With reasonably fertile soil, you can get by using only alfalfa meal and a topdressing of compost to fertilize roses. Or just use a rose or tomato fertilizer. Or Osmocote. There is no need to pile on various fertilizers and frankly, I do not understand why so many rose gardeners think these plants need some sort of specialized fertilizing regime to thrive. They are tough, hardy, flowering shrubs, just like most other tough, hardy, flowering shrubs, and do not require all the nonsense that seems to be promoted for rose growing.

I tend to use alfalfa tea....but only as a supplement. I do not rely on it as a full range fertilizer (because it is not). And I use the tea rather than the meal because so much of my growing is done in containers and a liquid form is far more effective.

Gardengal14, how do you make your alfalfa year? Thanks!

Meant 48 not 14

Alfalfa is an organic. Any organic feeds the soil. Good soil feeds the rose. If you have good soil you don't need a lot of other stuff. Is it OK to mix it all, yes. Is it necessary, no.

I assume you mean alfalfa tea :-) The first time was by accident. A bag of alfalfa meal got wet and fell apart. Thankfully it was in a plastic storage bin so I just added more water and let it sit. It started smelling a bit ripe after about a week and was ready to use. I have since been using the same bin to make and keep alfalfa tea in on a year round basis.

As noted, I use it only as a supplement, not a full service fertilizer. I tend to use Osmocote Plus for all woody plants in containers but use the tea maybe once a month on plants that would benefit from an extra boost (roses, clematis, lilies, containerized annuals, etc.).

Yes, alfalfa tea 😊.
Thank you for sharing your recipe

@gardengal48 could you share a formula for alfalfa tea that gives approximate quantities? For example:

1) Put N gallons of water into a bin

2) Add M cups of alfalfa meal per gallon of water

3) Mix until.... (i.e., do we need the alfalfa meal to dissolve or not?)

4) Wait P days

5) Extract liquid and use T tablespoons per gallon of container, once a month

It does not need to be exact numbers. Just ballpark things. Otherwise I am going to end up guessing and creating toxic waste that burns plants on contact. :)

After you make the tea, the residuals cannot be used again and should just be placed onto in-ground plantings?

LOL!! This isn't rocket science, precision is not required and you will not burn your plants with a "toxic waste"!!

The common recipe is 4 cups of alfalfa meal to 5 gallons of water. But I have never measured either the amount of meal or the water used. Wait 3-7 days until it begins to smell and it is then ready to use. I never dilute it. And you can use it as often as you wish but I doubt you need to use more than weekly.

As I stated upthread, my big tote bin (18G) full of alfalfa tea gets added to on an as-needed basis and with no attention to measuring (although the bag of alfalfa meal is 3 pounds so approximately 6 cups). There are no residuals and nothing just gets dumped out....it all gets put to good use.

Does anyone have an objection to the "Down to Earth" Alfalfa Meal product?

@gardengal48 That formula works, thanks. :)

How much of that tea would you apply to each plant that is the size of a four foot high rose bush?

I do it more by container size. And to a recently well watered container (never one that is dry). I pour in as much tea as it takes to flood the top of the container....so maybe an inch or so.

And I will just reiterate that this is not a process that requires any kind of precision or careful measuring :-)

@gardengal48 the amount of detail you provided was just what I wanted, thanks.

Here is a thread I started asking about aa tea. I am sold on aa tea, it has worked miracles for me. I use aa tea and also aa pellets. It takes time for for the aa pellets to break down and release the goodies when added directly to the soil. I find I get most bang from pellets if I add them around the bush late fall. Then they decompose and all the good stuff is right there when the roses wake up. During spring summer fall aa tea works best. This is my and a good few people's experience.

There is one serious nay sayer in the thread. He offers zero evidence why he believes aa tea does not work. And he actually has not tried it either. Anyway it has worked well for me.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5749417/what-is-your-opinion-experience-with-alfalfa-and-aa-tea-qs

This is my first year using alfalfa tea, and I have no idea if I'm doing it "right" - but my roses have never looked better! I take a box of alfalfa meal and dump it into my 40 gal. trash can. Then I water with the jets on high to get whatever microbe action needs to get going. I let it steep for about 24 hours, then use my watering can. I just keep re-filling my green watering can & dumping it all over the garden until I can't really get the stuff off the bottom. Then I spray the hose high powered again to create a bit more liquid to mix with the left-over meal that's on the bottom. Then I scoot the can over to my fruit trees and dump the rest out near my fruit trees.

I also did this about two weeks later with a bag of earthworm castings. A guy at the local nursery advised me to use a pond bubbler/oxygenator in the trash can to give the microbes as much oxygen as possible to maximize the tea. I didn't use the bubbler thing, but I did put the jets on high on the hose to do the same thing...though obviously I wasn't continuing that all night long!

The combo of doing these two things just gave me the best spring I can remember in a long time. As others have said -- I didn't do anything really precise.

Deborah: You will get more out of the aa meal if you let it ferment a little longer,a few days at least. You dont need an aerator for it to work. Use a long stick to stir the mix once a day or whenever you can. I cant recommend aa tea enough. You might want to browse the link above. A lot of people have contributed.

About four years ago I started using alfalfa pellets, go to your local feed dealer you can buy a 40 lb bag for about $15, I use a handful around each bush about each 4-5 weeks. try it you'll like the outcome .

Is there any reason to prefer alfalfa meal powder to the pellets, for either making the tea or for using on plants? Feed stores have 50-pound bags of the pellets for less than $20.

@katyajini I use alfalfa tea and I haven't seen any miraculous results from it. I also can't say it doesn't work, I simply don't have enough data. It's impossible to do a scientific trial in a garden. My intuition is that the roses like it and it works well as a part of mixed feeding regime but it's not like they are growing basals in all directions. Just reasonable happy and reasonable healthy roses. It won't make them grow out of their natural rhythm, won't make them do something they don't want to do and won't make them grow bigger than is typical for my climate with cold summers.

Pellets work great westes.

Edhelka: I do get pretty good effect. Yes, not possible to do a controlled study in a home garden. I compare to how the roses were growing in years past and then aa tea seems perfect.