Rose is the most beautiful, long-blooming, exquisite, truly royal flower - a real decoration of any garden. If you grow roses in Northwest Russia and want to preserve them in the winter, you need to take care of the shelter.
Training
You need to start preparing for winter even during the acquisition of planting material, that is, in the spring. How can you make life easier for roses in winter? Choose frost-hardy varieties and seedlings with a healthy root system.
When planting rose bushes, the place where the roses will grow is carefully selected. In shading, roses will not only bloom poorly and poorly, but will also endure the winter much worse. Roses are planted so that it is convenient to care for them in the summer, and to cover them in the fall.
One of the main conditions for the successful cultivation of roses and their preservation in the cold is the creation of optimal light and thermal conditions for them. If during the growing season you follow the agricultural technique of growing roses, a well-prepared rose bush with ripe shoots will survive the winter quite safely, but for insurance it is better to take care of shelter.
Starting in August, fertilizing should be stopped, otherwise the roses will continue to grow violently throughout the fall, and they will not have enough time to prepare for winter.
From September, all growth-stimulating work (loosening the soil, pruning, watering) should be stopped in order to give the rose bushes a smooth transition to a state of dormancy.
Shelter
Work on the direct preparation of bushes for wintering begins in mid-October. There are many ways to protect roses from frost. In Northwest Russia, it is best to apply comprehensive protection. First, roses need to be spud, that is, an earthen mound of loose dry soil should be poured around the base of the bush. The height of the hill is 30 cm.
When hilling roses, you should not take soil from the row spacing: this can damage the root system and reduce the productivity of the bushes. It is better to use imported soil to create a shelter.
Before building an earthen hill, you need to cut flowers, green, non-lignified shoots from the bushes and remove the leaves.
Then the earthen hill from above is insulated with spruce branches, leaves or sawdust. The best material is considered to be spruce or fir spruce branches, which reliably protects plants from cold in winter, and from bright sunlight in early spring, while allowing air to pass through well.
You can cover the entire bush with an insulating material (after filling an earthen mound). But the material should not touch the bush. A mesh lattice is made of metal or wood or metal arcs are placed on which the covering material is placed and fixed with tape.
