Prepare Roses For Winter's Chill

Q: How do I get my roses ready for winter?

A: Low temperatures in the last week of October caused gardeners to develop "winter's on the way" jitters. Preparing roses for winter means protecting them against cold and cleaning up any diseased material that might perpetuate infection next year. Roses sometimes grow buoyantly in our mild falls, continuing to bloom until late December.

In the early December 1990 freeze, many nondormant roses were lost to cold. To create the best winter protection, you want to arrest the plant's growth. Pick off ALL LEAVES remaining on the plant. You may feel that you are betraying the plant by doing this, but cleaning off the leaves forces the plant into dormancy and makes it better able to cope with low temperatures. Also rake up and discard all fallen rose leaves (do not compost diseased leaves).

After taking off leaves, mulch over the bud union (the swollen area just above the soil level where the graft of a rose cultivar was budded onto rootstock). Good mulches include bark, sawdust or shredded leaves, or even earth. Do not prune back your roses now, other than taking off the ends of any long canes that might whip about in wind.

Premature pruning contributes to winter losses. Toward the end of February and into March, remove mulches, prune and fertilize the plants.

Tree roses require even more winter coddling; mulch over the bud union as with all roses, but also insulate the second bud union

at the top of the trunk. Many growers wrap straw and burlap around the trunk, tying it on; others choose various high-tech mufflers such as preformed pipe insulation or fiberglass insulation.

If you have any roses in containers, get them into a sheltered area such as an unheated garage, or sink the pots in the ground and mulch for protection. Our last few winters have been fatal to far too many roses.

Q: I've grown garlic but mine aren't as big and white-skinned as what I can buy in the stores. When should I plant and harvest and how do I get big, white cloves? Can I grow them from the seed that forms on top?

A: We have received several questions on growing garlic and they are very timely. Late October-early November is the perfect time to plant this crop.

Garlic likes a fairly fertile, well-drained soil. Treat the bed lavishly with well-rotted manure or compost and 3 to 5 pounds of 5-10-10 or complete organic fertilizer, making sure it's well-incorporated.

Buy the kind of garlic you want to produce - big, white-skinned cloves. With garlic, what you see is what you get. You can purchase your starts at a grocery store or a garden center, just select firm, well-filled-out heads. Shriveled, dried up garlic won't grow. Separate the garlic into individual cloves. Eat or discard the smallest inner cloves; they won't usually produce much.

Plant the unpeeled cloves points up about 2 inches deep. Stagger rows so that cloves are spaced 6 inches apart in any direction. The garlic may sprout this fall. Tops that are winter-killed will regrow in early spring, when the plants begin to make rapid growth. For large cloves fertilize in March with a nitrogen-rich fertilizer such as blood meal, fish emulsion or ammonium sulfate.

Sometime in the spring pointed flower buds may appear. Remove them. The seeds garlic produces are almost never viable. Some kinds of soft garlic will produce bulblets on top. Allowing these to grow will take energy from your crop, so remove them promptly as well.

By mid-summer some of the leaves will begin to wither. The time to harvest is when leaves are just beginning to turn brown. Dig up a bulb to check on it. The cloves should be fat, well formed and compact. The husk should be thick and white and not yet papery.

Don't wait to harvest until the outer husk breaks and the cloves start to separate. The garlic is still usable at this stage, but past its peak and it won't store long. (The intact outer husk produces a substance that keeps the garlic from sprouting).

To harvest, dig - don't pull up the heads of garlic. Shake off the dirt and let them dry for a couple of days. Remove remaining dirt by brushing rather than washing. Then, either braid the stems or cut off and store the garlic in net bags in a cool, dry place. Never store garlic in the refrigerator.

After your harvest, enjoy your truly fresh garlic with abandon.

Just make sure your loved ones eat it with you!

Gardening runs Friday in the Scene section and Sunday in Home/Real Estate of The Seattle Times. It is prepared by George Pinyuh and Holly Kennell, Washington State University/King County Cooperative Extension agents, Mary Robson, Master Gardener program assistant, and volunteer Master Gardeners. Send questions to: Gardening, The Seattle Times, PO Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. Questions of general interest will be answered as space allows.