Shading Our Roses From Scorching Sun, Discovering Nirvana

As if to merely annoy the kids flocking back to school next week, summer seems to have been extended into September in southern Ontario. The forecast calls for temperatures in the upper twenties Celsius and the sun will show its shiny face, more often than not.

Roses thrive on sunshine. Most Rose varieties need at least five hours of bright sunlight per day, but they welcome more, if available. Of course, Pedro and I supplement the sunshine that streams in through the glass of our greenhouses with a bank of High Pressure Sodium lights in each greenhouse.

The lights are on tracks, so they can be pulled aside to let the full power of the sun reach our Rose plants. However, when the sun starts to burn with its intensity, we must activate our shading devices, in order to keep our blooms and foliage intact.

Our Blue Girl Hybrid Tea Rose seems to be the most sensitive to sunlight of all the varieties we grow. As you know, there is no such thing as a blue rose, hybridizers haven’t been able to isolate the blue tint as of yet.

So-called blue Roses are actually lavender or a shade of light pink. For some reason, this pigmentation is susceptible to sun burn, and Pedro and I are very careful to position the shading devices above the canopy, so that the hottest sun between noon and two pm doesn’t scorch our lovingly tended flowers.

Pedro’s favorite screens are retractable, with a 50% shade factor, and are rot, chemical, and UV stabilized. He is very conscious of the potential destructive effects of UV rays (the harmful ones), so he actually ordered UV protection on the glazed glass of all our greenhouses.

The roofs of our glasshouses have vents that open and close automatically, depending on how hot the greenhouse gets.

Digital thermometers are located in strategic spots throughout each greenhouse, and they are tied into the computer system that controls every important function of the greenhouse, from lighting, to ventilation, heating and cooling, the ebb and flow cycles of our multi-bucket hydroponic system, etc.

Pedro came in all excited the other day. “Advanced Nutrients has a new, 100% organic bloom booster, called Nirvana!” he shouted. “It’s a concentrated liquid that can be applied to the leaves or to the roots!”

He sometimes finds it hard to contain his enthusiasm. Sometimes I think that’s what’s so lovable about him.

“It’s been successful in test gardens in almost doubling the size of flowers! It contains vitamins, minerals, amino acids, carbohydrates, and such organic growth stimulators as guano and seaweed.”

“Seaweed has those things you’re always talking about—cyto…cyto…somethings,” I added, wanting to sound knowledgeable. “Yeah, cytokinins, auxins, and gibberlins,” he bubbled. “The web is all abuzz about these natural hormones that aid cell division, nutrient utilization, and overall plant growth.”

“As long as our Roses don’t grow to be over six feet tall, like what happened last time,” I reminded him. “Yes, the Granada and Ambience Roses did grow very tall, but we were able to sell them at the auction for a very good price,” said Pedro.

He got on the phone immediately and ordered some Nirvana for each of our Glasshouses. He also made sure that we have enough Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, our 100% organic basic fertilizer, to last well into 2008.

“The Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid were running low, the last time I checked,” I called out to him, as he was making the phone call. He ordered a generous amount of these products that are designed to recreate the rich, black, humus-like environment of bygone eras in our hydroponic reservoirs.

Pedro insists on ordering Carbo Load powder, even though I’ve asked him a few times to switch over to liquid. “Why would I switch?” he asked. “They do exactly the same thing, and the powder is more economical.”

I reminded him that when I wanted to save money by going with polyethylene for our greenhouses, he’s the one who insisted on glass, imported to boot. “That’s different,” he insisted, “glass lets in more light and it’s stronger in adverse weather conditions.”

We’re growing our Roses in coco coir, so Pedro ordered a large quantity of Sensi Cal Mg Grow and Bloom. It seems that coco depletes or leaches calcium, so this important nutrient has to be replenished.

“I heard an interesting story about SensiZym,” Pedro said after he got off the phone. “A friend of mine decided to do a test grow—one batch of Roses he grew with this enzyme additive, the other one without.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “The Sensi-Zym batch grew to twice the size,” I offered, not without cynicism. But Pedro was dead serious. “Not quite twice,” he said, “but the size of the plants and the girth of the flowers noticeably increased in the batch given Sensi Zym.”

