My Right as a Woman to Change My Mind

It’s always a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. I’m changing mine in a big way. If heretofore I was known as the carnation lady, let me be known henceforth as the rose lady.

I can hear the gasps of all you carnation lovers out there! What is she doing? Has she lost her mind? How did it happen?

Well, as I wrote to you last week, I had just planted all my carnation seeds, two per rockwool cube, and waited for germination. Well, through circumstances beyond my control (or divine planning) most of my carnation seeds turned out to be duds.

Yes, zilch, nada, forget-about-it. At the same time, as if by magic, I was invited by a mutual friend to visit a basement rose growing operation, in a room not much bigger than my basement rec room.

I was enthralled by the roses, which were just about ready to harvest in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. That day is a huge sales day for rose growers the world over. And some of the prices they fetch!

I came home to a grow room full of dud seeds and a few carnation Mother Plants, which could have continued to produce flowers until they were 18 months old. I donated my Mother Plants to a friend who’s continuing to grow carnations, and said adieu to my carnation growing operation.

What’s so great about growing roses? Aside from the exquisite beauty of the flowers, there is something to be said for marketability. Specialty roses sell for many times the price of carnations.

It’s a new challenge for me. I was getting kind of sluggish, winning prize after prize with my Dianthus caryophyllus flowers. That’s just a fancy name for carnations, you don’t have to go running for your dictionary.

Am I insane? Starting to grow roses in the dead of a Mississauga winter, missing out on the Valentine’s Day bonanza, having had zilch experience where the propagation, nurturing, and growth of these delicate flowers are concerned?

I am determined to become the best floriculturalist for roses possible. This means doing reams and reams of research on the Internet and in the Library. I have already started and this will probably take a few weeks. I’ll keep a step by step journal and share it with you week by week on this blog.

My first smart step was to call the technical help line at Advanced Nutrients. I’ve been talking to them frequently about growing carnations, they were surprised to hear that now I am planning to switch to roses.

Your Drip Irrigation hydroponic system should be fine for the roses, the man informed me, but your feed rate will probably change. Can I continue to use my basic 3-part fertilizer, Micro, Grow, and Bloom? You should be able to, since it is the best choice for many plants and flowers.

At various stages, you can vary your nutrients with just those three products, higher veg for structural, higher bloom for blooming.

First up is the pH question, which is the most frequently brought up issue on the Advanced Nutrient help line. The basics are well known. A pH of 7 is neutral, meaning you have a completely balanced acid-alkaline mix.

It is advisable to grow most plants in a more acidic environment, since the nutrients are more available to the plant in an acidic solution. As to the exact pH that is recommended for roses? You’re going to have to do diligent research on that, said the man.

It’s not that easy to find the exact pH required for hydroponic roses, when punching up the topic on Google yields hundreds of thousands of hits. I tend to favor the academic sites, since I presume they know what they’re talking about. There are too many amateurs posing as experts on the Internet.

I will report back as soon as I find the definitive answer to that question. Also, the issue of humidity is all-important, since roses tend to be plagued with viral and fungal diseases such as Black Spot and Powdery Mildew.

With regard to these diseases, Advanced Nutrients recommends using Barricade in your nutrient solution, a spraying regimen of Scorpion Juice, as well as Piranha and Tarantula as foliar sprays. You have to alternate these products and spray at five-day intervals, since the effects of one are cancelled out by the other.

I thought I would be smart and choose disease resistant varieties, but when it comes to choosing roses to grow, the types and varieties are endless. I know exactly the type of look I want (Hybrid Tea Rose) but inbreeding has killed the scent of many of these varieties.

The more I research, the more I think I’ll have to grow two different types, one for appearance and one for fragrance. The fragrant types I’m drawn to at the moment are the Bourbon varieties, that first appeared on the isle of Bourbon in the Indian Ocean in the 1800’s.

They come in colors that range from white, to deep pink, to scarlet and possess a very heavy fragrance. The drawback is that they’re bushy and grow big. You couldn’t fit too many of them into my limited size basement grow room.

So you see, the choices are not as easy as all that. I will have to continue for my search for the perfect rose that looks like a Hybrid Tea rose with a very heavy fragrance, is disease resistant, and doesn’t grow too large.

It seems that in order to have the best choices, believe it or not, mail ordering them from a large catalogue is recommended. However, since I don’t want to order roses with any soil attached, I would have to order bare-root plants, which are only shipped during early spring while they are dormant.

I have gotten rid of all traces of my carnations (not without shedding a few tears, mind you) and have flushed my hydroponic system with pure water over and over. I am using Advanced Nutrients Wipe Out to clean all my trays, tools, and utensils, and then to wipe the walls.

I’m even wiping the light fixtures (I have six 600W High Pressure Sodium lights with ballasts), I am so careful not to transmit any viral, bacterial, or fungal infection from my carnations to my future roses.

I hope I don’t have to wait too long to put in an order, but it’s best to be sure than to make a mistake. This is a huge change in my life, and I figure if it takes a few weeks to implement it, then so be it. Wish me luck.