Dr. Earth is an excellent choice. You want your young roses to grow as big a root system as possible, and organic fertilizer is a good way to do that--it breaks down slowly and feeds slowly. Let them get established first so they can support a large amount of topgrowth in future years. Mulch also helps--as it breaks down, it further enriches the soil, and keeps it more cool and more moist.

I take as little as possible off of first year plants. Let them get every bit of nutrition they can from every leaf they grow. Remove the spent flower as soon as possible so the plant does not put energy into seed formation.

The older they get, the more I take off. Moonstone at the age of 6 is already close to 8' this year, so I take off 2 feet when I deadhead, sometimes more, to keep the plant at a reasonable height.

I use liquids--fish emulsion--on baby roses: newly rooted cuttings. Highly diluted, it seems to help them grow fast without damage.

I have a baby Moonstone who just got her first bloom!

Liquid fertilizers are composed of fast-acting synthetics. Miracle Gro and Vigoro are common examples. The advantage of using them is they give you almost complete control over the amount of nutrients present in the soil at any given time. The disadvantage is that you may not know the best way to utilize that control.

Granular fertilizers come in two major types: timed-release and organic. Timed release fertilizers contain coated synthetic nutrients which are automatically released over time in the soil. Osmocote is perhaps the best known example. Of all fertilizers, timed-release fertilizers add the least total amount of nutrients to the soil over a season. The advantage of these is they're the least work and require the least thought. If you buy one intended for roses and you follow the label directions, it's probably very unlikely that you will over-fertilize. There is a tendency to worry about under-fertilizing but I try to stifle such thoughts.

Organic fertilizers, such as Rose Tone and Dr. Earth, contain organic sources of nutrients. As a rule, these tend to add the greatest total amount of nutrients over a season. These are usually described as very slow-release and hence safe for any rose. Still, some of them contain at least some fast-acting synthetics. Rose Tone, for example, gets most of its nitrogen from ammonium sulfate and Dr. Earth contains potassium sulfate. I would say that organic fertilizers offer the least control over the amount of available nutrients present at any given time in the soil. They do increase the organic content of the soil but organic composts or mulches do the same thing at far less cost.

Jeff, I realize none of the above directly answers your question, but I don't think there is any one best answer. I never deadhead any of my roses down to a five leaf set and I certainly wouldn't do so with first year roses.

Yet another type of fertilizer is inorganic-granular like the 10-10-10 in 40 lb bags at the discount stores. These have the three major nutrients in soluble form like Miracle Gro but in bigger pieces with a clay binder and usually without the trace and minor elements. If you throw a full dose of this on the rootball of a recently-potted rose, it will burn. These need to be scattered thinly.

A lot of the cautions you hear arise from newbies' tendency to overfertilize.

When you purchase an own root rose from Roses Unlimited, their directions for feeding the first year clearly states soluble fertilizers only. I have no idea why unless they have found there is better results that way. If it works for RU, it's fine with me for all that I may purchase, own root or grafted. Solubles are just so much easier to deal with. Remember that roses can only deal with materials in solution, so granulars have to be broken down into liquids before there will be any benefits. Solubles, on the other hand, are already liquid so are absorbed immediately.

I know why. Inexperienced rose growers can kill their their roses with the "If a little is good, a lot is better" mentality after reading about intensive feeding programs suggested by some. It's easy to harm a young plant with granular fertilizer, whereas young plants never die from no fertilizer at all.

On this forum we've seen people apply weed n feed to their roses. We've seen people fertilize roses right before temperatures peak in the low 100 degree F range. We've seen people apply excessive quantities week after week without irrigation.

If RU has to guarantee the rose will grow, then at the very least, it needs a small amount of control over one likely source of grower-controlled damage.

Since I propagate a lot of my own roses and know how hard and labor-intensive it can be, I never use granular fertilizer on young fragile plants. Of course RU doesn't send out young fragile, newly rooted plants. Still, I think their advice is sound and prudent on many levels.

Thank you for your responses! I have adopted a cycle of fertilizing twice a month. I am supposed to fertilize today, but our weather report says the temperature will hit 100+ deg F on Thursday. Do I hold off on fertilizing until the temperature goes down? Our summer temperatures go up to around 100 deg F intermittently throughout the summer. Should I stop fertilizing completely in the summer to avoid burning my roses?

Thank you.

Jeff