I have a lot of roses in pots and the one thing I know is that you have to fertilize a little more often then ones in the ground because you do wash out nutrients when you water. It will depend on what fertilizer you chose though. Some are slow release and will last a little longer. I'm sure there will be lots of good suggestions for what to use. I usually use what ever I have on hand or is on sale when I need it so I can't suggest any particular brand.

On spraying, you spray regularlly to prevent disease but only spray for insects when you see them. There are a lot of beneficial bugs that you don't want to kill when you spray insecticide so be careful what you use.

The best Southern California advice I ever heard on spraying for "bugs" was given by an eminent local rosarian 20 years ago.
He said: "For insects, I spray when I see some."
That's very good advice. Also Seil's advice is well-taken. You don't want to spray "good bugs."

As far as fungal disease, in Zone 9/10 Southern California, it should be possible to avoid spraying for that AT ALL, by eliminating roses which regularly have disease problems.

Your choice of fertilizers should be dictated by several factors. These might include how many containerized roses you have, and what pets you have living around them.
You could use a time-release granular food, or a liquid such as Miracle Gro For Roses, or Peters 20-20-20, or you could periodically give them alfalfa tea. You could even foliar feed with a liquid.

One constant is that BIGGER containers will result in healthier roses. How large are your containers? For instance, a 5-Gallon container really isn't a suitable "forever" home for a full-sized rose. And I even prefer at least 7.5 Gal for a Miniature.

Jeri

I'll second what Jeri said about pot size. The bigger the better, generally speaking. Even most minis will be happiest in a 16 or 18 inch diameter pot once they reach maturity, although a few do stay much smaller. All my roses are in pots for the same reasons as yours are: I rent. Plus, invasive tree roots are a problem in my neighborhood. If you plant your new roses in pots, hopefully you're using a good potting medium that is organic, without sand or loam or clay in it, as those "soil" elements tend to compact badly in pots. If you used a commercial potting mix, most likely you will need no fertilizer initially. Later on you'll definitly need to feed regularly for best performance, but be very careful. Potted rose roots are very easy to chemical-burn if the fertilizer concentration is just a little too high. I follow the rule of thumb that for man-made or "articficial" fertilizer nutrients, cut the recommended concentration in half if it's a rose fertilizer that is supposed to be mixed in water. For time-release fertilizers it's less critical. Follow the instructions on the packaging.

Organic fertilizers have an important advantage of helping to build the stucture of the soil and keep the soil itself healthy. They are also less likely to burn tender feeder roots. I would wait until just after your first spring flush before fertilizing, but I don't know your particular local climate schedule. Around here it's mid-March, even though we've had such a mild winter that some of my roses kept blooming right through winter.

I'm curious, what specific varieties of roses you have potted in your garden. 10 years ago I grew NO minis. But since I moved where I am now, I've come to love them for their versatility, usefulness in tight spaces, and sheer amount of blooms. One drawback is that only very few of them are fragrant. About half my roses are minis or the slightly larger mini-floras. The other half are hybrid teas, most of them compact varieties; and there are a couple token shrub and china roses. There are many hybrid teas I love but which I no longer try to grow, because they would require huge pots to be happy. I don't like to mess with anything bigger than 22" in diameter because of the weight and difficulty moving them.

The advice to only spray bugs when you see them I completely agree with. If you have spider mite problems (most troublesome in dry hot weather), strong blasts of water from a hose with spray attachment every 2 to 3 days should keep them under control--be sure to blast the undersides of leaves; that literally knocks them off the plants. Flower thrips are my most difficult to manage pest, because the eggs are laid inside closed flower buds and are therefore inaccessible to sprays. That is the only insect pest that I DO spray preventively for, spritzing the buds of lighter blooms just as they start to show petal color through the green sepals. Some folks report success with predatory mites or insects or good nematodes, which you can purchase from suppliers. I've tried those but found only a mild reduction in the thrips population. So I went back to spot-treating by hand with either Ortho Rose Pride spray or Bayer Advanced Insect spray. I'm careful to only aim at the brand new buds, so I don't kill off too many good bugs.

