Our garden has been pretty fun and rewarding, but it is definitely not without it’s challenges – our biggest trials so far have been with our roses. My partner bought a few of those Trader Joe’s mini rose bushes before we even met and re-potted them in a wooden cart. Impressive decorations, but upon closer inspection….
We noticed aphids – a lot of them! They crowd around the buds of the flowers and prevent them from blooming. We sprayed with Neem oil and bought lady bugs, but at my partner’s old apartment, the 8th floor balcony seemed to only protect those little aphids while the lady bugs and spray just blew away in the wind. At our current place, we were able to buy more ladybugs that have slowly eaten away most of the aphids.
Almost concurrent to making progress on aphid problem, we found little bright orange spots on the bottom of the leaves – after some internet searching, we found out this was mold! We quickly started pruning aggressively to rid of the mold as quickly as possible. And we’ve become more careful with watering and disposing of dead leaves since then.
Even now, our rose bushed can look diseased, get spots on the leaves, more aphids, and maybe even something we don’t know about. We also found powdery mildew, which is a challenge we will have to face with all of our plants because our neighborhood in San Francisco is a mix of foggy/cold/humid that are perfect conditions for the fungus. So, we continue to water carefully with fertilizer, spray with Neem oil, and carefully prune.
But despite all of the problems, the roses continue to grow. They’ve actually been more resilient than I would have thought. And throughout all of challenges we’ve faced, the results have been surprising and beautiful!
- The roses started as single colors, yellow and dark red, maybe a couple of others, not sure, but they’ve blended together to create a bunch of interesting hybrids.
- We’ve always gotten a bunch of buds, but the aphids prevent most of them from opening, so all of these photos have been taken in the last week.
- Hopefully more roses to come!
You should ask Mom to collect ladybugs for you 🤣
Beautiful colours. Do they smell as good as they look?
Unfortunately the strongest scent right now is the Neem oil. But they are looking healthier and we are spraying less so hopefully they will!
Nice roses! Roses are difficult to keep safe: bravo!
Yes, they have been very difficult – we just found more aphids this week! Thank you!