Sounds perfect to me. Planting during the Winter seems ideal before the heat hits.

I'm to far away to give advice but just wishing you much success with your new adventure!

Thanks Sheila and Jim!. I just hope will be a beautiful adventure rather than an epic fail!

Thanks also to rifis! I was sent your comment via email but did not find the post here on Houzz. To answer your questions, the roses are grafted and living in 21" containers, where they've been for at least a year. I do have use of a root tiller to loosen the clay and per your suggestion I reposted to the soil/compost forum. Thank you!

Good question! I have a shelf full of rose books but few address making new beds.

I make a new bed by skimming off the turf with a shovel; the turf goes into the compost pile or is used to repair bare patches or low spots in the lawn.

Then I use a pitchfork/digging fork to loosen up the soil. I leave the topsoil on the top and the subsoil on the bottom, no turning. Just rock the pitchfork back and forth so the soil is ready for amendments.

Then I mix 6 inches of amendments-- manure, compost, soil conditioner into the top six inches. A lightweight tiller like a Mantis is good for this job; rear tine tillers disturb the layers and tend to bring clay to the surface.

Then the hard part-- waiting for the bed to settle. Ideally I won't plant the new bed for at least 8 weeks, better yet make the bed in the fall and plant it in the spring. This gives a chance for microbial activity in the top layer to recover and start breaking down the amendments. I keep a good layer of mulch on the new bed to keep the weeds down.

Thank you Barbara and Cynthia! Those are such good insights!

I have a question regarding the depth of soil preparation. You mentioned depths of less that 1 foot. But I will likely have to dig at least 18" to plant the rose rootball from the containers they are currently planted. I read that I should try not to disturb the roots and lay them on top of a mound like an octopus.

I will likely have a very slightly raised bed, but do not plan on buying a truckload of soil...

Should I not plant the Rose this deep?

Thank you! So glad that I can learn from all your experience in this planning stage!

As i dig the hole, I put the good topsoil in a garden cart and mix compost, manure or whatever amendments are handy. (Roses Unlimited has a very detailed recipe for what to add to the backfill). My soil has already been amended so I don't need to do all that. A cup or two of Mill Magic or Rose Tone is good to mix in.

I set the subsoil aside and use it to fill holes the dogs have dug back in the woods!

If your roses are growing in a container, don't disturb the root ball, just slide or cut the container off. Dig a hole just deep enough to set the rose at the same level as it was in the pot. Newly planted roses set in freshly amended soil have a tendency to sink and end up too low. You can counter this by filling around the root ball half way up and then running water in to eliminate air pockets; when you don't see any bubbles or when the water starts to stand in the hole, that's enough. Drench the newly planted rose again when planting is complete, running the water until you don't see any more bubbles. I may finish the process by firming the soil with my foot (I do the same thing with perennials to get good soil contact with the roots).

If I were putting in a new hedge of twenty or more vigorous shrub roses, I wouldn't bother to amend the backfill. By the third year you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

I volunteer in two public gardens where it is very important that the new roses quickly catch up to the existing plants, for a nice uniform look. I use the same process at home, since many of my antique and shrub roses are so tall (6 to 8 feet) that the new plants are shaded by them. I really need those new plants to catch up and get their share of the sun!

jjkoc, Barbara has great suggestions for how to plant the roses to disturb the root ball as little as possible, and I totally agree. As for how deep to amend your original bed, if you amend the top foot or so, the worms will continue to mix the soil into the deeper layers as much as needed, so there's not a particular need to amend as deep as the rose goes. There are rose feeder roots relatively shallow in the soil, and they can take advantage of the nutrients as well. What you want to avoid is creating a lush "sink hole" of rich soil in a bathtub of rotten soil, or the rose won't want to put out roots beyond your amended hole. That's the rationale for either doing some global amendments to the whole bed, to whatever depths you wish to do so, or to not amend the bed at all and get the rose used to its native soil right from the start.

In California there isn't the rush to beat the winter cold like we have, but you do want to get roots established in the rainy season before the major heat sets back in. Austins like a lot of water and you want their roots deeply established before drought conditions are likely. Barbara is right that you want to plant the rose as deeply as in the pots without disturbing the 18" or so of the root ball, but you don't have to dig so deeply to bury the grafted part of the rose like we have to in cold zones. In fact, I've heard for your warm zones it's actually better to plant the graft (knobby part where the main canes grow) a little above the soil line so the plant doesn't go own root into the soil.

The planting instructions that you saw are for bare root roses that don't have any soil around them at all - in that case, you want to dig a hole big enough so that you can spread out the roots over a mound and give them room to grow, at least ideally. I never do that because I'm planting my roses a lot closer to each other given that most don't get very big here, but you want to give the roots enough room to spread widely in California. If you're buying potted roses, you don't disturb the roots to do this spreading out, but you can gently soften the edges of the soil under the roots when planting if they look crowded and twisted into the space (pot bound).

Sounds like you have a good plan - remember that roses are tougher than they look, just be sure to give them deep soaking when planted rather than frequent shallow watering so they put down deep roots.

Cynthia

Do not double dig and bring the subsoil up, foul the topsoil with it. The subsoil often contains fine particles that have washed out of the topsoil - this is an improvement, that you do not want to eliminate by retrieving the fine particles.

Do not work clay soil during the rainy season or any other time when it is wet, this makes its consistency worse rather than better.

Do not amend small areas like individual planting holes or small beds for long term plants like roses. In fact the decomposition of organic material, returning of amended soils to their original organic content makes even the amending of large beds for anything other than short term plants like annual flowers and vegetables a questionable use of resources.

If a given soil really is unsuitable for a particular kind of plant then that soil needs to be either dug out and replaced or have suitable soil dumped on top of it, without blending the two layers together.

New garden beds are always exciting! But the hardest part is getting them ready. I find the biggest challenge is getting rid of the turf. And I don't mean digging it up, I mean actually removing it from my yard. So I also do the lasagna mulch method as well. Usually I plant a few of the larger plants, trees, shrubs, roses and then do the whole cardboard, compost & mulch layers. But given that you have plenty of time you could easily do this before planting anything at all. You mentioned having clay soil, so the best thing you can do is add a lot of organic matter to help loosen it up - leaf mold, compost, etc.