Bare root roses

The weather is milder, the snow melting, crocuses and hyacinths are starting to come out of their winter rest…. Spring is well on it’s way ! 

Last week I received an order of bare root roses and seeds. I never placed an online order for plants so early in the year, but there was a good deal on roses and I couldn’t resist getting some beautiful historical roses – Ghislaine de Feligonde.

Bare root plants were also a new thing for me, and I have to admit I don’t have any experience with them so let’s see how it goes. The package arrived in the middle of a busy work week and even though I picked it up pretty quickly from the post office I did not have the chance to put the roses in water, so I left them in their original packing and plaved the  closed cardboard box in the coolest part of the house – the basement.

Today I unpacked them and placed the roots in a bucket of water where they will stay soaking for a good 24 hours  I also found in my storage some deep flower pots, a bag of soil and got everything ready for planting the roses temporarily indoor until the risk of frost is over; since this will take a month or more I will keep them in the cool, darker basement room in an attempt to prevent the plants from growing too fast.  The plan is to eventually bring the ‘wintering’ plants into the warmer rooms slowly but surely, and a little closer to the time I will take them outside. 

I read that there is no hurry to start plants indoor if you don’t have a green house or proper set up, as they end up sending long shoots to soak up the sun light, and these are often weak stems which break or get damaged easily. Better to be a bit patient and calculate your time according to your garden zone.

Pansies are pretty hardly little flowers, but if started too late will only bloom the second year. So I put some seeds to sprout and hopefully they will bloom this summer, but if not, then at least I can look forward to seeing them bloom in 2020.

These should be amazing !

Bare root roses in their wrapping

A little soil, still moist around the roots

A little soak in my mop bucket should give the roots the chance to rehydrate themselves before going into temporary flower pots.

For the curious ones, I ordered the roses from hageglede.no

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Disclaimer:  I am not affiliated or sponsored by Hageglede, but they do have a lovely assortment of plants/seeds and worth a visit.