A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Plants and Flowers Forum The Rose Grower's Forum Climbing Roses

I was at roses yesterday and like always they have rose bushes outside the store all winter long.

I want to cover my fence in front of the house with climbing roses so I don't have to paint the silly thing anymore. So I bought 2 Climbing White American Beauty everblooming climbing roses, and 2 Climbing Red Fountain everblooming climbing roses.

They didn't come with care instructions. Can anyone tell me what to do after planting? The bags came with planting instructions.

The year before last the roses I bought died so this is like a second attempt with climbing roses.

TK I had climbing roses, of course you have to "train" them to climb up . When I planted them I put rose food in the hole with soil. After it got established I would feed it with epsom salt, as it promotes blooms. One thing I found out tho is that I had to watch for aphids, and black spot, so I always had "rose defense" on hand and sprayed it early in the morning before the sun came up and bought a container of ladybugs, as they love to eat aphids.

The ladybugs are already out in the garden. I have bayer for the blackspot and fertilizer. And I did amend the clay with compost and sulpher to get the ph right in the planting hole. Along with digging it 4 times wider as 4 inches deeper so the soil would be nice and soft for the roots. I've got my fingers crossed on this one.

I have plenty of garden ties for training them along the fence. The trick is to train the fence to stay put.

sounds like you have everything you need TK, not sure what you mean by needing the fence to stay put

I planted mine on a rail fence...it used to bloom beautifully until the fence moved and tore it out of the ground. Does your fence shift between the seasons?

Yes it does. I may have to rethink the way I planned to train it. I never considered that it might actually pull it out of the ground.

Also the railing fall down often because it's one of those fences where the railings are just sitting in a slit in the posts.

Hum, maybe some of my fishing line strung between the posts rather than resting on the rails.

Thanks so much for the heads up.