Can You Help Save My Sick Roses? Grumpy Weighs In
About This Episode
The Grumpy Gardener answers a reader's question about sick roses. Plus Grumpy talks about his love for daylilies and how to grow these beauties.
Question Of The Week
My dad has the most beautiful roses and is very steadfast about fertilizing, spraying, and watering them, however while his white roses have very healthy foliage, the flowers look sickly, brown, and deformed. This makes him very... Well, you know, Grumpy. Please help.
Grumpy's Answer
Well, I'm glad that he's steadfast. That's a quality that we should all possess in this world, but he's also a curmudgeon, and there's a couple possible reasons why he feels this way. And the problem with his roses could be a couple things. The first is a physiological phenomenon called balling, that has absolutely nothing to do with athletics, but it strikes roses That are very round, globe-shaped, that have a lot of petals and they're very densely packed. And during cool, rainy weather, the petals stick together and they don't open, and the flowers eventually just dry up and turn brown.
Related: How To Deadhead And Prune Roses For Healthier Blooms
And there's not much you can do about this, other than plant your roses under umbrellas, which is a nonstarter for your dad, trust me. The second possible perp for this is a tiny little insect, called a thrip. You can hardly even see it, and it loves to infest the blooms of roses and suck and chew on the petals. And because of this, the buds often don't open and they turn brown. So, if you think you have thrips, to control them, what you do is you apply a product called BioAdvanced All-In-One Rose & Flower Care according to label directions, In early May, and that should take care of the problem.
Plant of the Week
Dayliliies
We're gonna start off with daylilies. Now, let me get this out of the way first. If you have deer and you aren't willing to spray deer repellent, don't plant daylilies. They'll be gnawed off at the ground. But for the rest of us, just enjoy. There are so many different kinds of daylilies. There are small ones, there's tall ones, there's scented ones, re-blooming ones, ruffled ones, in just about every color you can think of, except blue. Full disclosure, I have the only blue one in the world, and it can be yours for $1 billion.
Related: How To Grow And Care For Daylilies
Daylilies are one of those plants, when you put them in the ground, they form a big clump... And after about a year or two, you can dig them up, and you can separate the roots out, and you can get three or four plants, where you only had one. So the good thing is even if you're paying a pretty penny for a very special daylily,-
About Ask Grumpy
Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 20 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.
Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.
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