kimbesashomekeeping.com » Homekeeping outdoors

Rose Care Tips for Beautiful Blooms

adminh — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:24:48 +0000

Roses are pretty easy to grow if you learn about them and follow some simple guidelines.

Watering, fertilizing and pruning are essential rose care tasks.

Roses should be watered deeply, especially in this hot summer weather. They should get at least an inch of water every week.

As long as you have planted your roses in humus-rich, balanced soil, you shouldn’t need to give them more than one inch of water per week.

Always water your roses in the morning so their leaves will have time to dry before dark. Otherwise your roses can get Blackspot, Powdery Mildew or other diseases. Watering systems that only water the soil and not the leaves, such as drip irrigation hoses, are even better.

Roses need to be pruned regularly. You should use a good, sharp pair of pruning shears to nip faded flowers, and trim away dead or damaged branches, as well as any brown leaves.

Do not compost any diseased trimmings, because the pile may not get hot enough to destroy the disease organisms.

Fertilizing Roses

Roses are voracious eaters. They consume large amounts of soil nutrients, so you must feed them lightly but often each time. Stop feeding about two months before the first expected fall frost. In Michigan, that means finish feeding around the end of July.

The American Rose Society alfalfa tea recipe for roses has been around for quite a few years. Be aware: it smells! It is generally applied in fall. It stimulates the roses to release a special growth hormone that will help them build a strong root system.

To make this tea, take a 32-gallon plastic trash can and add 10 cups of alfalfa pellets, then enough water to cover them. Alfalfa pellets come from a feed store where you buy bags of food for horses or other grazing animals. Get the pellets that are just plain alfalfa, with no molasses or other additives.

Then you steep this tea for about five days, stirring it daily. After about three days, the smell will be apparent, so keep the lid on.

You can add nutrients by adding 2 cups of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate). Some growers add trace elements or their other “secret” ingredients to this brew.

This recipe makes a concentrated fertilizer tea. Dilute the mixture by adding water to fill the trash can at least half way before you water your plants.

Large rose bushes should receive about a gallon of this tea, and mini roses should get about 1/3 of a gallon. After you use all of the water, you can add more water to the pellets in the bottom to make a second batch. After the second batch, discard the pellets.

Some growers prefer just to sprinkle the pellets around their roses, and water them in. This treatment, repeated three times during the summer, will also benefit your roses if you don’t wish to make the tea.

With proper food and water, you can look forward to lovely and fragrant roses. The healthier your rose bushes, the more resistant to disease they will be and the more flowers they will produce.

With some basic care, your roses can be healthy and beautiful all season long, and for many seasons to come. You can continually enjoy and even show off your rose-growing talents!

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Earth Day, Community Composting, and Memories

adminh — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:32:16 +0000

Thursday, Earth Day, was a gorgeous spring day, so I spent part of it outdoors doing some yard work. In the front, a bush died over the winter, and needed to be removed. I started with hand pruners, but quickly realized I needed something with more bite.

Loppers made short work of it, and it wasn’t long before the bush was bagged ready for the city pick-up. My axe will come out later, to grub out the stump.

Lawn work can have a certain meditative quality about it, so I don’t mind doing it. Since it happened to be Earth Day, it got me remembering.

In 1970, I was in school and our National Honor Society chapter did a “teach-in” where we did presentations for younger students. Mine was on water quality and waste water processing. Tertiary septic systems. Now that was a hot topic!

Remember going to the library and using the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature for your research 40 years ago? A long row of books, library bound in green, where you would record the information and ask for the magazine to be pulled from the stacks in back. Or perhaps view it on microfilm.

Some people in the country made compost. We used to burn our leaves on the edge of the street. Cans, bottles, paper, all that went into the regular trash. In my area, we recycle those things, and many more items.

Grass clippings and leaves go to community composting. If you want the results, there are designated places where the finished product is offered for free – first come, first served – to people improving their soil or working on their landscaping.

Perhaps in the future, someone will benefit from mining those old landfills. Meanwhile, 40 years after the first Earth Day, it seems perfectly natural to recycle the grass clippings, leaves and the dead bush, just like in nature.

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More Snow? Get Out The Toro

adminh — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:45:25 +0000

Several years ago, I bought my first snow blower, a Toro 1800 electric snow thrower.

It’s been working with me to clear snow ever since.

I got it via Amazon, which some of my friends thought was strange. Usually you buy such things from a brick-and-mortar hardware store.

But I’d done my research online, and I got shipping included with the price of the snow blower (as we know, it’s never really free).

It was delivered the day after Thanksgiving, and I finished minor assembly. It was easy. I’ve been very happy with my Toro ever since.

Before purchase, I had researched different snow throwers, because I had never used one or owned one, and we did not have them at home when I was a kid. We had shovels, which the kids were allowed to use. The lawn tractor with snow blade was Dad’s exclusive territory.

Toro has come out with a more powerful version of the Model 1800, but matching the machine to your needs still applies.

A single stage machine was right for me. I have a cement driveway, about 150 feet long and generally one car wide. If it was gravel, I would have considered two-stage snow throwers. Single-stage means there is one spinning rotor that both collects the snow and throws it out through the chute. These machines are less powerful than two-stage snow throwers that have an auger to collect the snow, and an impeller to throw it.

Weight was also important. My Toro is light enough that I can lift it, and hang it on the wall for storage.

Power was also important. I chose an electric snow thrower because I have grounded outlets in the garage and house that are right next to the driveway, and because I wouldn’t have to deal with gasoline in the cold. When I turn on my Toro, it starts, as long as it’s plugged in.

My Toro 1800 can handle the type of snow I get most often. Not matching your needs to a product is just a recipe, IMO, to end up unhappy with the item.

My biggest challenges throwing snow was learning how to deal with the prevailing wind. It blows across my driveway, and if I throw with the wind, I fill up the neighbor’s driveway. So I need to be able to throw down the driveway most of the time, while avoiding a bath in snow, covering the neighbor’s driveway, and filling up my own driveway after I just cleared a section.

It has been worth it to learn now to use my Toro 1800 snow thrower. It is a lot faster than using a shovel, and a lot less work.

Toro snow thrower on a work break

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