More trimming and a weird rose

This week we spent ages trying to work out this one weird rose, without bothering to actually open a rose book, of course. It is a weeping one- it must be? Look at the weird form.

It’s not a carpet rose- it is definitely trying to creep along the ground, and only a handful of shoots are growing anywhere but downwards- all of the new growth just wants to grow downwards.

This is how it was pruned- so it looks like it should grow somewhat upwards? And it is not pruned like one would prune a carpet rose.

This is at my house, we moved a few months ago, and it is full of roses. I don’t rate much of their pruning at all, but two roses beside each other (of which this is one), hard up against the retaining, are the absolute worst of them. Hmmmm.

I had a bit of an obsession with weeping roses a while ago- we had a property with huge olive trees, and I wanted 5 weeping pink roses in a line, looking like an overly abundant handful of flowers or something a bride would walk down the aisle with.

The roses were sourced, only one type of weeping rose was available at the time and it was pink- success- but the shoots insisted on growing upwards for the longest time before eventually, sort of falling. The Mitre 10 website assures me that this is not uncommon, although I think it was more trying to sell the plant…

Now I am left thinking- is this rose worth something, as the only successful weeping rose I have found? Should I take cuttings and grow a bunch of standard (the lollipop shaped) roses, and sell them for squillions?

Honestly I think the dream of a nice, abundant looking weeping rose is all in my head. This rose is on the chopping block the moment I have the motivation to dig out what will be an enormous root ball.

What I'm obsessing over this week

We are back on the mealybug train this week. I have tried soaking a hole with neem, and was pleased to see mealybugs come to the surface to die- that was 15mL neem in 24L of water (5mL neem in an 8L bucket, empty, wait till the water is all in the ground, repeat, repeat).

We are soaking pine needles and will try that too- and also want to do horticultural soap. Luckily/unluckily one of my friends has an extremely mealy-bug infested slope at her house, so we have lots of capacity to try a lot of things..

What staff learnt about this week

Our weekly focus was trimming again! I took some photos, to help motivated trimmers out there-

See how I have trimmed the top corner and the left hand side, these are areas which are harder to get right with the trimmer, and they have set the height so I can confidently trim the rest, using their depth as a guide.

Two things here- gently brush off the cut parts so you can go over it again and make sure it is nice and square. You can’t get a good cut with all of that debris! And look at the edges- those edges are easiest cut at a 45 degree angle, if your hedge trimmer isn’t catching them (which it often doesn’t)

Don’t be afraid to leave some areas- like the ones in the foreground- bushier in order to make the cut straight. This buxus has been trimmed on an angle for a few years, so the closest part needed to come out more in order for the whole thing to be square. It has hardly been trimmed compared to the rest (which had about 3cm off).

Passionately work on making your hedges the right shape, not making your hedges the same as last year. People will just follow last year’s cuts and the same wonky bits will remain if you do that.

Some garden tasks for this week

Put your feet up and have a cuppa?

I am picking up rescue chickens so I haven’t even thought about my own garden! I would definitely give everything a good, deep watering though- even if it doesn’t look too dry.

And pick up the last of your long term veges like pumpkin, zucchini, tomatoes as we are on the cusp of not really planting them anymore (they won’t have time to mature).

Have a great week everyone