Fungal diseases I spray preventively for religiously (I like Banner Max alternating with Bayer Advanced Disease Control every 2 weeks). But then, that's primarily because in my region Blackspot is a bad problem. If you seldom have to deal with that, maybe you can skip it. If rust is a problem in your area, I haven't got a clue what to use on that, since it doesn't exist here. I definitely agree with posters above that careful selection of varieties for suitability to your region and with disease resistance in mind makes life with roses much easier.

Happy pot gardening!

Thanks Mike, Jeri, and Seil all great advice.
I fully admit that I have lost my marbles for roses, a few turned into many and I now have a collection of 33, with 2 newbies on the way (Golden Buddha & Won Fang Yon & almost ordered Jeri Jennings..Beautiful!!)... 12 Floribunda, 17 HT, and 4 Austin & I've found that I lean greatly toward high powered scent and huge blooms or old rose form.

Currently they are in 18" pots and about 25 are first year roses, potted Feb 07. I was told to repot in larger ones after 3 years, but I hope to be putting them in the ground by then. I have 1 dog who is an indoor kinda guy, except for occasional sunbathing & b-room runs, but is why I asked what kind of spray so that its safe.

Can you tell me more about alfalfa tea? and what does "foliar feed" mean? (sorry!!)and is using systemics on potted roses a big no no??

I did pot in commercial potting soil(miracle grow moisture control I think) but someone recently recommended adding peat moss for acidity, is this good advice?

As for pests, the bugs I always see are gnat like flying buggers and just today I saw some on the soil & on leaves.Disease mostly hasn't been a problem but last season I had small case of blackspot (I think on Heritage) and some powdery mildew. I sprayed with Bayer all in one and it seemed to fix the problem.

Thank you all for the warm welcome to this site!!
Deron

I strongly suspect that your roses will need bigger pots long before they reach three years.
Take a gander at the bottom of the pot, and if the roots are starting to show through the holes, it is time to
pot them up.

When you are talking about "Systemics," do you mean the stuff that you put into the ground?
If so, with a dog there, I would avoid this like a plague.

It is really, really, really serious poison.
In the soil, it will remain a hazard for as much as 6 years.
Moreover, it's not the most efficient way to accomplish what you want from a pesticide.
The hydraulics of the plant really can't get much of it to the very newest growth tips.
And that's where insects and disease turn up.

Gnat-like flying things PROBABLY aren't a danger to roses.
I'd avoid spraying, though, 'til you know for sure what you're killing.
In any case, gnats sound like an insect you may lose, when conditions are a little drier
(up here in Ventura County, we're pretty dank just now.)
Blackspot is still an uncommon visitor to most of Southern California, most of the time.
When you see it, remove those leaves and dispose of them in the trash.

In cool weather, a spray with any light hort oil (Eco-ERASE is great) should control minor outbreaks of mildew.
Roses that just mildew or rust no matter what you do are probably not the best choices for your garden.

Jeri

Here is a link that might be useful: Alfalfa Tea

also the roses will happily accept your coffee grounds and banana peels. I chop up my banana peels so they break down faster and are not so noticable. Plop them on top of the soil, close to the base if possible, scratch in the banana peels a bit and there you have it. Not only does it add organic matter to the soil when it breaks down, the nutrients will leach down each time you water in the meantime.

For any reason do you have corn meal that you bought for something you cooked and had left over or that you never cooked? I have found it such great organic for my roses. No, it does not have anything to do with blackspot except maybe the amount of nitrogen pushes off the old leaves and puts on new ones quickly..but they grow like wildfire with cornmeal.

how often do you recommend putting in coffee grounds and/or banana peels?

To foliar feed is to use a water soluble fertilizer (Miracle Grow, Peters, Schultz, etc.) in a sprayer and cover the tops and bottoms of the leaves of any plant.

I use is for my orchids, epiphytic cactus, other cactus and anything else that I feel needs an extra boost.

