The speaker for June was Norman Ingate who gave us a talk on "Growing Roses for Gardens and Exhibitions.

If you wanted to grow roses, he advised going to a rose specialist grower where you can walk around and see what the plants look like before making up your mind. He told us that there are approximately 40,000 different species of roses. These are budded onto root stock usually originating from The Netherlands or Germany.
Prepare the soil by digging in rich humus such as cow or horse manure - plant directly into the new bed or replace the soil in an existing bed.
Prune the roses in late February or early March to 2 or 3 buds and feed with a specialist rose fertiliser. Spray with insecticide when the plant begins to shoot, every 2 or 3 weeks but not in the direct sunlight as the intensity of the spray will scorch the leaves. If the central flower head on a cluster flowers first, take out the centre bloom of the cluster to encourage the outer blooms to blossom at the same time producing a multiple of blooms.
Heavily mulch the border to preserve the moisture in the ground.

Containers
Plant up a container with John Innis No. 3 compost as ordinary compost does not contain enough nutriment for roses.

Climbers
These should be pruned in the Autumn.

PROBLEMS

Black Spot  Pick off the diseased leaves and put in a bag to burn or dispose of; do not compost them.

Die Back This is caused by cold weather and exceptionally cold winds, prune the dead stalks back into the green stem by an inch or so.

Showing Roses
When cutting roses for a show, take a bucket of cold water with you and as soon as they are cut, plunge the stems into the water, never take the blooms to the bucket.
To stop petals opening too soon, tie the petals down with soft wool. To encourage the petals to open, put plugs of cotton wool between the petals (but don't forget to remove them before the show).

Bowls of Roses
Try to have roses of similar size in the display and make them an equal distance apart. Mr. Ingate finished his talk by showing us some slides of his favourite roses in various shades of red, pink, orange, yellow, and white.

He was thanked for his interesting talk by the Chairman Mr Denis Holmes.

Denis reminded gardeners that there was a hosepipe and sprinkler ban from South East Water

The summer show is on July 8^th, viewing by the public is from 2.30 pm., and the next meeting will be on Monday July 10^th at 7.45 at the URC hall when Mrs A Winder will talk on Pot Pourri from start to finish.

Visitors and new members are welcome.