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The best book on rose care
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Posted by poodlepup 10 (My Page) on Wed, Nov 4, 09 at 15:02
Does anyone have one book that they just couldn't do without on the care of roses? -Feeding, pruning, etc.?
Thanks. (Hopefully not an ortho book, as I am a no sprayer)
Kate |
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RE: The best book on rose care
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| I can think of several to recommend. If you lived in the northeast my first choice to recommend would be Stephen Scanniello's excellent A Year of Roses because I really love the way it follows the calendar. However the information does not line up to a warm climate calendar very well. I quite like Field Roebuck's book published as part of the Creative Homeowner series. It is called Foolproof Guide to Growing Roses. His approach is not dogmatic, but makes only minimal use of sprays, and organic ones when called for at all. I very much like his emphasis on healthy soil. For strict organic approaches there are the cold climate book Growing Roses Organically by Barbara Wilde and the warm climate book The Organic Rose Garden by Liz Druitt. So you have some choices. Given that you are in USDA zone 10, you would probably want to skip the two cold climate-oriented books. Rosefolly |
RE: The best book on rose care
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You have chosen not to tell us if you are zone 10 Florida, Zone 10 Texas, Zone 10 Arizona, Zone 10 California. That's your right.
But you need to know that roses that thrive no spray in some zone 10 conditions are disasters when grown no spray in other zones of the same temperature ranges.
There are also soil issues with some zone 10 growing conditions. Field Robuck wrote his book based on his experience in Texas near Dallas.
Liz Druitt was gardening in Central Texas when she wrote that book.
There's a book from Arizona called something like Blast Furnace Roses.
If you're in Florida, you need to do websearches for the phrase "Chilli Thrips" because the information on the web is more up to date that what's in books written several years ago. |
RE: The best book on rose care
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Where is my brain?
I live in rose friendly Sonoma County, in Northern California. -Right near Garden Valley Ranch, & Vintage Gardens. |
RE: The best book on rose care
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In Sonoma Co., I might opt for the Druitt book, but -- to be truthful, I've found rose-CARE books to be of limited utility.
So much of "what works" depends upon micro-climate, and MOST particularly upon what roses you are growing.
A book that tells you how to care for Hybrid Tea Roses and Floribundas may well steer you wrong if you are growing TEA roses, or Noisettes, or Chinas. Suspecting that you may be growing older roses, I think you might want to pay a few visits to the Sacramento City Cemetery.
Check their website for the dates of their pruning demos, for instance.
You couldn't follow a better model. Jeri |
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