LIFTING ROSES.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 366, 8 May 1889, Page 4

LIFTING ROSES.

Everybody should plant roses who has a piece of ground even big enough to make only a few flower-beds. Writing on the management of roses, an English gardener says :-- "I am of opinion that roses are often allowed to remain too long in the same position, and urn equally satisfied that even when the same ppot is devoted year after year to their cultivation much advantage is to be derived from careful lifting and replanting, especially in cold ungenial districts, where the soil is naturally poor. Last autumn I determined to lift a bed of border carnations and plant roses in their place. The roses I selected for the purpose had been growing in a bed for two years, which I determined to appropriate to the carnations. After lifting the carnations I had the bed well dug and enriched with manure and fresh soil. I then dug up the roses carefully, shortened the longer roots, and replanted them without a moment's delay, with the result that every plant has done well, blooming better than those which were not lifted, and producing sturdier, shorter growth. " The lifting gives a slight check, which is, I am satisfied, beneficial to the health of the plants, and affords an opportunity for renovating the beds with fresh materials. It has also other advantages : it insures the better ripening of the wood, gives a longer peiiod ol rest, and retards the starting of growth in spring in an appreciable and beneficial degree. Every rosavian will i-e-cognise these advantages on consideration of their likely effects on his rose trees. " Roses lef ttoo long in one place, especially when the soil is properly enriched with manure every year, are apt to grow too vigorously and io get overcrowded with nonproductive shoots. My experience certainly is that the blooms on such longstanding trees, though more numerous than on newly planted trees, are distinctly inferior to them in si?e and finish. My advice is to replant some of the beds annually, and never to allow the trees to remain without lifting for moro than two years. The roots will then be kept closer at home, and masses of fibre will be produced instead of long whip-like loots straggling all over the bed. I should perhaps add that I am writing about dwarf Roses (not standards), and particularly about Roses on their own roots. Perhaps I should add I am writing from a cold exposed situation where the soil is light."