We now have one hundred thirty four rose sprouts!!! That said, we have lost a number to mold. One of the biggest issues is that I have been overwatering these poor seedlings. Our greenhouse can get really hot when it is sunny and it dries up the soil quickly. Recently, we have had a bout of warm weather. Although it is only 59 degrees outside, my greenhouse got to 87 degrees and the water in my seed trays evaporated – or so I thought. It appears that up top was dry, but down below still held water. I watered to compensate for the dryness so the seedlings wouldn’t cook and now I am hoping these seedlings don’t die from being overwatered. Well, we are back to cooler days ahead so I am going to run the heater and fan at longer levels to help reduce the water stress these seedlings are now exhibiting.
We completely blew our goal out of the water this year and we are hoping that these seedlings survive their next transplant. We plan to transplant seedlings with strong roots to new containers next weekend. We placed an order expecting to only have roughly 100 seedlings and now we may have to order more to compensate for the all the new seedlings.
New Methods This Year
This year we chose to try a new method of pest control early in the season. Where we live in Battle Ground, Washington, we get many, many aphids early on in the season. The natural predators aren’t out in force yet and this causes mottled growth of our early rose leaves and eventually black spot. Our local rose society featured a brief viewing of The Queen’s Garden on PBS. The video piqued our interest because it mentioned a natural method of pest control, Garlic. Who could be opposed to that? Well we have been trying to let nature take care of our pests because we don’t want to do damage to our local bee populations. Well, early this season we decided to replicate the Queen’s method. We boiled some garlic down and made a spray of its oils. Within two days all of the aphids are gone. We also chose to mix a mild foliar feed into the spray to help encourage new growth. It has worked wonders. One of our newest additions, Don Juan, is loving not being attacked by aphids. This is two weeks of growth on a newly planted rose that received the garlic/ foliar spray treatment from day one (March 3rd -> March 16th). Needless to say, this will be our go-to method going forward. We look forward to updating you on our blooms soon!!!
