Time to enjoy our Holiday festivities! Roses will be in a semi-dormant state during the winter months. Before the end of December, pile up shredded leaves, pine needles, or pine mini-nuggets around the bottom 12 inches of your most tender roses, which are usually the white, yellow and apricot colored roses. Roses in containers should be put together pot to pot next to your home, out of the wind. Any roses over 6 feet tall can be trimmed down to 4 feet to prevent any severe winter winds from yanking them out of the ground. Apply a cup of dolomitic lime around the drip lines of your roses if you haven’t done so in several years. A Clemson Soil test costs $6. You want the pH around our roses to be between 6 and 7, with 6.5 being the sweet spot, this ensures most availability of rose nutrients during the growing season.