“I thought you added it just to clean the grow medium of plant debris,” I said. “Yes, it does exactly that, but it doesn’t stop there. SensiZym turns that plant debris into easily absorbable nutrients, thus ensuring a healthier, more robust, larger harvest.”

Pedro becomes like a little kid in a toy store when he’s thinking about Advanced Nutrients and their wonderful products.

Movie Offers Galore, Midas Touch and Voodoo Thrive

The heat wave seems to have broken (I don’t want to speak too soon) so our high temperatures are in the mid-twenties, rather than the low thirties. People are beginning to worry that somehow we missed out on summer, and they’re wishing for the heat to come back.

Not Pedro and I. We are perfectly happy not having to worry about the high temperatures in our three Glasshouses. The sun still visits us, more often than not, but it doesn’t have that burning intensity that could be anathema for sensitive blooms, such as Roses.

The movie had its premiere in Toronto, and we were invited. Our Glasshouse Number Three looked especially wonderful up there on the wide screen and I got all nostalgic about our Ambience and Granada Roses.

I closed my eyes during the final scene, when the mad murderer takes a machete to the Roses, even though by this time the moviemakers had substituted silk and plastic flowers for the real ones.

The week after the premiere, Pedro received phone calls and e-mails from American and Canadian producers, wishing to use our Greenhouses as one of the locations for their next film.

Even though we got reimbursed handsomely for the experience, we hesitated to except any of the new offers, prior to seeing a script. We feel responsible to present Roses and Rose-growing in a good light.

As it worked out, most of the screenplays called for the destruction of the Roses and the Greenhouse itself, either through explosion, fire, or earthquake. Why do big budget movie producers insist on all this violence on the screen?

Pedro decided to turn down all the offers. “Dear Jill, our flowers need some peace and quiet now. It wouldn’t be fair to them to have all this noise and activity to disturb their natural production of beautiful blooms.”

I agreed with Pedro wholeheartedly. Although the money was tempting, we instead concentrated on growing the best possible cut flowers, using the expertly designed plant foods from Advanced Nutrients.

The Hybrid Tea Roses Midas Touch and Voodoo, our newcomers, are thriving on their diet of Iguana Juice Grow, along with the Plus Program of all the additives, supplements, and root colonizers.

They’re still in the vegetative stage, which means that they receive fundamental doses of Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice, in order to populate their root systems with beneficial fungi, bacteria, and microbes, respectively.

Ever since I was a little girl, one of my favorite stories was the one about King Midas. It’s the ultimate “be careful what you wish for” story. Dionysus granted Midas one wish for a good deed, and the King wished that everything he touched should turn to gold.

And so it was. But the King grew thin, since every time he tried to eat, the food would turn to gold. He touched the beautiful Roses in his garden, and they turned to the yellow metal, as well.

He lovingly touched his daughter, and even she turned to gold. He became afraid that his whole kingdom would eventually turn to gold, so he asked Dionysus to turn everything back to the way it was.

So now we have a golden yellow Hybrid Tea Rose to commemorate the name of King Midas. The moral of his story is that real wealth cannot be measured in precious metals.

I can’t wait for the Midas Touch Rose to flower, so I can inhale its rich, fruity fragrance. In a way, all the ingredients that we mix into our nutrient solution are aimed at the arrival of that day, when the large, golden flowers will finally open.

Pedro is already spraying these Roses with Colossal Bud Blast, in anticipation of their flowering. This foliar spray can be used throughout the vegetative and bloom stages in order to provide the plants with the ability to absorb organic nutrients better.

Even though Colossal Bud Blast complements our feeding regimen rather nicely, it can also be used as a standalone product. It’s a complete blend of vital nutrients, plus natural biostimulants, chelators, and surfactants.

There is nothing else like it in the gardening marketplace, and it does provide us with a Midas touch when it comes to growing our flowers. It contains reduced nitrogen, in the form of amino acids, and reduced carbon, as carbohydrates.

During the bloom stage, we’ll be feeding our Roses not only with Iguana Juice Bloom, but also Carbo Load Powder, which will provide our plants with additional carbohydrates, to be used as building blocks for flower formation.

And even though Midas Touch Hybrid Tea Roses have good disease resistance, Pedro mixes in Barricade every week into the nutrient solution. He also makes sure that Glasshouse Number Three, Multi Rose, receives regular sprayings of Scorpion Juice and Protector, in order to keep parasitic fungi, bacteria, and viruses at bay.

