Another rose thread - sad tatty looking roses!

[teenyweenytadpole]

Hi, I have a rose bush by my patio. Don't know variety but it is a pale pink bush type rose with fairly large blooms. It just looks a bit sad - initially this spring there was lots of new growth and lots of buds, but it just does not seem to be blooming well. Some of the buds look brown and tatty before they even flower, and the flowers that do open don't seem as big and lush as last year and don't seem to last long. I have been dead heading it, but the overall effect is a bit dispiriting. Should I be feeding it? The weather has been pants, lots of rain and wind, so maybe that is part of the problem. Any advice gratefully recieved!

Don't be sad, it's been a terrible year for rose blooms. Make sure when you dead-head that you cut right back to healthy leaves and you don't just nip off the dead flower - tempting but not helpful.
I suspect the floppy growth is just too much water and not enough sun. You can feed your rose (with proper rose fertilizer) but not later than about e/o August or it will flop even more. If all else fails, move it to a sunnier, more sheltered place during the winter months for better flowers next year. Good luck.

Hi Hebe thanks for your message - quick question, some of the buds come in little groups of three, and often one will need deadheading while the others are still in flower, so do I just nip off these individual flowers or wait until all three are dead, if you see what I mean? Thanks!

I would nip the old buds off one by one, but when you take off the last in the cluster then, as Hebe says, cut down to the level of the leaves.

Some of my roses have had buds which turned brown and shrivelled and never opened. I can't remember its name, but ut's a condition caused by excessive rain.

Thanks - well we've certainly had excessive rain, so maybe that's it! Thanks for the advice.

PS MY DD's middle name is Maude so your username makes me smile...

Glad it's not just me

I planted 5 roses this year, two are dead, the others are struggling. Of the previously established 3, I've had about 4 blooms!

The only one that has done anything is a blow-in wild rose which has done brilliantly after I hadn't the heart to hoick it out - but it is in completely the wrong place.

Here in Suffolk we have alternated between baking heat and downpours so not great for anything much except fucking horsetail.

I daren't think about the horsetail on the allotment. Sigh.

How lovely to think of a real Maude. My name is an hommage to Tennyson and all things Victorian. Normally I name-change every few months, but this name seems to fit so well, for all the time I spend on gardening threads, that I'll keep it a bit longer.