2 weeks Ago By Angela Patrone
Roses in winter may go through extremely low temperatures, depending on where you live. Therefore, a rose needs to be properly prepared to survive until spring, known as winterising. If you grow tender roses like grandiflora, hybrid tea, or floribunda roses, you should likely take all the necessary precautions to protect your plants from cold, windy weather.
Hardier roses can withstand temperatures with less intervention, although you should still use some protection methods - one of which stands out as the best. Amy Powers, the professional gardener behind the TikTok account @powers_plants claimed that mulching is a must for winterising roses in a video . The caption in her video reads: “The only thing you need to do for winter rose preparation is make sure you have a two to three-inch layer of mulch around the root zone of your plant.
” However, it’s important not to go crazy with the mulch as it should never touch the stems as doing so “traps water up against the stem and brings disease”. Winter mulch acts as a protective blanket, shielding plants from extreme cold and temperature fluctuations that can damage or kill them. It prevents the soil from freezing and thawing repeatedly, which can heave plants up from their roots.
Winter mulch also helps insulate plant crowns from cold injury. Before mulching your roses, thoroughly clear the area around the rose of old leaves and weeds. Regardless of the thickness, always make sure to spread the mulch around the base of the plant to cover its root zone as Amy detailed.
If you are using a lightweight mulch such as shredded leaves or straw, you can surround the rose with a cylinder made of chicken wire to hold the mulch in place. Amy later in the video adding in a pruning warning she said: “Don’t cut your roses in [autumn]. We leave them as they are.
“We come back and do a hard prune on our shrub roses in late winter or early spring.”.
