WHY NOT SOME EARLY ROSES?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

WHY NOT SOME EARLY ROSES?

Trees potted up now will flower early and you can have roses blooming in pots many weeks before the outdoor plants are even in bud. In an ordinary greenhouse they will commence to bloom in August. Ordinary bushes can be used for the purpose. There is no need for specially prepared plants and you can chooso almost any varieties you like. The dainty Polyantha roses, with their clusters of brilliant blooms, also do splendidly in pots, especially the lovely orange scarlet Gloria Mundi, the deep pink Ella Poulsen and the white Catherine Zeimet. Do not use unduly large pots; roses do not like them. Ihe sixing or at most eight-inch size will do for the strongest of the bushes; the five or six-inch size for the Polyanthus. For soil use a mixture of loam, three parts, and well-rotted manure, one pait, with a sprinkling of sand. Add a good handful of bone meal to each peck of compost. Before potting cut back the strong "■rowing roots to a length of about five inches "and pot firmly. When potting roses first put a little soil into the pot and mako this linn with a. ramnici. Then set the plants in position, trickle soil between and over the roots until the latter are covered, and ram again. The potted roses should remain outdoors until the efid of June, being plunged to the pot rim in ashes. Then, before they are taken into the greenhouse pruning inu"t be done, the shoots of the weakergrowing bushes being cut back to two eves, those of the stronger bushes to four eyes. Polyanthcs need very little pruning. All you need is to cut out shoots which are too weak to bloom and prune unripened shoots.