The Organic Gardening Club of Garland and the Lakeside Communities

The monthly meeting of the Lakeside Organic Garden Club takes place on the first Sunday of each month at 2:00 pm in the little red schoolhouse at Rohde's Nursery in Garland, TX.

Topic: Water Gardens in your Landscape with speaker Steve Moeller, founding member and past president of the North Texas Water Garden Society and graduate of the Association of Nurserymen's Master Certification program and Auburn University.

Location: Rohde's Nursery at 1651 Wall Street, Garland, TX 75041

Free and open to the public.

Sue Brown, PR & Marketing
Lakeside Organic Garden Club
Phone: 972.203.9170
susan_c_brown@hotmail.com

Garland Native Plant Society

The February meeting will have Mary Phinney from the Dallas County Park and Open Space Programs as the guest speaker. The County's open space program seeks to acquire and preserve environmentally unique properties and to create a comprehensive trail system. The County's open space system presently consists of over 3000 acres at twenty-one different sites; there is now a County open space preserve within a twenty-minute drive of most people within the County. The County owns each of these preserves, which are usually maintained by the city in which they are located. These preserves tend to resemble state or national parks with passive recreational use rather than the traditional city park with ball fields and swing sets.

Contact Brigette Vinton at 972-348-5295 or bvinton@alldata.net for details.

List of Antique Roses Arriving on February 6th 2004

Please call and verify delivery.

Climbing Roses

• Buff Beauty- 8’-12’ remontant, fragrant, apricot
• Cecile Brunner- 15’-20’ remontant, pink
• Clotilde Soupert- 12’-15’ remontant, fragrant creamy white
• Crepuscle- 6’12’ remontant, orange to apricot
• Felicia- 8’-10’ remontant, fragrant, double apricot pink
• Fortune’s Double Yellow-10’-15’ fragrant apricot yellow
• Lamarque- 12’-20’ remontant, fragrant, white w/ yellow center
• Madame Alfred Carrierre- 15’-20’ remontant, fragrant, double creamy white


• Old Blush- 12’-20’ remontant, fragrant, Lilac pink semi double
• Red Cascade- 12’-20’ miniature, remontant, dark red
• Sombreuil- 8’-12’ remontant, fragrant, white
• The Fairy- 8’-12’, remontant, very double pink
• Will Scarlet-10’-12’ remontant, scarlet red
• Zephirin Drouhin- 6’-12’ remontant fragrant cerise pink

Containers/Small Hedge Roses

• Cecile Brunner-3’-4’ remontant, pink
• Gruss an Aachen-3’-4’ remontant, frag, org/red/yellow buds-pink to creamy wht flowers
• Madame Laurette Messimy- 3’-5’ remontant, fragrant, salmon pink semi double
• Marie Pavie-3’-4’ remontant, fragrant, creamy white semi double
• Marie Pavie-3’-4’ remontant, fragrant, creamy white semi double
• Martha Gonzales-2’-3’ remontant bright scarlet


• Phalaenopsis-3’-4’ remontant, vivid cerise pink
• Rouletti-1’-3’, remontant double lilac pink
• Valentine-3’-4’, remontant, semi double rich scarlet
• White Pet-1’-3’, remontant, fragrant, white
• Winecup-1’-3’, remontant, fragrant, purple crimson

Shrub Roses

• Amazone-4’-6’ remontant, fragrant, yellow
• Belinda’s Dream-3’-6’, remontant, fragrant, hips, pink
• Blumenschmidt-3’-5’, remontant, fragrant, yellow
• Carefree Beauty (aka Katy Road Pink) 3’-5’, remontant, frag. hips, semi dbl pink
• Clotilde Soupert-3’-4’, remontant, fragrant, creamy white cabbage
• Cramoisi Superior-3’-6’ remontant, fragrant, crimson
• Graham Thomas-5’-8’, remontant, fragrant, bright yellow
• Lafter-4’-6’ remontant, fragrant, yellow/org/pink/blend
• Mrs. Dudley Cross-3’-6’, remontant, fragrant yellow
• Mrs. Oakley Fisher-3’-4’, remontant, fragrant, orange yellow
• Mutabilis-4’-6’, remontant, yellow/org/pink/crimson
• Old Blush-3’-6’, remontant, fragrant, hips, lilac pink semi double
• The Fairy-3’-4’, remontant, very double pink

All 2-gallon Antique Roses are $14.99.

Through Valentines buy GreenSense Rose Food and receive 20% off of either a 20 or 40 pound bag.

