Care and How-To - Roses
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Learn how to protect container plants in winter. Discover methods like burying pots, mulching, and using unheated storage to keep roots safe from cold damage.
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Most modern roses need protection to survive the cold winter months in Iowa. Hybrid tea, grandiflora, and floribunda, as well as some polyantha, miniature, and climbing roses, are not reliably winter hardy and must be protected.
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Some plants in the landscape need a little extra protection to make it through the winter months. Here is what you need to know to successfully overwinter plants in Iowa.
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Explore the rich history of roses, from ancient fossils records to modern gardens. Learn about their cultural significance across civilizations and their evolution into beloved garden plants.
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Discover various methods to propagate roses, including cuttings, layering, division, and seed. Find the best techniques for your gardening needs!
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When autumn arrives, several things can be done to prepare the garden for winter and the following growing season. Here is a list of things to do for perennials, vegetable gardens, annuals, trees, shrubs, lawns, and houseplants in the fall.
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February and March is the best time to prune most trees and shrubs in Iowa. The absence of foliage at this time of year gives you a clear view of the tree and allows the selection and removal of appropriate branches. Also, when pruned in the late dormant season the walling-off, compartmentalization, or sealing of wounds can begin as soon as growth starts in the spring giving the tree the most time to recover from the pruning cut.
Iowa State University has many resources available to help with pruning all your woody plants.
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Roses are grown by millions of gardeners throughout the world for their beautiful flowers. To reduce the confusion of selecting between thousands of rose varieties, roses are classified into various groups. In Iowa, the major groups of roses that can be grown include shrub roses, hybrid teas, miniatures, and others.
Each of these types varies in their season of bloom, winter hardiness, and maintenance requirements. Use the information below about each type of rose to select the best rose for your landscape.
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All roses benefit from pruning to improve their appearance and encourage better flowering. Pruning also helps reduce disease issues by increasing airflow and light penetration. In general, pruning is done in the early spring and starts by removing dead tissue from disease or winter kill. Then canes can be selectively removed to encourage vigorous growth and open up the plant to promote good air circulation and light penetration to reduce disease issues and improve bloom. Specific information on how to prune different types of roses is below.
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Trees, shrubs, roses, and perennials are available bare root. That is, they come to you from the garden center or mail-order retailer with no soil around their roots. Extra care is required to make bare root plants survive and thrive.
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With so many different types of roses available to the gardener, selecting the best rose for your growing conditions is important. Factors like the amount of sun, soil moisture, soil fertility, and winter hardiness are important considersati
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Organic mulches serve several important functions in gardens and landscape plantings.
These many benefits make the use of mulch very beneficial in a wide range of garden settings. When choosing which organic mulch to use, consider availability, cost, appearance, function, and durability.
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Spring, summer, and fall are a great time to bring the garden indoors with cut flowers. No prior experience is necessary to harvest flowers for bouquets.
If you cut flowers from your own garden, there are several things that can be done to condition those flowers to ensure they stay fresh, colorful, and vibrant for as long as possible. -
Roses have a number of potential problems that can make them more difficult to grow. Planting them in a good garden location and selecting a winter-hardy and naturally disease-resistant cultivar is the best way to avoid many problems.
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Roses (Rosa sp.) are the quintessential garden plant. Their beautiful blooms come in many shades of pink, red, yellow, cream, white, and all the colors in between. Many are wonderfully fragrant and bloom from early summer to frost, forming colorful hips (fruit pods) in the fall. They make excellent cut flowers. The blooms make beautiful edible garnishes, can be dried for things like potpourri, and the hips are used to brew aromatic tea.
It's easy to see why we love roses. Learn more about the types of roses best suited for your garden and how to grow and care for them to keep them healthy and colorful all season.
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While many woody trees and shrubs bloom in the spring, there are several great selections for Iowa that look their best in June, July, and August. Consider these shrubs to add color and interest to the garden in the summer.
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The first step in the successful culture of roses is correct planting. Roses can be purchased as container-grown or potted plants from the garden center or as bare-root plants from the garden center or mail-order source.
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Roses (Rosa sp.) are the quintessential garden plant. Their beautiful blooms, wonderful fragrance, and captivating history make them a favorite in Iowa gardens.
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In recent years, the number of farms that grow and sell locally-grown cut flowers has increased. Learn more about the reasons for the rise in flower farms across Iowa and the unique niche they are filling at farmer's markets and flower shops.
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In spring, many gardeners will be at nurseries, greenhouses, and garden centers looking to buy plants. Selecting the right species and cultivar of a plant for the landscape by matching sun, water, soil, winter hardiness, and other growing requirements is important. Equally important is selecting high-quality plants. Below is advice on how to purchase high-quality plants from the garden center.