This full-year rose care guide is extremely practical, definitely worth saving.

This article mainly summarises rose cultivation experience across several aspects: selection, planting, daily care, points to note, and pruning. Feel free to add anything missing in the comments!

1. Choosing roses

When choosing roses, you can decide on the varieties and quantities according to your own time, space and preferences. For a first planting, you can start by buying a small number of strong, mature plants - lower risk and quicker results.

At the same time, gardening friends should first buy a sturdy mature plant to grow. Once it is growing well and you have figured things out, then collect cuttings to propagate. 

2. Planting and transplanting roses

1. The most important thing to note when transplanting roses is to minimise root damage. 

2. The best time to transplant roses is in early spring just before bud break, or in late autumn after leaf fall and dormancy. In spring and autumn, choose cool, humid weather. If you really must transplant in summer, do it in the early morning, evening, or on a cloudy day. 

3. Before transplanting, water the rose thoroughly to protect the roots, which helps with digging and keeps the soil around them. The dug-out roots should be exposed to the air as little as possible; bare-root seedlings especially must be kept strictly moist to avoid drying out in the wind. In fact, only dormant plants in the cooler seasons and on cloudy days can be exposed like this, and the roots should be soaked in water as soon as possible. 

4. Keep no more than four strong branches per plant; cut the rest off from the base. The branches left should also be cut back to about 20 cm. Even large plants or very vigorous branches should not exceed 30 cm. Thin out 1/2 of the leaves on the branches as well. Make sure the pruning cuts are smooth, and plants transplanted in summer must not keep any flower buds. This is because the rose is in a stage of recovery, and flowering consumes a great deal of nutrients, which is bad for the plant's growth. Those transplanted in autumn may keep one branch with one bud, provided the plant itself is very strong. If transplanting in spring, the rose should first be pruned once in early winter, mainly removing weak branches and pest- or disease-damaged branches, and cutting back leggy shoots and main branches, with shaping as the main goal. For autumn transplanting, prune a few days before transplanting, or prune as you transplant. 

5. After planting in the ground or in a pot, make sure the plant sits upright. When about half the soil has been added, press it down lightly. The original root ball must sit below ground level or the pot rim. After filling with soil, tread or press it firm. 

6. Once the soil is filled in, water thoroughly, then water thoroughly again the next evening. On the fifth day, water a third time. If there is rain during this period, reduce watering appropriately. If transplanting in summer, you should also mist the plant morning and evening to keep it humid.

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Also take care to provide some shade; do not put it in direct sun. After about 7-10 days, once the plant has recovered, gradually increase the sunlight. 

7. After planting, you can also spray the plant once with a 50% carbendazim wettable powder solution diluted 800 times to prevent powdery mildew and black spot. 

8. The roots of a newly transplanted rose need to recover, so do not apply any fertiliser at this time. Only after new leaves and shoots have grown can you add fertiliser little by little, and remember to "apply light fertiliser frequently". 

3. Daily care for roses

This section is based on Beijing; readers elsewhere in the country should analyse according to their own geographic location. 

Every year in January and February, add base fertiliser. Dig a hole near the roots, or if conditions allow, best to dig a ring-shaped trench. Put in organic fertiliser / hemp residue / cake fertiliser and the like; pig, cattle, horse or sheep manure is even better. At the same time, prepare some sulfur powder and lime, mix them into a liquid and spray it around the base of the plant to prevent pests. 

In early April, once it has warmed up completely, apply a nitrogen fertiliser once and water thoroughly, the aim being to make it grow strongly and push out shoots and buds. The most powerful nitrogen fertiliser is urea (a chemical fertiliser), isn't it? Give it once in spring; more than that will cause excessive growth with no flowers. 

In mid-April, aphids are most likely to appear on the young shoots. Observe carefully; if there are few, pinch them to death by hand, if many, then you need to spray. I use "Jusha", which works very well. Be sure to eliminate the aphids in mid-April to early May, when the first batch of buds appears; once the flowers open it is hard to spray. After one spray, wait three days and spray again, and you can basically wipe them out. But you must strictly follow the concentration in the instructions - only less, never more; too high a concentration will burn the shoots and buds. 

