Roses

Remember that 1962 Bobby Vinton's song.
Roses are red, my love
Violet are blue
Suger is sweet, my love
But not as sweet as you

Roses especially red roses always remind me of this song and it brings back some of my old memories. I love roses since my younger days. Not because of Bobby Vinton's song, it is simply because roses are beautiful and have a nice smell. Off and on I used to buy pots of beautiful roses and tried to grow them but always failed miserably. For quite a long time I refused to plant roses any more. Early this year before the Chinese New Year I went with my wife to Sg. Buloh and I was attracted by pots of large size roses from Cameron. They were so beautiful that I couldn't help and I bought 2 pots back. Same as before, the plants became smaller with time as the new branches and leaves became smaller. The new flowers not only became smaller (the size reduced by 70%), their shape and colour also started to change like the one shown below.

Last month in one of my trips to the nurseries in Sg. Buloh, I meet this friendly man, I was not aware initially that he is an expert in planting roses, I started to tell him my frustration with roses and after listening to my story he gave me three simple tips. First tip was that 'roses need well drained soil' (this one I know). Second tip was to buy a special fertilizer as shown below.

This "Baja Ros Istimewa" is available at Carrefour in Kepong and Tesco near The Curves, Mutiara Damansara. The third tip was to pay Rm 5 to the nursery owner for this bottle (1 litre) of ready-mix liquid as shown below (most likely is pesticide + fungicide) specially made for roses.

I took his advice, I bought the special fertilizer and liquid. Once a week, I sprayed my roses with the ready-mix liquid and I applied one table spoon per pot of the special fertilizer. The result was fantastic, I turned all my sick rose plants into healthy plants with beautiful roses.

One more tip that I have forgotten to mention, don't plant roses that came from Cameron, get those specis from Thailand or Phillipines.