For your roses to bloom this summer you will have to feed them accordingly – unlike many other plants in your garden roses consume a lot more but the reward is big, beautiful blooms that smell wonderful. It is important for you to know that you don’t feed established rose bushes the same way that you feed new ones. When they are new you cannot use chemical fertilizers as they will burn the young and delicate roots. Instead, you should use organic fertilizers that will feed the plants without harming them. You can find a variety of these at your local gardening store. The best way to do it is first water the pants well, apply the fertilizer and then water again. Do this in the evening when the sun is going down for maximum benefit.
After your roses have bloomed for the first time you can apply chemical fertilizers. The best way to do it is to first prune the plant – you don’t want to waste nutrition on dying leaves. You should do it in the early weeks so that as the weather gets hot the fertilizer can break down as the weather warms up. There is no fixed diet that your plants should be on – what you feed them depends on the kind of roses and also the soil that they are growing in. According to the American Roses Society website, a good diet includes bone meal or superphosphate, cotton seed meal, blood meal, fish meal and Epsom salts. Feed your roses every 4 weeks for best results.
The best way to feed established roses is to first water the plants thoroughly. Let the water get into the soil and them scratch about an inch before you water a second time. Apply the fertilizer around the plant and then water one last time. Many rose growers will mulch their plants to give the soil even more nutrition. If you have mulch around the roots pull it back and then feed the plant. After you water the third time put the mulch back around the plant to keep the soil from drying out too fast.