Growing Indoor Roses

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

What causes indoor roses to suffer in winter?

Growing roses in indoor conditions is a rather troublesome business, it is very difficult to please these capricious beauties. Usually in the collections of florists there are so-called indoor roses, which have long been growing in houses, a kind of fruits of folk selection. And more recently, amateurs have begun to grow miniature roses, which appear in abundance on the shelves of flower shops. These two types of roses more or less tolerate life within four walls.

But in winter, the situation, as a rule, is complicated by the too dry and warm microclimate in our apartments. After all, roses for normal development need bright diffused light and fresh cool air. These are the basic rules for successfully growing the queen of flowers. From spring to autumn, such conditions are quite easy to provide for them by putting plants in a garden or on a balcony. But with the onset of the heating season, the situation becomes critical. Daylight hours are noticeably reduced, there is little sun. And because of the heating batteries, hot and too dry air appears in apartments. In principle, roses grow well in a temperature range of 10 to 25 degrees, they can easily tolerate even small frosts. But they absolutely do not tolerate overheating - this is the first winter problem.

For the normal preparation of roses for wintering already at the end of summer, you need to pay attention to the fact that fertilizers for feeding do not contain nitrogen, since at this time the plants gradually move to a dormant period. A gradual decrease in air temperature to 10 ° C contributes to this process. That is why roses can not be taken into the room from the street for a long time, because the apartment will not have such a temperature. After the leaves turn yellow and fall off, the stems are shortened, leaving hemp no more than 10 cm high with several buds.

The rest period for these roses lasts from about mid-autumn to February, so a cool place with a temperature of + 3 … + 6 ° C, for example, a basement, will be optimal for them. In urban conditions, a glazed and insulated loggia is quite suitable, where in winter the air temperature does not drop below + 2 … + 4 ° С. After the leaves have fallen off, watering is almost completely stopped, only occasionally it is slightly moistened with an earthen lump, because the complete drying out of the soil can be detrimental to the root system.

If, besides the window sill, there is no other suitable place, then you should place roses for the winter on a well-lit window and at the same time make sure that it is not too hot there. To do this, you can fence off the window sill from the room with a wide strip of film, creating such an isolated chamber with a low temperature, preferably no more than + 15 ° C. Leaves at this temperature often remain on the branches, but growth stops. Roses need to be watered occasionally, not allowing the soil to dry completely.

With this wintering option, you need to especially carefully monitor the condition of the roses, because it is in dry warm conditions that the appearance of a spider mite is most likely - their most common pest. Dry air, leading to the appearance of a mite, is the second problem that can be solved by regularly spraying roses or by placing the pots on trays of wet expanded clay.

As soon as at the end of winter the buds start to grow, you need to prune and start feeding the roses with a weak solution of fertilizers. 4-6 well-ripened branches are left on the plant, shortening them to 5-8 cm, so that each has 3-5 buds. In this case, the upper bud must necessarily be directed not inside the future bush, but outward. When pruning roses, it should be remembered that it is enough to shorten miniature species by one third. But tall indoor roses are cut more radically, leaving several buds, as described above. After a successful winter, young leaves and first buds will appear on the roses in March.

With the onset of stable heat, it is advisable to send indoor roses to the open air for the whole summer: to a balcony or loggia, to a garden. This has a very beneficial effect on their general condition and promotes long and abundant flowering until autumn. After all, in essence, a rose is a street plant, so a summer vacation in the fresh air for a room rose is vital.