Planting roses is fairly simple gardening stuff. The first thing is to never let the rose roots dry out. If you do, the rose will either perform poorly the first year or simply die. It does help to soak the roots in warm water for an hour before you plant if youve purchased the rose as a bareroot plant. Container grown plants do not have to be soaked.
Always did a dollar sized hole for a 25-cent plant. The bigger the hole, the looser the soil will be and the easier those tiny feeder roots will grow quickly. I cant emphasize this enough. And never, ever (with a bare root plant) cut off healthy roots. You can remove broken roots but leave every healthy one thats on the plant. Theyre your ticket to early blooms.
When you backfill the planting hole, I always add one shovel of peat and one shovel of compost for every three shovels of soil. This gives the rose some quick nourishment and makes a wonderful soil for expansion. The only exception to this is if youre planting in a clay soil and then I only add the compost. I do not add the peat as I want the rose roots to grow out into the soil that surrounds the planting hole. They might establish faster in...