How to Fertilize My Roses

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Stan DeFritas, Mr. Green Thumb. How do you fertilize roses? Well, there's a number of different rose foods that you can use. There's bag rose fertilizer. There's also some fertilizer like we have here. Now this one has kind of a combination of some insecticide that can be pulled up through the plant and sometimes you'll find fungicides also, along with a good supply of nutrients. Remember that fertilizing roses you need N, P, and K...nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, but you also need calcium, sulfur, magnesium, manganese, all these trace elements as well and you need to fertilize on a regular basis. Usually, most rose growers are fertilizing either lightly at about one quarter strength each time they feed or they're doing it probably monthly if you're using one of these time released fertilizers like we have here that has a pesticide and other systemics within the fertilizer. Remember, systemic just means it's absorbed within the plant and it will cut down on some of your having to worry about spraying if you actually put some of the pesticide or fungicide materials into the root system that way you can pull it on up and keep your roses looking more black spot, and aphid, and mite free. Fertilize your roses on a regular basis and you'll be rewarded with beautiful flowers. For askmrgreenthumb.com, I'm Stan DeFreitas."