A good rule of thumb is to use the product half strength and spray no more often then once a week. Watch the weather, though. You don't want a rain storm to wash it off right away.

Here is a link that might be useful: Small hand held pump sprayer

Well since you have 30-something roses you are in no danger of overdosing them I would think. So I would say as you acquire banana peels and coffee grounds you would disperse them among the roses. Probably a couple/few pots at a time and rotate. There are alot of outside sources for spent coffee grounds which we won't even go into in this thread as it has been covered ad nauseum in other threads. Same with banana peels.

I have 18 roses in containers. My climber is in a 15 gallon
plastic container and the rest are hybrid tea roses in 5
and 6 gallon containers (5 gallon plastic and what I am
calling 6 gallon are terra cotta pots that are bigger than
5 gallons but not by much - they could be 7 gallons). My
roses started bare root (with 2 exceptions - 1 pulled from
the ground and 1 purchased already potted) 6 years ago.

Obviously it's better to have a bigger pot, but I haven't
had major problems with this size pot. I have changed the
soil once so far just to keep it fresh. I fertilize
every other week at 1/2 strength with liquid fertilizer
similar to Miracle Gro and once per month I fertilize with
fish emulsion and an organic slow-acting fertilizer like
alfalfa meal, blood meal, or Grow More. I never apply all
of this on the same day, so that usually means a schedule
similar to:

Wednesday Week 1 Organic granular fertilizer
Saturday Week 1 Weak liquid fertilizer
Saturday Week 2 Weak liquid fertilizer
Wednesday Week 2 Spray fungicide
Saturday Week 3 Weak liquid fertilizer
Wednesday Week 3 Fish emulsion
Saturday Week 4 Weak liquid fertilizer
Wednesday Week 4 Spray fungicide

(I try to do the nasty things like spray chemicals and
smelly fish emulsion during the week so that my neighbors
and I don't have to deal with it when we are BBQing and
the like on the weekends.)

I spray for insects when they become a problem, except
that I do proactively spray all of my buds with spinosad
because thrips are the bane of my existence. For instance,
I don't think I sprayed an insecticide at all last year.
Most years I end up spraying maybe twice. I don't want to
kill the praying mantis and hover flies that I get.

Fungicide is a different story and I spray every
other week (the week I do not fertilize). I use Immunox
alternated with Mancozeb/Banner Maxx. When I do use an
insecticide I use one mixed with yet a different fungicide
just to switch it up.

That's about it. Here in CA I usually prune in January,
although I pruned in February this year. We usually get
3 flushes per year, although I had 4 this year with the
mild weather.

The biggest challenge I face growing roses in containers
is keeping them watered. A rose in the ground can withstand
even the fiercest heat for a few days between waterings.
My container roses need to be watered every day when the
temperature is above 90 degrees and when it's 100+ sometimes
I water them twice if they look sad when I get home from
work. If I miss a day the roses don't die, but the new
growth gets crispy and the flowers I work so hard for
burn up. Luckily, this is usually just for a couple of weeks
in July or August. Otherwise, I water 2-3x per week. Right
now with the rain I am watering just 1x to supplement
Mother Nature.

Whoops. I messed up my schedule. Here it is corrected:

Wednesday Week 1 Organic granular fertilizer
Wednesday Week 2 Spray fungicide
Saturday Week 2 Weak liquid fertilizer
Wednesday Week 3 Fish emulsion
Saturday Week 4 Weak liquid fertilizer
Wednesday Week 4 Spray fungicide

I should credit Bob Martin for inspiring my regimen. He
always stressed the importance of alternating an organic
"base" with a shot of "junk food" synthetic fertilizer.
This schedule works for me and I devised it myself, but
the main ideas here are you don't want to fertilize and
spray at the same time and that you should use both
organic and synthetic fertilizers to give your roses a
combination of fast-acting and slow-release nutrients.

