Saturday 20th June, 2020
Hi
Wahoo 2000 roses more and almost done
It's been a full on week and we have almost completed potting all the new rose arrivals for this year. Yesterday we hit another milestone in our daily potting totals with one of the team cracking 1000 bags in an 8 hour day, Alex completed his 1007th bag with Wild eve (who just had to be taken for the garden). It has to be said that it was a tad testing for, those of us labelling, to be able to keep enough product in front of the potters. It was great re acquainting ourselves with all the roses that we haven't had for a while. There is a good range of Austins on the shop floor including many of the classics we all know and love like Graham Thomas, Grace, Jude the Obscure and Leander just to start us off and many, many more to be potted still.
You do get a bit discerning after a while though, especially when you have had quite a few thousand bare root rose bushes through your hands as you get quite up close and personal with their thorns and roots. I have to say that it's quite a knack to get that label onto a prickly stem while keeping skin in tact, mine not the roses... and I admit to being fascinated by the roots.
Now you may think that roots are just roots, but no... every supplier has their own version of rosa multiflora and their own technique that makes for quite a different looking package... that is the bits that you get to see before they go into the potting mix.
To quickly recap... most roses, in New Zealand, are grown on rosa multfilora rootstock and the growers grow this as a crop. They usually have their own version which they like for a variety of reasons. It's a way of creating a consistent product as not all roses will do well on their own roots. The root stock is cut into lengths and then these stems are blinded, all the buds removed, except for the top one which is allowed to grow... some use the smallest amount of rootstock... I'm impressed that they manage to find the space to squeeze in a T bud incision.
Then there are others that have quite the 20cm stem and really robust roots.. you will notice that we cant quite get the whole length into the bag and this is because of the vigour of the plant and just being overall very large.. the last batch we potted were of the perfect size to fit.
You can tell roses grown using classic production method because the stems look like cuttings with a classic star shape of the roots from the end of the stem but there is another production method that we should all know about and that is of using seedling rootstock. I have to say that this is a bit new to me but apparently a batch of rose seeds are sown of a variety developed from wild roses in the Northern hemisphere. These are grown on just like the normal rootstock method and then T bud into the seedling at ground level or just below the seed leaves and then removing the top growth once the bud has taken.
At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what the roots look like as long as they are vigorous, robust and help a good rose perform well in the garden.
Correa Ring a ding ding
Correas are a plant that I have not written about before and not one that we have stocked before but I see Ange has found a new cultivar of this Aussie native, the Australia fuchsia, or if you like to have the Latin as well Correa pulchella.
Typically most Aussie natives prefer warm sunny positions and good drainage and this tidy evergreen shrub is no exception... Ring a ding is a compact, tidy, hardy shrub that smothers itself with orange tubular flowers in gay abandon (I think that one of the team wrote that descript lol) A great addition to the garden.
What's just arrived in this week
We have a lovely selection of
Hebe varieties in this week. These compact, structured plants will provide colour for many months, often flowering from spring right through to autumn. Evergreen, hardy, and many different leaf sizes and colours with some of the new varieties introducing leaf colour variances like Hebe
Regal William which displays small leaves of burgundy at the tips which are nicely complemented by light pink flowers that fade to white with age or
El Camino that has bronze foliage that deepens to a rich brown red as it gets cooler.
There are some good mature size options too ranging from
Emerald Green at 30cm to
Icing Sugar at 100cm and all sizes in between so something for most spots in the garden. Hebe are great for low borders/hedging with a quick clip after flowering to maintain size and shape.
PLENTY OF CITRUS ... we have just received a lovely big top up to our citrus stocks so now's the time to get your order in. We are always trying to keep stock of the different citrus varieties available but they go so quickly so don't be slow ordering the varieties you need. We have a good selection of larger grades and standards in
lemons,
mandarins and
oranges including the weeping orange
Cipo.
Tips, hints, advice and suggestions from Waikato Rose Society
It's that time of year that we look at our roses in the garden and start to think about what to do with them in terms of pruning and care. You may even have roses that are not performing as you would like, possibly to the point where it's out with the old and in with some new.
If you are unsure about how to prune your roses to achieve the look you are trying to achieve or just want to chat to someone who lives and breathes roses then come out to the nursery on one of the following dates because the Waikato Rose Society are sending along some of their members to pass their extensive knowledge about all things roses to you. They will be delighted to help you with any of your questions.
We have organised to have the events on alternating morning and afternoons on weekend days and included a session on a week day to sort a time for just about everyone... Cathie will have these up on our
Events page and on
facebook and we would like you to register you interest so that we have an indication of interest.
Remember there is still heaps of time before you have to prune in the Waikato and it's my recommendation that you leave it as long as possible until perhaps the end of July early August but definitely before bud burst... you could in the meantime be spraying your roses with
Copper Oxychloride and
Conqueror oil or
Lime Sulphur to help them defoliate, you can read more on this on our web page for
winter spray programme in our
How to's.
OMG... finally it has rained again, I even had to turn the irrigation on the other day and it's June! That's not normal for this time of year but it will help the garden and make the grass grow.
At this time of year the days just seem to roll into a blurr for me and now it's the weekend... I know that it will be morning sport for some, work for other, gardening for the keen maybe even shopping, whatever is in your plan...
Have a fabulous weekend
cheers Lloyd Tony and the Wairere team
