Best natural feed for roses?

[AndyStuart]

I have been asked by a client as to what natural food is available for her rose bed.

She has small children and pets so anything artificial is a no-go really.

I have had a quick look on Google but can't seem to find any unbiased reviews.

Do any members here have suggestions or should I just stick with standard plant foods?

Thanks in advance

[Flordel]

Compost and manure (Lulu's "muck"- a separate topic in this section).
I don't know anything else expect artificial.
But the lady can dig a bit around the roses, put the fertilizer and cover. I have a small dog and do the feeding of the roses this way, nothing bad happened.

[AndyStuart]

Thanks for the reply Flordel

Much appreciated!

[elemire]

There usually is a selection of the organic/green rose foods (brands vary from country to country). Well rotten (not fresh!) manure or compost are good too. Alternatively with small children and pets, she can just make any fertilizer liquid in a bucket of water (or use liquid feed for that matter, tomato fertilizers work fine for roses).

If she has chicken though I would not use the chemical fertilizer even in the ground, because chicken tend to dig for the worms. She can make a manure tea for her roses from the chicken manure though, 1/4 of a bucket the chicken poop, 3/4 water, leave it for a few days to ripen and you have a great fertilizer for about 5-10 roses.

[Stefanie]

Welcome to the forum

Compost Tea is the ‘non plus ultra’ here in SA. It is cheap but a bit labour intensive:

Take a big plastic bucked (depending on size of rose garden, I use a 40L black storage bin and I have 140 roses) and place at a warm/roofed over spot (I use my garage).
Fill bin at least ¾ with RAIN WATER (don’t use tap water as this contains chlorine).
Take an old stocking, cloth bag or what ever else you can use (as long as it is not made of metal!) and fill it with +/- 2L to 4L good compost, a few hand full of you original garden soil, one hand full of brown sugar or the same amount of molasses), if you have a hand full of bunny food (you want the Alfa Alfa (Lucerne) that contains it and if you have a splash of earth worm manure/liquid (worm farm).
Hang the bag into the black plastic bin so that most of the contents of the stocking are in the rain water and place an aquarium air stone, connected to a aquarium air pump (the stronger in air- output the better!) underneath it.

Leave to brew for 24 hrs, stir the contents of the stocking occasionally. Don’t worry if the brew begins to make foam - this means the process is working well.

USE WITHIN 4 HOURS AFTER SWITCHING OFF THE AIR PUMP. All the good microbes you so painstakingly breed will die without the oxygen and you will have a dead brew. The Oxygen is a key component of this brew.

Dilute brew with rain water 1/5 or 1/10 (does not harm the plants at all) and spray as a foliar feed or use as a soil drench.

This brew encourages all the good micro organisms, the sugar/molasses feeds them. The hand full of garden soil inoculates the brewing organisms to your specific garden conditions. Alfa Alfa/Lucerne contains Triacontanol that is known to benefit roses and the different types of compost, worm manure provide the organisms you are looking for.

Use as often as you want, best once a week to ensure healthy growth and happy roses.

[jo_blogs]

Hello ! I use a simpler version of the above - seems still to work ... I take comfrey and or nettles and soak in a bucket of water until good and stinky, then water on in dilute form - perhaps 1/3 goo to 2/3 water in a watering can. My friend keeps a brew going all summer in a water butt but the small might put you off that ... Good way to make you feel that it's OK to have a few nettles in the garden! - really good for heating up the compost heap. Comfrey is quite a nice addition to the flower beds.
xx

[admin]

What an interesting thread, thanks everyone.

[Stefanie]

Originally Posted by jo_blogs

Hello ! I use a simpler version of the above - seems still to work ... I take comfrey and or nettles and soak in a bucket of water until good and stinky, then water on in dilute form - perhaps 1/3 goo to 2/3 water in a watering can. My friend keeps a brew going all summer in a water butt but the small might put you off that ...

Yes that brew works too but you better have no neighbours around. After a few days in the sun it develops a really good stench. I’ve experimented with it extensively but still found the oxygenated version far more superior (and it does not take weeks to ‘ripen’.

[jo_blogs]

ha ha yes stefanie, you are dead right. we are in the country here and bad smells are just part of life. But if I were less lazy I'd do it your way. I talked to someone who just put a good slug of manure into the rainwater butt on the house and used that to water the sweet peas. Great sweet peas but you couldn't really appreciate the scent .....! xx