Caring for Knockout Roses
Caring for Knockout roses sounds intimidating, even scary… but it isn’t.
Having your own rose garden means having to fend off pests, ward off diseases and round-the-clock maintenance of your flowers, it can be quite a chore sometimes.
But it’s not if you’re caring for Knockout roses.
Of course, the moment the first buds appear, it all seems worth it. But what if you can grow roses that do not require much maintenance and are virtually disease resistant?
Welcome to the world of Knockout roses.
These hardy plants were developed by a Wisconsin botanist named William Radler, and grow to a height of about 3 feet in tidy mound.
The main benefits when caring for Knockout roses are their cold tolerance is – useful for rose garden tenders from the north, and their resistance to disease – reducing the costs needed for pesticide and the chore of weekly spraying.
There are several varieties and the first developed was the Red Single knockout.
Others are the Double Knockout, Pink Knockout, Pink Double Knockout, Rainbow Knockout, Blushing Knockout, and the Sunny Knockout.
All varieties are repeat bloomers, meaning they have a fresh bloom cycle every 5 to 6 weeks up to the first frost of winter.
They are also self-cleaners thus deadheading is not an issue. Of the several types of knockout roses though, only one, the Sunny Knockout, is fragrant.
Because of its hardiness, caring for knockout roses is easy compared to a regular rose garden.
They are perfect for new gardeners as well, working great in borders or mixed beds along with other shrubs.
It is up to the gardener which shrubs to mix up with them, but the long blooming Encore Azaleas are a good match.
The popularity of these roses makes them easily accessible to the public, and can be found in most home and commercial landscapes.
Readily available in store outlets, even homeowners without much spare time find it easy caring for Knockout roses, though rose garden elitists deprecate the overuse of them.
They say it destroys the essence of tending a rose garden. But the truth of the matter is, these roses are easy to care for, low maintenance and wonderful attractive bloomers.
A great example on how hardy and tolerant these roses are, there is a story of one condominium project in Georgia where the developers bought 80of them in individual containers.
The plants were stockpiled and left on their own through one of the hottest and driest summers on record, and after being inspected by the landscape architect, most appeared to have died.
The leaves were all dried out or gone, there were no flowers to speak of, and the soil in the containers were so dry that they took on the appearance of cracked mud flats.
Efforts to rescue the plants went underway by moving the containers to a shaded area and were watered regularly.
To everyone’s surprise, they grew back to health, leafing and blooming as if nothing had happened. Most of the ignored plants survived and flourished as soon as they were planted.
This is a testament to the hardiness of the plants, and indeed, even the most inexperienced gardener will be successful caring for Knockout roses.
