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(Compost) Planting Your Rose Garden

By Steve Knapp

 Learn To Grow Roses

Growing roses can be a great hobby. To grow beautiful roses, you just need to follow a few simple guidelines. There are also a variety of misconceptions about rose gardening, but I assure you that growing beautiful roses is not as hard as many say. However, one does have to be serious and dedicated to get the best from their roses.

The first point to note while starting your own rose garden is to decide the type of rose and the colors that your would like in your garden. There are many different kinds of roses available in the nursery. These include bare root roses, container grown roses or pre-packaged roses. Bare root roses are found in the nursery during winter and the beginning of the spring. These roses are meant to be planted soon after the frosts go away and the soil becomes warm and workable. Pre packaged roses are sold in a box and are found with bare roots with saw dust around them to maintain moisture. Container grown roses are usually available from early spring through mid-summer, they are found in containers and should be either budding or in bloom.

In order to produce those beautiful blossoms, rose plants need more fertilizers than most other plants. You should start using fertilizers at the start of spring and continue until a few weeks before the end of the growing season. However, be careful not to over- fertilizer your roses, and water the plant after each application of fertilizer. I have had great success with rose fertilizer spikes that feed for around 3 months. As roses also drink a lot of water, you will need to soak the ground around your rose plants at least twice every week.

To begin your rose gardening, you need a spot with plenty of sunlight, good soil and proper drainage. Although roses love water, too much will cause problems. The planting methods of different kinds of roses are the same, irrespective of whether it is bare root, pre packaged roses or container grown roses. Make sure that there are not too many dead leaves or thin and decayed shoots on the plants trimming any that are present.

If the rose plants have any damaged roots or there are long roots to them, they should also to be trimmed. Before planting bare root roses, soak the roots in water for a period of 10 to 12 hours to restore the proper moisture content. To plant your rose, dig a hole twice as wide, and twice as deep as the container, or root ball. Mix in some compost or mulch to provide extra nutrient for your rose, and then water the hole and surrounding soil before planting the rose.

To keep your roses healthy, and producing the most colorful blossoms, youll also need to learn how to prune your roses. During the growing season, you should only need to cut-back the spent blossoms (known as dead-heading). At the beginning and end of the growing season youll need to prune according to your hardiness zone. For more specific guidance, visit your local nursery or find websites about rose gardening on the Internet.

Steve Knapp is author of this article on Rose Gardening.

Find more information about Pruning Roses here.

The Many Advantages Of Artificial Flowers
By Alex Stacey

 The earliest makers of artificial flowers were the Chinese. The Italians followed suit in the twelfth century. However, it was the French who mastered this art, giving their Italian counterparts stiff competition.

Artificial flowers can be made of materials like fabric, paper, clay, and even soap. The common fabrics used for this purpose include silk, rayon, cotton, muslin, and crepe.

The point to be kept in mind while making flowers from paper is that paper is not exactly the most durable substance. Hence, there needs to be a way to strengthen it. Sometimes it is treated to any sort of glue. Simply by applying a coat of it stiffens the paper up. One thing to make sure of while doing this is to not overdo the glue content. Otherwise the crispness will give way to brittleness instead! Another option would be to use hard paper. The petals and leaves need to be cut into the required shapes and sizes. Motifs for both fabric and paper flowers can be hand-painted or placed in moulds.

Artificial flowers made of clay can be made very creative. But when using clay, if it is not treated to heat (burning of clay) then even after it dries, the object remains brittle. Hence, it easily breaks. Once the clay models have been burnt red in a furnace, one can paint on it. An important tip while coloring a clay flower is to mix glass powder into the color. This way, after letting the paint dry, if it is placed in the furnace once again, the heat melts the glass powder of the paint, giving it a glazed, porcelain look.

Flowers made of soap bars are very interesting to make. The process resembles stone carvings done with hammer and chisel. They are mostly handmade and consume a lot of time. Soap bars that are free of oil can be ground into powder and mixed with water to make a paste, which can be placed in moulds shaped like flowers to get the desired shape.

Both these methods allow further painting on the models.

The most popular forms of artificial flowers include rose, calla lilies, carnations and orchids.

There are many advantages of artificial flowers over their real counterparts.

Real flowers have a limited life. The artificial ones survive forever. They are unaffected by weather changes. The stems of the latter do not need to be cut into size before putting them in a vase. In fact there is no need to place them in a vase altogether.

Good imitations of real flowers look as real as can be. Hence, the difference is only felt tangibly.

Artificial flowers don’t necessarily need to be copies of real ones. The design and shape depends on the artist’s imagination. This increases the range of choice of the customer.

Many people are allergic to the pollen carried by some of the real flowers. Any proximity to them results in serious sneezing fits, sometimes even leading to asphyxiation. There is no such problem with artificial flowers.

Choose from a fantastic range of artificial flowers, plants and trees all at low prices and next day delivery at: http://www.artificialflorist.co.uk.

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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 pm and is filed under gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.