June 29 column: Peggy Jeremiah

Here is a link to my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: Roses keep giving all summer long. In it, I am pleased to feature Master Gardener Peggy Jeremiah and her beautiful rose garden. You can also read my column below.

Boy, can Peggy grow roses! During my visit, I admired how all of her plants were very healthy and robust, with shiny leaves. She really has a green thumb. In this column, she shares her impressive knowledge of what it takes to grow every gardener’s favorite flower.

I hope you will enjoy it.

Column:

by Susan Mulvihill

Peggy Jeremiah knows roses. A Master Gardener since 2008, she is comfortable saying that roses are her area of expertise. After all, there are 138 of them growing in her Spokane Valley backyard.

“I just love them,” she said. “They bloom all summer long and aren’t like irises that just bloom in the spring and then they’re gone. You can cut roses for the house and they’re just gorgeous.”

I recently visited Jeremiah’s beautiful garden and was rewarded with a wealth of rose-care tips.

Peggy Jeremiah’s rose care tips

“To grow roses successfully in our area, the biggest thing you can do is order or purchase them from a quality place,” she suggested. “Look for Jackson & Perkins and Weeks Roses. Some of our local nurseries carry and they’re guaranteed. I’ve found you get what you pay for.”

While she mostly grows hybrid teas, there are also grandifloras and floribundas. Peggy Jeremiah also grows David Austins and some miniature roses in her garden. Some are grafted while others are non-grafted, own-root roses.

At planting time, she buries the bud union of her grafted roses 2 inches below the soil surface. This protects the graft during the winter. It also frees her from a tedious fall chore. She doesn’t have to cover them with pine needles in the fall and uncover the plants the following spring.

She finds that roses need a lot of sunshine and water.

“The next most important requirement is cutting them back,” she advised. “The more you cut your roses, the more flowers you’ll get. You have to just be mean and cut those canes in the spring so more will grow in their place.”

Her routine is to cut back the canes by one-half.

“In our winters, roses are going to freeze back, no matter what,” she explained. “So if you leave them tall, they’ll freeze back half that distance. If you cut them back to 6 inches, they’ll freeze back half that distance. That means you’ll end up with shorter canes. And always cut real tall canes back to at least 3 to 4 feet in length. That way, they won’t whip around in the winter winds.”

In the spring, she fertilizes all of her roses with a balanced fertilizer (16-16-16) which has worked really well for her. In the past, she used rose fertilizer in the spring and fed them again with a bloom-booster in the summer. The only downside to her new routine is that she has to apply a fungicide. That’s because there’s no systemic in the balanced fertilizer.

She also emphasized the importance of removing the spent flowers, also known as deadheading. This will keep the blooms coming.

Her biggest challenges are the two rose diseases, black spot and mildew. Deer used to be a big problem but she and her husband put up an 8-foot-tall fence to keep them out.

“Roses do need attention, there’s no two ways about it,” she said. “You need to take a walk around your garden every other day to catch problems before they get bad. So if you see a problem, act on it right away.”

There’s more in her landscape than her large rose garden. She has a beautiful bed brimming with irises, Oriental poppies, daylilies, Black-eyed Susans and other perennials for a cottage-garden look. She also grows clematis vines up the supports of her upper deck.

Roses remain Peggy Jeremiah’s primary focus. She encourages gardeners to plant and enjoy them in their own gardens.

“Don’t be afraid of them,” she said. “Sure, they’re a bit of work but they respond very well to care. They’re definitely worth it.”