The Chinese rose blooms bigger than a face and breaks the branches under its weight; Auntie Liu relies entirely on these few tricks for care

What is life? For people who grow flowers, life is having a small yard of your own and tending some plants and flowers in your spare time. Auntie Liu is just like that. After retiring, her life became incredibly simple, and how to grow Chinese roses well was pretty much her whole life.

Auntie Liu is from Northeast China. When she was young, she met her other half and came to Nanning, and just like that, several decades passed. Now she is retired and idle at home, and for her, flowers are her emotional anchor. Right now, her favorite flower to grow is the Chinese rose. Her daughter is not by her side now, so she raises the Chinese roses as if they were her daughter. These Chinese roses are blooming so beautifully that they are almost breaking the branches under their weight.

Me: Auntie Liu, your Chinese roses are growing so well. Do you have any secrets?

Auntie Liu: Even a clever housewife cannot cook a meal without rice. With this kind of Chinese rose, the first thing to look at is the variety. Look at my whole yard--among them all, this Haishen Wang blooms the biggest and the most. This variety has a trait: it blooms abundantly and quickly, and the plant only reaches about 30cm at its tallest, so it is very suitable for balcony growing. But other people's Haishen Wang has a looser flower form, and the bloom diameter only reaches about 10cm. The Haishen Wang I grow can reach 12cm in diameter. There is a secret to this.

If you want the flowers to bloom well and large, the most important secret is to provide fertilizer. To grow miniature Chinese roses, choose a gallon pot with a diameter of 10-15cm, and the soil should preferably be fertile, loose, slightly acidic sandy soil. The most important step is still to bury some material at the bottom. You can bury a bit of fish intestines, bones or eggshells at the bottom of the pot, so the Chinese roses get fed and the flowers keep popping out.

This bit of base fertilizer definitely still cannot satisfy this Chinese rose glutton, so you also need to fertilize separately. For fertilizer, you can choose an organic nutrient solution specially made for Chinese roses, purely plant-fermented and rich in organic matter. About every 10 days, drench the roots or spray the leaves once, and the Chinese roses absorb it especially well. Most importantly, it can also improve the plant's disease resistance. Once the Chinese roses are sturdy and have enough fertilizer, the flowers will naturally bloom well.

Many beginners who grow Chinese roses often water them to death or fertilize them to death. In the past we had to pay quite a bit in tuition, but now it is better--there is a flower and plant detector. As long as you insert it into the soil, it can detect the water and fertilizer conditions in the soil, reminding you to water when it is time to water and to fertilize when it is time to fertilize. If there is not enough light, just put it in the sun, which is very convenient.

But if you do all of the above, you can only say you will get one relatively good flower. If you want a full pot of blooms, you still need to do one more step, and that is branch pressing. Pulling the main branches horizontally can promote the Chinese rose to sprout side buds, turning a single-stem Chinese rose into one with many branches and encouraging a full pot of blooms. Have you mastered all these tips? Hurry up and give them a try.