climbing roses.
First of all, the broken and affected parts of the curly branches are cut off, then the upper unripened part of the shoots is cut off. It usually differs in color. It makes no sense to leave it, as it will freeze, first of all, and become a threat to the entire bush. Next, cut off all the leaves and remaining flowers of the plant.
Further pruning will depend on the type of climbing rose according to the nature of flowering and shoot formation. There is a group of roses that bloom once a season on last year’s climbing shoots. In autumn, such shoots should be removed completely, like raspberry shoots. There are young shoots that have grown in the current season (zero) and last year. You can leave 5-10 shoots.
Climbing roses, which bloom twice a season, form flowers on shoots of different ages from 2 to 5 years. Old age shoots of the plant gradually form fewer and fewer buds, so after 5 years of life they should be removed, leaving the youngest and strongest branches. In total, 4-10 climbing shoots should remain.
It also happens that the plant forms a large number of replacement shoots, which makes it extremely difficult to care for and winter protection of climbing roses. Therefore, the number of shoots should be regulated. You may need to remove many more of them, as their development will draw on a lot of nutrients, which can weaken flowering.
And the most difficult thing remains – to remove the climbing stems of the plant from the support. Use special gloves to protect your hands from spikes. Then you will not be distracted by annoying interference, and the work will go faster. Curly roses are unhooked from the support, removing the fasteners. Lay on the ground, tied together for convenience.
It is not always possible to immediately bend the plants to the ground. The branches of roses are strongly lignified and resilient. Then the shoots in the upper part are tightly tied with a rope and begin to gradually bend down. You can tie the other end of the rope to bricks or something heavy. You will simply move the bricks further away, causing the climbing rose to lean. The process may take several days.
At negative temperatures, climbing rose wood becomes too brittle and can easily break.
No plant residues should remain in the near-stem circle. They are a potential threat. Further, the rose is treated with a solution of Bordeaux liquid, iron sulfate (30 g / 10 l of water), copper sulfate (50 g / 10 l of water). After processing, the trunk circle is either spudded, up to 30 cm high, or mulched with peat or compost.
In a bent position, a climbing rose can be left for a period of 1 to 2 weeks, fixed with hooks. Do your own shelter preparation.
How to make shelters for climbing roses
It will be necessary to cover a climbing rose as soon as it is established from -5 ° С to -7 ° С. The impact of light frost is even beneficial for the plant, as it hardens it, and finally puts it into a state of rest.
Watch a video on how to cover roses for the winter:
1 method
Curly roses processed and stacked. So that there is no contact between the soil and the lashes, it is better to put branches of coniferous trees or fallen leaves, boards or roofing material between them. Gardeners offer other options for the substrate: plastic bottles fastened together or foam sheets.
Then set the arc. You can buy them ready-made, you can make them yourself from metal rods or from polyethylene pipes for plumbing. The materials are durable, and the arcs will last more than one year for shelter. For additional structural rigidity, fastening is added at the upper points of the arcs.
Make arcs with the expectation that they should not touch the lashes of a climbing rose. It’s good if there are 20-30 cm in stock. With the first frosts, covering material is pulled over the arcs: lutrasil, spunbond marked 42-60 g / sq. m in 2 layers. Attach the cover with clothespins or paper clips. It is important to fix the covering material well, as in winter there is weather with strong gusts of wind. And the coating can easily be torn off.
Advantages of shelter with arcs: reliable, you can make a shelter for several plants at once with your own hands. The meaning of such a shelter is that the earth gradually gives off heat, creating its own microclimate inside, comfortable for wintering roses. In winter, additional protection will lie on top of the shelter in the form of a thick layer of snow.
2 method
This method is suitable for climbing roses with a flexible stem. The stems will need to be laid in a spiral. Wooden stakes or metal rods are stuck around them around the circumference. Around the base, some material is attached that will hold the insulation: a chain-link mesh, a metal mesh for reinforcement, thick cardboard or thin plywood that can be bent to the diameter of the base for shelter.
You will get a kind of cylinder, inside of which a heater is poured: foliage, spruce branches, sawdust, hay, etc. From above, the entire structure should be covered with agrofiber.
Advantages of the method: saving space and money, you can make a shelter with your own hands.
Other covering materials can clump and become airtight, causing climbing roses to dry out.
3 method
The frame of the shelter is made of boards: along the entire length of the stacked stems of roses, supports 0,5 m high from thick boards are hammered into the ground. Boards of the same width as the rose garden are laid on them, fixed with nails. Long boards are laid on top of the boards at right angles to the previous ones. It turns out a lattice of boards.
A spunbond or lutrasil is pulled over such a base for shelter, securely fixed on the sides with bricks.
The method is reliable, climbing roses never freeze, snow falls on top and is not blown off the horizontal surface of the shelter, in contrast to the method using arcs. The disadvantages should be attributed to, during thaws, the snow melts, the water does not roll, and then turns into ice. Which changes the protective qualities of the structure for the worse.
Shelter for climbing roses will be much more effective if you make an inclination. To do this, you just need to increase the height of the supports on one side by about 0,3-0,4 m.
Another structure made of boards for sheltering climbing roses is a hut. It is made of two shields, which are installed at an angle. From above, shields made of boards or plywood are covered with agrofiber or film. To save material, you can make not solid shields, but in the form of a lattice. The ends of the hut should not be securely fixed so that during thaws it is possible to open them slightly for ventilation. The method is good in that such shields can be used repeatedly, unlike the previous method, where the structure for sheltering roses must be disassembled each time.
Conclusion
To prepare climbing roses for the winter cold, proper care is required from the end of summer. Then the need to securely cover the plants is added to the concerns of flower growers. When choosing a shelter, proceed from the climatic features of your area.