I hate to anthropomorphize my roses, but eating rice cakes
all the time isn't that great for you, but neither is
cheesecake. Likewise, you don't usually consume a whole
cheesecake and a 2 liter bottle of Coke on the same day you
get a flu shot. :)

Hate to follow myself up again, but the organic fertilizers
I have been using for the past two years are Grow More
and Espoma Rose Tone. You don't have to use these products,
but they contain manure, bone meal, blood meal, alfalfa
meal, cottonseed meal, kelp meal, greensand, guano and the
like. E.B. Stone, Whitney Farms, and others make blends so
that you don't have to buy so many different fertilizers.
Any fertilizer with these types of ingredients on the label
will do as an "organic base".

dimitrig,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reducing my "pot" stress, felt like I was smothering the poor things. Your feeding/spraying schedule sounds great and I appreciate the name dropping for goodies that work (in newbie english too!!)

When pots are described by the gallon I can't (yet) visualize the size. Most of my container roses are in 18" pots. How many gallons is that??

BettyN

It's going to vary because some pots are tapered, some are
shallow, and some are deep but for the plastic nursery
pots the following is close to correct. Note that a 1 gallon
pot doesn't contain exactly 1 gallon of soil, but it's
close.

1 gallon = 6-6 "
2 gallon = 8"
3 gallon = 10"
5 gallon = 12"
7 gallon = 14"
10 gallon = 20"

About pot sizes, using terms of gallons can be very confusing, because people mean different things by them. There was a thread here on the forum quite a while back in which someone pointed out that "gallon" in nurseryman lingo refers generally to a plant size, not a literal volume of the pot that a given plant might be sold in. I have compared nursery pots that were, for example, labeled "1 gallon," and I've seen these pots actually vary significantly in size. I've never seen a pot labeled in gallons that was literally as big in volume as the label indicated. They always seem to be smaller.

I like to refer to diameter, even though the taper of the pots can vary and the height even a little bit. But in general, the height to diameter proportions tends to remain similar in most commerical pots.

As Jerijen suggested, hybrid teas in 18" pots will often benefit from transplanting after 2 or 3 years, but that depends on the specific variety, as well as on whether its growing on its own roots or grafted, and if so, what rootstock its on. Most California grafted roses will be on Dr. Huey, which is just fine, but not for pots. Hr. Huey sends out long thick tap roots that don't like confined spaces. I'm not personally familiar with the growth dynamics of multiflora, the preferred rootstock in much of the north and northeast. Fortuniana, which will do great anywhere warm, is very vigorous, but entirely composed of fibrous feeder roots, without any taproots, so it will tend to grow to fill the space it's in. It tends to be OK in pots, though very large pots would still be best. My strong preference is for own-root roses, specifically because I grow them in pots. They seem to adapt best, with just a few exceptions depending on variety.

If you've got medium to large sized hybrid teas and plan to keep them in 18 inch pots long-term, you can still do that successfully, but you'll want to (or need to) gently pull them out of the pots every 2 or 3 years at winter pruning time to inspect the condition of the roots. If rootbound, they'll benefit from root pruning and fairly hard top pruning. They then should bounce back with renewed vigor.

I hope that's helpful.

Thank you dimitrig and mike. You both gave helpful feedback.

These are the roses I have in pots: Pretty Jessica, St. Cecelia and Wife of Bath - on own root. Tamora, Miss Alice, Honey Dijon, Distant Drums, Sharifa Asma and Yves Piaget - grafted.

The own root roses have been in 18" pots for over 10 years. Every 3-4 years I re-pot them. Every year I top-dress with steer manure and worm casings and amend with organic fertilizers several times during the season. I also mulch heavily. So far they are doing well. I under plant them with a variety of options- ivy, campanula, species geraniums, allysum, sweet violets, bacopa and others whose names escape me.

BettyN

If you've got medium to large sized hybrid teas and plan to keep them in 18 inch pots long-term, you can still do that successfully, but you'll want to (or need to) gently pull them out of the pots every 2 or 3 years at winter pruning time to inspect the condition of the roots. If rootbound, they'll benefit from root pruning and fairly hard top pruning. They then should bounce back with renewed vigor.

I hope that's helpful.

* * *

Yes thank you, that was helpful to me too.