Our familiarization with rose start from the childhood. If somebody tries to name five flowers in a rapid session, most likely 99 percent answers will have rose in them. We cannot think of a garden without some rose plant. Rose is the national flower of United States of America. Rose is a perennial plant. They come in different shapes and sizes. Rose mostly consist of five different varieties, namely

Grandiflora rose is also very popular, which is a cross between Hybrid tea and Floribunda. Earlier, it was difficult to grow rose in places like Kolkata due to being mostly of tropical climate. But now, we have overcome that obstacle. Different types of hybrid roses are available in the market. And they flower almost throughout the year, though here winter is the best flowering time.

If you want to make a flowerbed only for rose, prepare the soil by digging a spade deep, and remove all weeds. The soil should be a mixture of seven parts grounded clay soil, five parts leaf mould and three parts grounded half-burnt clay. Also mixed with this soil, 100 grams steamed bone meal and 10 grams super phosphate, per square-feet. The bed should be little higher from the surrounding ground, so that it should not be water-logged. getting quality blooms, fertilize your rose plant thrice in a year. First feed should be in end For September, before the beginning of new leaf, followed by one in early December and another in middle of January. Prepare this side feed by mixing 150 gram steamed bone meal, 20 grams super phosphate and 10 grams sulphate of potash for each plant. There are also some fertilizers available in the market, which are specially made for rose plant.

Care for rose mainly consists of pruning. Pruning is an essential for all roses to encourage new branches and end result of that are more blooms. Potted Floribunda and hybrid tea required hard pruning to have less branches but quality flowers. Hard pruning means, cut the stem back up to 2 to 3 buds. For other roses medium and light pruning to be done, means cut the branches up to two third or half of their length. Always prune dead branches. After pruning apply fungicidal paste to prevent fungus attack. Propagation of rose is mainly done by cutting, grafting and Tee-budding. Tee-budding procedure is very difficult to explain but when you do it by your own, it is very easy and most of the roses produced in Bengal is mainly done by this procedure. If your rose plant is a budded one, do not forget to fully remove the shoot of the wild plant, which normally comes up below the joint (bud union). This normally done by pressing your thumb downwards over the shoot and breaking it completely.

Die-back and black spot are one of the major diseases in rose.

In die-back, the branches start drying up from top, and the end result is loss of the whole plant. If this happens, cut the branches from the live portion and apply anti-fungal paste. In black spot, leaves started having black spot in them and eventually fall-off. For this disease, spray capstan powder over the leaves bi-weekly. Also let the foliage dry and water the plant from bottom. If the plant gets attacked by aphids or spidery mites spray insecticides and do not forget to spray the undersides of the leaves.

With this knowledge and little care, you can turn your rose plant to a healthy bush, providing a profusion of colorful and fragrant roses.