About Basic Care

Sloppin' the Pigs

by Sue Streeper

I think it was Cal Hayes who said, "Roses are pigs." They love to be fed. Well, the Streeper rose garden has a lot in common with a barnyard these days. On the weekend of the first day of spring, Dick was raking manure onto the lawn, and I was slopping the pigs-I mean, roses, with fish emulsion. It sure smelled like a barnyard. But the smell fades in days, and the plants respond magically to the organics they are being given.

Within a week the lawn will be greening up. The roses, too, react quickly to the liquid fish fertilizer added to their diet. To almost any fertilizing program, you can add small amounts of liquid fish frequently, and you will not be overdoing the feeding. We use dry fertilizers according to Dick's calendar, but we also feed with one tablespoon of fish emulsion per plant each week during active growing times such as right now. Here are ways to make it easy to feed with fish emulsion.

For 32 roses, you need 32 tablespoons of liquid fish fertilizer which is two cups. Fill up a standard 32-gallon garbage can with water, add two cups of liquid fish, and stir well with a hoe. Use a bucket to dip out the mixture, and pour one gallon on each plant. This mixture is weak enough that you don't have to be concerned if you are getting it on the leaves.

If you have a lot of roses, you should consider a pump arrangement to deliver the fertilizer. You can link two or three garbage cans with u-shaped syphons made from plastic irrigation pipe. The syphons need to be long enough to reach down almost to the bottom of the cans. Mix the fertilizer in the three cans, one right next to the other. Fill the syphons with water or fertilizer mix, put your fingers over the ends, and turn them upside down into the fertilizer mix to connect the cans.

You will be using a submersible pump which is available for about $70 at Home Depot. Mine is called "Little Giant." Connect a hose to the pump and connect a wand with brass on-off valve to the hose. (On-off valves are available in plastic and brass; brass will last you a lifetime, and plastic breaks.) Put the pump in the center can. Plug in the pump, using a heavy-duty extension cord if necessary. Then walk around with the wand, feeding the roses. The syphons keep filling the can with the pump so that you don't have to stop and mix more fertilizer so often.

You can determine how much to feed each plant by seeing how long it takes to deliver one gallon to a bucket. For my pump, it's a count of about seven seconds. When the cans are empty, you have a couple of minutes to pull the electric plug on the pump to turn it off. I try to pull the plug as soon as I hear that the liquid is gone, but it sometimes takes a minute or two and I haven't had a pump overheat yet.

Another little tip which makes the pump arrangement easier to handle involves two brass quick-couplers. Buy the quick-couplers for about $8 a set in the garden implements section of the nursery or hardware store. Attach one between the pump and the hose, and the other between the hose and the wand. They make attaching the hose very simple (no twisting to connect it), and they allow you to move the hose around without twisting or kinking.

If this sounds complicated or hard to visualize, call me or anyone who feeds this way to see if you can come over and watch the system in action. I normally do this on Saturday or Sunday mornings, and many hardcore rose growers have a regular weekly time for this kind of feeding.

Some of the brands of fish emulsion are less smelly and less greasy than others. I have had good success with Atlas, Alaska, and Blackleaf brands. When you are finished fertilizing, you will need to clean up your equipment, particularly the garbage cans. I use TSP and a terrycloth rag to get the residue off.

This article was originally published in Rose Ramblings, Vol. LXXII No. 4, April, 1999. © 1999 San Diego Rose Society, Inc.

Keywords: Feeding, Basic