For all of these years, I've only planned to fertilize and never got around to it. I've bought tons of various products for that purpose and all of them are either standing unopened on the shelves in the garage or have been discarded because their service life expired.
The easiest method, aside from just hurling handfuls of Osmocote at things, would seem to be the liquid fertilizer that comes with a special hose attachment. I have several bottles of it, so yesterday I took the bull by the horns and fertilized all of the roses in front of the house, from the driveway to the pond in front, and the roses near the mailbox on the slope. That took one bottle of Miracle-Gro LiquaFeed. I felt my eyes burning at the end, so I won't do more than one bottle at a time. Today I'll use up another one in some other part of the garden.
Okay, here I am on October 3rd and I still haven't finished fertilizing all of the roses, but I did the ones reachable with the hose near the big pond yesterday. Today it rained all day and nothing could or did happen outside.
These are the roses I ordered from Cliff, but was unable to get because others were quicker than I was:
Apricot Silk
Arielle Dombasle
Barock (TANbak)
Blue Chip
Blue Ribbon
Bolchoi
Brokat
Café
Candlelight (AROwedye)
Cathedral
Chelsea Morning
Cherry Brandy (Evers/Tantau, 1985)
Cheshire (Fryer)
Cristin Cira
Double Feature
Euphrates
Exotica
Fancy Amazone
Fiji
Fragrant Keepsake
Giuseppe Motta
Good Golly
Halle
Halloween
Ibiza (purchased from Vintage Gardens)
Incantation (ordered from Rogue Valley)
Johan 18-99
Juliet (Easlea)
La Passionata (don’t want it anymore, I think)
Little Gigi
Little Silver
Louis de Funes
Miss Lindsey
Mu Lan (purchased from Wisconsin Roses)
Mistica
Mullem (purchased from Vintage)
Muriel Robin
Old Johan
Orchid Masterpiece, Cl.
Pam’s Choice
Paname
Paul Cezanne
Peaceport
Pearl Essence
Romantic Ruffles
Salute
Scarlet Ripple
Scottish Highlands
Sengodea
Silverado (purchased from Wisconsin Roses)
Slava
Sultane
Superstition
The Dahlia Rose
Tifton
Twilight Zone
Waverland
And here are the ones I did receive in this shopping opportunity of a lifetime:
Delivery yesterday from Cliff. Just one rose -- Razzle Dazzle, the Fryer floribunda. Huge, huge, huge plant. Will not fit into 5-gallon gopher cage and probably not into the 15-gallon cage either. I'll have to plant it in one of the beds the gophers have ignored all these years.
Delivery of six roses today from Vintage Gardens -- Gracie Allen, Blush, Ibiza, Super Excelsa, Paul Ecke, Jr., and Kathleen Joyce. The last two are duplicates, but I waited years to find them and I don't want to lose mine and learn that the roses are unavailable again.
The big move from Cubits to ATP is taking precedence over everything and I'm barely able to water the garden, but I have almost finished pruning all of the spring-blooming shrubs. Just a few Weigelas, Lilacs, Camellias, and Kolkwitzias to go. Some of the Spiraeas are still blooming, so I'll get to them later.
A delivery today from Eurodesert, a replacement for the Butterscotch hybrid tea I had ordered and received earlier. It turned out to be the Butterscotch climber (JACtan) and I already have plenty of those. I hope this is the right one. Cliff said they kept getting confused on his property because none of them exhibited any tendency to climb in the desert.
Testing photo feature:
Clematis Vienetta:
Starting work on my first blog, determined to keep copious records of what I do in the garden each day, what I buy, what I plant, and (sob) what doesn't make it.