Cooling our Glasshouses in the Hot Summer Sun

Today it’s 32° C (89.6° F) in Mississauga, and the Weather Channel says that it feels like 39° C. In Hungary, 500 elderly people died last week when the mercury reached 42° C (107.6° F). Yeah, summer can be a killer!

The heat can kill Roses, too. We’re using every trick in the book to cool our three Glasshouses, but pretty soon we won’t have a choice. We’ll have to install air conditioning systems in each and every one of them.

It’s not just the ambient temperature of the air that we have to worry about. The temperature of the reservoir can determine whether our flowers will thrive or stop all growth and bud production.

As you know, we use a multi-bucket ebb and flow hydroponic system to grow all our Roses, and our reservoirs are contained in stainless steel tanks. Everything is state of art, smooth for easy cleaning, and equipped with chillers to keep the rez temp down.

The temperature of the nutrient solution is just as important as the pH or the parts per million of dissolved solids. Pedro still goes around daily with his truncheon EC and pH meters, as well as a digital thermometer, to make sure that the rez temp doesn’t go above 80° F. Actually, it’s best between 65 and 75° F (18.3 to 23.8° F).

In hot, humid Mississauga during the dog days of August it’s not possible to use some of the methods suggested by Pedro. It seems that his Rose-growing family in Spain has used the high pressure fogging method, combined with heat expellers. This method will not work effectively in hot, moist climates, like ours.

Most North American greenhouses use pad-cooling with pressure-less watering and air exhaustion. Huge pads made of various absorbent materials are hung along one side of the Glasshouse, over open air vents, while the other side of the Glasshouse has large, slow-moving fans sucking the exhausted, hot air out of the greenhouse through appropriate openings.

The pads are soaked with pressure-less water. Due to the exhaust fans having created suction, hot air from the outside enters through the pads and thus is cooled and humidified. Since our air is already humid, this isn’t the perfect cooling solution, either.

With high humidity come eager fungi ready to attack our Roses. Pedro is spraying religiously with Scorpion Juice every Sunday, then with Piranha on Wednesdays. The former is like an inoculation, imparting induced systemic resistance against many pathogens and pests, while the latter spreads beneficial fungal spores all over our plants.

Sort of like fighting fire with fire, spraying fungal spores actually does help prevent fungal infections, since the mycorrhizal fungi in Piranha fight off and prevent fungal infestations by such bad guys of the fungal world as Fusarium, Rhizoctonia solani, Pythium, and that all time dread, Gray Mold (Botrytis cinerea).

Up until the second week of flowering, Pedro also sprayed with Protector. Once the blooms mature, however, this Advanced Nutrients product cannot be used, since the active ingredients that combat Powdery Mildew might also interfere with floral growth and coloring.

Now that the heat is so high, I suggested to Pedro that we fill plastic bottles with water, deep freeze them, then put them into our reservoir to keep the temperature down. Ice is by far the best cooling agent. The chillers do their job up to a point, but even they need all the help we can give them.

In the weeks of bloom when the Nutrient Calculator calls for application of Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice into our nutrient mix, it is especially important to keep the temperature of the mix down. Mixing these products in hot water can kill the beneficial microorganisms they contain and render them ineffective.

In fact, most of the products in the nutrient mix should be mixed at room temperature, perhaps with the exception of Barricade, which is slow to dissolve and should always be mixed in the night before, to give it a chance to blend in better.

Barricade is a potassium silicate product that thickens the cell walls of our Roses and thus it makes them less vulnerable to parasitic attacks of different kinds. Not only do microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi hesitate and are kept from attacking our prize plants, but even insects find it hard to get their sucking mouthparts through the thicker cell walls built up by Barricade.

I put Pedro to work researching large capacity air conditioning systems. The York company, which makes air conditioners for many of the world’s tallest buildings, also makes a system that is perfect for Glasshouses.

If global warming raises our summer temperatures another five degrees, we’re going to have to spend the money on such a system for each of our Glasshouses, in order to protect our overall investment in the exquisite Hybrid Tea Roses that grow in Red Rose, Blue Rose, and Multi Rose—our pet names for the three structures that house our ornamental grow op.