In mid-May, when the first batch of flowers opens, start adding a phosphorus-potassium fertiliser once every half month. You can water it into the roots or spray it on the leaves. Once in the flowering period, control the water appropriately, which can extend the flowering period; too much water makes the flowers fade quickly. 

From May to June you can enjoy the fruits of your labour, take a photo or whatever. 

From the end of June, you can provide a little shade for plants in areas with no shelter at all. 

In July the rainy season begins. An occasional shower is no big deal, but long spells of overcast, rainy weather will cause various mould diseases. Once July arrives, spray regularly with carbendazim / chlorothalonil or the like to prevent mould. In addition, spray to control various small fleshworms. 

In August and September, cut off the new non-flowering side branches on the stems and any excessively vigorous branches that affect the plant's shape. First, this saves nutrients; second, if the branches and leaves are too dense and there is no ventilation, pests and diseases easily occur. At the same time, add a slow-release fertiliser once, in preparation for a grand flush of flowers in autumn. 

From late October to November, you can begin transplanting or repotting. For plants grown in the ground for more than two years, or in pots that are too large, you can remove 5 to 8 cm of the surface soil and replace it with fresh mixed nutrient soil. 

From December to February, you can prune the whole plant, and use suitable cut branches for cuttings. 

4. Points to note

1. For daily watering, water when the soil is dry and let it dry out between waterings. Roses like this very much, but the roots are very afraid of waterlogging, so never keep them soaking. Water more on hot days, less on cold days. Never water under the blazing sun; in extreme heat, water in the morning and evening. When watering, water into the roots as much as possible; otherwise, if there are pathogens on the upper leaves, they will run down with the water onto the lower leaves and the whole plant will become infected. 

2. Roses like heavy feeding, but be sure to apply light fertiliser frequently - a lower concentration is safer. From mid-May to mid-October, add a phosphorus-potassium liquid fertiliser once every ten days. In extreme heat, lower the concentration of the fertiliser solution appropriately. 

3. Roses like strong sunlight but are afraid of scorching. More than half of the varieties will scorch and curl at the edges under blazing sun. Use the thinnest shade netting to provide some shade. Potted ones can be moved into tree shade to escape the heat when the sun is strongest. 

5. Pruning roses

Generally, routine pruning of roses means removing the spent flowers after blooming, cutting at one or two leaves below the flower. It mainly depends on the thickness of the branch: for a thick branch, one leaf is enough; for a thin, weak one, two leaves. The cut should be slanted to prevent water collecting and causing disease. 

Observe often in normal times, and promptly clean up insect-damaged and diseased branches. One kind of insect-damaged branch is when a small hole 1 to 2 mm in diameter appears in the cross-section of a woody stem; there is definitely an insect inside, so cut down bit by bit until you find the insect. The other kind is when a small black hole of half a millimetre appears on a flower bud and black sap flows out; such a bud should be cut off directly, as there is a small fleshworm damaging it inside. 

From July to September, promptly clean up the small non-flowering side branches. Generally they are no more than a hand-span long, with no flower buds at the tip, and the branch itself is dark green and looks very old. Cut them off flush with the branch. Another method is, after the full bloom in late spring and early summer, once the height of summer arrives, always remove the flower buds. This way, by early autumn there will be a full flush of flowers just like in spring. The advantage of this approach is that it saves nutrients relatively well, does not tire the plant out too much, and helps the plant become strong and sturdy. 

Autumn pruning should be done a bit later, waiting until the rose leaves have all fallen and it is completely dormant. If you prune too early and new shoots grow out, they will be damaged by frost as soon as the temperature drops, affecting the next year's growth. I myself plan to prune again before spring begins. 

In my personal summary, there are the following points to note:

1. For roses grown in the ground, especially those planted close together, do not prune too short; otherwise the branches will be short and thick, which is bad for ventilation. Of course, this should also match personal preference - if you like tall, tree-like plants, prune less; if you like low, spreading plants, prune more. 

2. Prune thin, slender plants more to encourage them to become sturdy; prune thick, large ones less to let them gain height and hold up the display. 

3. For the sake of the overall plant shape, you must be willing to use the shears. Sideways-growing branches take up a lot of space and also affect the overall appearance; best to cut them off. 

4. Old branches will produce fewer flowers as they age, so you can cut and replace them year by year; do not remove them all at once.

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