Things You'll Need:
- Rose plants
- Compost
- Rose Defense organic spray
- Home remedy aphid spray
- Garden hose
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Step 1
Good organic gardening practices begin with nutrient-rich soil. Improve your soil by adding compost. Compost consists of the decayed remains of plants. You can easily make a compost pile by adding grass clippings, leaves, fruit and vegetable peels. Never add raw materials to the soil to make compost. Instead, build your compost pile elsewhere and wait until it breaks down into nice, crumbly dark compost that looks like chocolate cake. Then it's ready to go into the garden.
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Step 2
Roses love horse manure. If you can get horse manure from a farm or stable, truck it to your garden and add it to the compost pile. As with compost, never add fresh manure of any kind right to the garden. It can burn the plant's roots. Instead, let it sit or age for a while until it too breaks down and turns crumbly. Then it's ready to go into the garden.
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Step 3
Once you've built up the soil, use a good mulch to conserve water. Pine bark mulch or similar mulch breaks down over time too, and enriches the soil. Mulch gives the ground a protective cover, keeps the weeds down, and helps the soil retain moisture.
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Step 4
Use organic remedies to fight common problems. A home made remedy for aphids kills pesky bugs. To combat Japanese beetles, use traps rather than sprays. Or fill a clean spaghetti sauce jar with one tablespoon of dish washing liquid and about two cups of water. Use a popsicle stick, spoon or your fingers to knock beetles right off the roses and into the soapy mixture. They cannot escape and drown.
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Step 5
Black spot and powdery mildew are two diseases caused by fungi. Damp conditions create an environment in which rose diseases thrive. Always water your roses in the morning. This gives the sun time to help the water left on leaves to evaporate and dry the leaves out. Try using a soaker hose, which gently mists roots but doesn't wet the leaves.
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Step 6
Companion plants ward off insects naturally. Marigolds are the wonder-plant of the garden. They repel many insects. Try planting marigolds around your roses.
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Step 7
When all else fails, a good organic rose spray can treat leaves for fungal diseases, mildews and viruses. They can also repel insects. Rose Defense, available at Lowe's home and garden centers, is a great organic rose spray. It contains neem oil. The neem tree of India provides a natural oil that works like an insect repellent, but also wards off and kills bacteria, fungi and mildew.
