Weed free rose garden

[carolelaine]

I have a fairly large rose garden. This year I let it get really overrun with weeds and I need to get it all cleaned out and the roses pruned down this fall. My question is...Has anyone found a good ground cover to keep down the weeds. We tried the black roll out weed barrier with mulch on the top, but that really didn't work too well. I want to install a new border around the garden and then put in some kind of weed barrier, but I'm out of ideas. Help

 

[Katie H]

I've had very good luck with putting down 6 or 8 sheets of newspaper, dampening it and then putting mulch chips over that. By the end of the season, the newspaper has decomposed enough to be turned in with the mulch to winter over the roses.

 

[lulu]

I am strictly a hobby gardener, but I would say it depends how formal you want it to be. My mother has an amazing old fashioned rose collection in our English country garden, people literally stop and look in if they hike past our house. She underplants with annuals where its least formal, lavender where it is more formal (eg along a path) and where she is desperate she has resorted to ground cover roses, which she doesn't like that much (.....if there are nice plants there is no room for weeds,). My favourite are the informal borders, aqulegias, cornflowers, canterburybells, delphiniums, love in the mist, shirley poppies, things like that.....its breathtaking in May and june, just stunning.

 

[lulu]

Should say, the roses are definitely the stars of the garden though.

 

[Gretchen]

What Katie said. And use some round up.

 

[BlueCat]

What Katie said. And use some round up.

Round up is a complete vegetation killer, and will travel down into the soil and kill your roses. Do not use it anywhere near your rose bushes! I've grown roses for 15 years. I've even dug up a particularly weedy rose bed, removed the roses to pots, Round Up'd, waited until it had dissipated for quite some time, and then replanted, but will never use it near a growing rose.

BC

 

[QSis]

BlueCat is right - Round Up will kill almost anything growing.

I've used a great Miracle Gro product that you shake on your newly weed-free soil around your plants and it feeds the plant while preventing weeds from growing - for MONTHS!

It's called Miracle Gro Garden Weed Preventer. http://www.miraclegro.com/index.cfm/event/ProductGuide.category/category/%2FCategories%2FProducts%2FGarden+Weed+Preventer

Good stuff!

Lee

 

[Constance]

Round up is a complete vegetation killer, and will travel down into the soil and kill your roses. Do not use it anywhere near your rose bushes! I've grown roses for 15 years. I've even dug up a particularly weedy rose bed, removed the roses to pots, Round Up'd, waited until it had dissipated for quite some time, and then replanted, but will never use it near a growing rose.

BC

Sorry, BlueCAt, but you have been misinformed. I happen to be a professional landscaper, so I know what I am talking about.
Round-up is one of the safest herbicides you can use. It works systemically, and kills only the plant whose leaves you have sprayed. It is even approved by the EPA. There is nothing released into the soil, and as long as you keep the spray off the roses, they will not be harmed.
Once your garden is weed free, work in a pre-imerge like Surflan, which keeps seeds from sprouting. If the overspray hits existing plants, it will not harm them.
Trust me on this..

 

[carolelaine]

Great ideas, yet another question. Will it harm the roses to use the miracle grow weed killer in the fall/winter? I know I have always read that you shouldn't fertilize roses after August. I have these hideous weeds with thorns all over them that round up has never killed.