Knock Out Roses - How To Plant Them

Knock Out roses are supposed to be one of the hardiest, and disease resistent roses available at the moment. In order to keep them disease resistent you want to plant them in an environment that’s conducive to their health and vigour. Follow these steps for planting your Knock Out roses and they should reward you with disease free growth and prolific blooms.

Pre Planting Preparation

Make sure you plant it in a position that gets at least 4-6 hours of sun each day. If they don’t get enough sun they start getting sparse foliage and become more prone to rose diseases.

Check the pH of the soil. Roses like a soil pH of between 6 and 7. There are simple to use pH testing kits available from your local nursery or hardware stores.

Check the drainange to make sure it drains freely after a good soaking. Like any roses, Knock Out Roses hate wet feet and become prone to disease and dieback in poorly drained soil.

Add some well composted and milled cow manure or rose planting compost to the soil. Avoid fresh manures or rose food at planting time so you don’t burn any newly forming fine root hairs.

Planting.

When planting bare-root knock out roses, dig out a hole large enough for the roots to spread across and deep enough for the bud union to sit about an inch above soil level if planting in warm climate zones or just under soil level if planting in cold zones that have harsh winters.

Before planting the bare root rose, make a small mound at the bottom of the hole and sit the rose on that and spread the roots out without any kinks in them. then its just a matter of backfilling the soil and firming it down well but gently as you go. You don’t want to compact the soil too tightly so there’s no tiny particles for soil air but you don’t want to backfill too loosely either and have too many air pockets around the rose roots.

If it’s a potted rose, just dig a hole double the width of the pot and at the same depth as the pot so that once planted, the rose sits at the same soil level it did whilst in the pot.

Remove the rose from the pot and gently tease out some of the fine feeder roots, then place  in the hole and backfill as above.

Give the rose a good watering, then fill up a watering can and add liquid seaweed like Maxicrop Liquid Seaweedat half the recommended dilution rate and water that in. Liquid seaweed helps plants cope with transplant shock. I never plant anything without doing this, but it’s important to water the plant in well first with just plain water, then use the half strength liquid seaweed.

After this you can cover the soil with some mulch like Element 6 Organic Mulch and spread it about 2 inches thick to help retain moisture in the soil, and suppress weeds. Be sure not to put the mulch too close to the stem.

These steps should get your Knock Out roses off to a flying start, and keep them growing vigourously and disease free for years to come.

Related posts:

1. Bare Root Roses - What to Look For When Buying One To Plant In Your Garden