Occasional Gardener: Roses are red - and hundreds of shades of pink, white and yellow - but can they be green? The thorny question (ouch) is, can you grow perfect roses without using chemicals? Sarah Marriott has some suggestions
Growing roses really is a labour of love. Even keen gardeners I know are giving up because all the inspecting, monitoring and then spraying is simply too much effort, while many low-maintenance gardeners never even try to grow the most romantic and deliciously fragrant flowers in the world.
I bought two roses last year, one climber and one rambler, and haven't had any disease or pest problems - yet. Planting a clove of ordinary cooking garlic next to each plant seemed to do the trick. The only problem with preventative methods like this is that I'll never know if the garlic was responsible for my healthy plants or not - but who cares?
I'm always impressed by the rose garden in the Botanic Gardens, so I rang up to find out what the gardeners there use. They like to use products which are as environmentally-friendly as possible and don't use any chemicals at the moment, Brendan Sayer told me. As an insecticide, the gardeners use a soap-based spray called Savona and, as a fungicide, they use bread soda in water. This works early in the year, but not later on when they get black spot.
Chemicals can kill beneficial insects, such as ladybirds, as well as nasties like black fly - and anyway, recent EU legislation means that fewer pesticides are available to the spray-happy gardener. So what are the alternatives?
The traditional spray of washing-up liquid often works but the problem is that it can affect ladybirds - and they need all the help they can get because they seem to be fairly rare these days.
If you don't fancy garlic growing next to your roses, the American author of Roses Love Garlic has plenty of other solutions. Louise Riotte suggests attacking pests with sprays made of natural ingredients. If your roses have red spiders or aphids, grind onions in a blender, add an equal amount of water, strain and use as spray. If you have a problem with ants, cabbageworms or caterpillars: chop hot pepper pods and mix with an equal amount of water and a little soap powder. To make Riotte's multi-purpose spray: grind together three hot peppers, three large onions and a whole bulb of garlic (peeled); cover it with water and leave overnight; strain and add enough water to make a gallon of spray.
She says this can be used three times a day for heavy infestations on roses, azaleas, chysanthemums, beans and other crops. And bury the mash under the rosebushes. Other solutions include a spray made of macerated tomato leaves to free roses of aphids, and one made of boiled rhubarb leaves to fight against greenfly and blackspot. And strong healthy plants find it easier to fight disease - to fertilise roses, Riotte advises burying cut-up pieces of banana peel around bushes.
Roses Love Garlic by Louise Riotte is published by Storey Books www.storey.com
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