Roses

I remember when I was in Wellington, New Zealand visiting a friend that even though most of the front yards were about 40 by 40 feet I saw some of the most spectacular colors I had ever seen. And the colors came from rose bushes. I saw so many rose bushes with so many flowers and the most outstanding, colors and fragrances not just at one home, but also in hundreds of homes. As I write this I can almost smell and see their beauty all over again. I do not know for how long men have known about roses, but for as long as their has been civilization Roses have been used to beautify landscapes and as expressions of love. We know that Shakespeare thinks that a rose by any other name is still a rose. We also know that from before Shakespeare and until early in the 1940’s organic products were the fertilizer of choice for growing roses.

Granted chemical fertilizers were not available and if they were the wiser gardener would probably not use them anyway. So why try anything else? If roses have been growing beautifully for hundreds if not thousands of years and chemical fertilizers have only appeared in the last 50 to 60 why are they touted as the best rose food?

Drive through old farmland, anywhere in the United States and you can find frames of old houses long ago abandoned. Look closely and you will find some of the most beautiful disease and insect free roses growing with out care living off of the organic matter in the soil and with rain as their source of moisture.

You can grow roses too with very little care. All you need is a little time to research which varieties are adapted to your area. You will need to plant them where they get lots of sun and plenty of air circulation in well-prepared beds. Or beds with plenty of rich organic matter.

So what is:

An Antique Rose?
An Antique Rose is a rose that was around before 1867. After 1867 hybrid roses were introduced.

A Climber?
A climbing rose is normally one that needs support such as a trellis or a wall. These roses can be trained to grow tightly against a structure or loose and cascading.

A Shrub Rose?
Normally a rose that can support itself as an individual plant and grow in beds with other shrubs and perennial plants.

A Remontant Rose?
A remontant rose is a rose that bloom with a mass of color in the summer and again in the fall.

A Hip?
A hip is the fruit of the rose also an added benefit to a rose since it adds an unusual growth and can be used in teas.

Planting

When planting roses prepare an area using large amounts of organic matter I like Back To Nature Acidified compost sold at Rohde’s under the Green Sense label. Add 10 –20 pounds per thousand square feet of Corn meal to the mixture so that it will end up just below surface level.

Make sure that the plant will get good drainage After the soil is prepared follow Howard Garrets planting instructions for trees. Dig an ugly hole that is twice as wide as the pot that the new rose is in but no deeper. Remove the can and break up any roots that are growing around the exterior root ball, both the side and bottom of the plant. Soak the plant in a bucket that contains kelp, Epson salts, fish emulsion and other organic products and then set in hole no deeper then the top of the root ball from the container. After you are finished add a layer of cedar mulch or pine needles.

Prunning

Some roses may have specific pruning needs this is where some research comes in handy. Before we start talking about pruning make sure that you are not going to prune an early spring bloomer that may be full of buds. The first example that comes to mind is Lady Banks, otherwise roses are normally pruned in February or early spring. Remove dead and diseased wood. If you have sucker growth growing the graft remove those too.

Maintaining Your Roses

Because roses are heavy feeders and can get stressed out easily I like feeding my roses monthly from February through October. Green Sense Rose food contains a blend of ingredients such as rock phosphate, lava sand, alfalfa meal, cottonseed meal and sul-po-mag. In the early spring until the leaves harden off I like to apply Foliar Juice once a week. Foliar Juice contains ingredients such as Kelp that will help plants through the stressful periods of changing temperatures from morning to evening and the effort to put out new leaves. By reducing the plants stress you will see a reduction of insect pest.

I use Beneficial Nematodes in all my beds and I believe that they are the reason that I do not get Thrips. Thrips are insects that bore into the buds of plants and destroy the beautiful flowers.

Whenever my mulch looks depleted I will add more to help conserve moisture and to protect the plant from water splashing by up on to the leaves creating any fungal problems. If my roses develop any fungal problems I will apply Potassium Bicarbonate at a rate of 2 tablespoons per gallon of water in conjunction with Foliar Juice or Aunt Rohde’s Compost Tea. You can reapply one cup of Corn Meal as needed to the soil around each plant if you develop a fungal problem.

Other Things to Do in February

As soon as you can, finish pruning your trees, especially Oaks. Remember that pruning is mostly for your benefit and not that of the tree.

Put out Corn Gluten Meal but remember that CGM is a pre-emergent herbicide that may prevent seeds fro germinating. This also means vegetable and grass seeds.

Fertilize your lawn with an Organic Fertilizer, preferably Green Sense.

Apply a rock powder to your soils. This is a great time to apply Humate.

If you are to busy to work in your lawn, call Rohde’s. We can do your garden work for you.