5 tips for caring for your rose garden

From giving your rose bushes a midsummer boost to helping them fight common problems, here are five tips for caring for your rose garden.

• To give your rosebushes a midsummer boost, tuck old tea bags under the mulch.

When you water the plants, the nutrients from the tea will be released into the soil, spurring growth. Roses love the tannic acid in tea.

Yellowed leaves with dark green veins are signs of chlorosis, a condition caused by an iron deficiency.

• Apply fertilizer containing chelated iron, but first test your soil.
• To keep iron from "locking up," the soil's pH must be between 5.5 and 6.5. If the pH is higher, apply sulfur; if it's lower, apply lime.

Standard roses, often called tree roses, are actually rosebushes grafted onto long rootstock trunks.

• To protect the graft union over the winter, simply cut off the sleeve of an old sweater or sweatshirt.
• Prune back the rose's top growth in late fall so that you can slip the sleeve over the branches and around the graft union on the trunk below.
• Then stuff the sleeve with peat moss, dry leaves or straw for insulation; tie a plastic bag over it to keep out ice and snow.
• Remove the sleeve in early spring.

At the first sign of blackspot — a common leaf disease for roses in humid weather — pinch off affected leaves and protect those that remain with a baking soda spray.

• Mix 10 millilitres (two teaspoons) of baking soda and a few drops of liquid soap with four litres of water.
• Spray the whole bush with the mixture.
• Reapply every four or five days until the spots disappear and the weather becomes drier.

Take cuttings from roses that grow on their own roots (that is, ones that are not grafted onto rootstock) and set them to root.

• In June, look for a vigorous pencil-thick cane; one bearing a bloom is at the right stage of maturity. Cut it into 15- to 20-centimetre lengths, making sure that each one has at least three leaves.
• Without damaging the buds at their bases, trim off all but the top leaf on each. Cut a cross into the base of each cutting with a sharp knife and slip a grain of rice into the centre of each cut.
• To keep the grains in place, bind the cuttings' bases (not too tightly) with twine. Stand the cuttings in water overnight, then pot them in a mix of equal parts sand and soil.
• Water the pots thoroughly, set them in a cool and bright but shaded spot, and keep them well watered. The cuttings should root in two to three weeks.