Prized as one of the most treasured garden flowers, you may have wondered to yourself how often roses bloom. Keeping in mind this flower acts more finicky than any of the others, adding it to your garden will make it look even more beautiful.
How often do roses bloom? Roses bloom on and off throughout the season from April to October. Some roses will go until November or right up until the first frost covers the ground. Before 1867, only once-blooming roses existed, which meant they bloomed once per season.
If you’d like to learn more about how often roses bloom, keep reading because we will explore everything you need to know about this topic, and we’ll also look at how to make your roses bloom more often.
How Often Depends on the Variety
Some roses bloom throughout the season known as repeat bloomers, but other varieties like the once-flowering roses only bloom once. You have over 150 species of roses with thousands of hybrids. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
If you want a rose that blooms more frequently, pick a modern species. You might research the species beforehand to ensure that you have the right one.
Some of the most common repeat bloomers include:
- Pippin
- Perfect Pet
- Tranquility
- Mortimer Sackler
- Super Fairy
- Lady of Shalott
- Sir John Betjeman
Want to know the longest blooming rose species that blooms most frequently? Choose the Floribunda Continuous Roses, which will bloom from the early spring to late fall. The bushes grow anywhere from 2 1/2 feet to 5 feet tall.
On the other hand, if you want the once-blooming roses, you might choose species like:
- Eddie’s Jewel
- Rosa Mundi
- Banshee
- Alba Suaveolens
- Rosa Glauca
- Maiden’s Blush
- Cardinal de Richelieu
Repeat Bloomers vs Once-Blooming Roses
Obviously, repeat bloomers will bloom throughout the season, whereas once-blooming roses will only bloom one time per year. That begs the question, “Why would anyone choose once-blooming roses over repeat bloomers?” While once bloomers only bloom once, the single blossoming makes it worth it.
Many species of once-blooming roses will produce up to 50-percent more roses than the repeat bloomers. In fact, people choose once bloomers because many of them can produce the same amount as what repeat bloomers produce in a season.
Still, a lot of people prefer repeat bloomers because they continue to bloom throughout the year, producing ongoing beauty in the garden. Repeat bloomers can be fun because once you cut the flower off a rose bush, it signals to the plant to grow a new stem that produces a flower. Usually, you can expect it to take anywhere from four to 10 weeks for repeat bloomers to bloom again.
Roses are Supposed to Bloom Frequently…Why Don’t Mine?
Provided you bought the repeat bloomers, roses should bloom throughout the summer and into the fall season. First, you could have squirrels that attacked your rose bushes. I wrote about that here. Squirrels, deer, rabbits and other animals love the sweet scent of roses, which brings them straight to your rosebushes.
As a general rule of thumb, your roses should bloom every six weeks. Roses also won’t bloom much in hot weather like in places like Houston, Miami and Phoenix. While these cities experience a longer bloom season, they don’t bloom as often in the summer season.
Don’t apply fertilizer in the hot season because it won’t spur new rose blossoms.
Getting Your Roses to Bloom More Often
Want to spur your roses to bloom more frequently? You will need to fertilize them. Before you do that, however, you will want to cut off the dead blooms. You cut at a 45-degree angle above the leaf cluster.
Scientists classify roses as heavy feeders, which means that they like to feed on fertilizer. Instead of only fertilizing it once in the spring, you can fertilize roses the roses throughout the season every two to four weeks.
Rose gardeners differ in opinion of what fertilizer to use. Liquid fertilizers will give you fast results, but you shouldn’t depend on them too much. Granular fertilizers, on the other hand, act more slowly, but you might think of them as the veggies, a healthier way to feed your roses. Meanwhile, liquid fertilizer classifies as junk food. You might feed it to them once in a while, but you want them to remain healthy.
Some of the most popular choices for fertilizing roses include:
- Fish fertilizer
- Compost
- Manure
- Alfalfa
- Epsom salts
- Bone meal
- Cottonseed meal
- Coffee grounds
Avoid spraying fertilizers in temperatures over 85 degrees Fahrenheit. This will help your roses to bloom more often. Remain consistent with your fertilizing schedule, and you should see results with it.
Location, Location, Location
Your rose bushes should receive six to eight hours of sunlight every day. This ensures that they will bloom on time. You want well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter.
What Can Impact the Frequency of Rose Blooms?
Another thing that can impact the frequency of the rose blossoms comes from the climate. As we said before, states like Texas, Florida and California will experience a longer bloom season.
In comparison, Alaska experiences a much shorter grow season, and the rose won’t bloom for as long here. If you choose to grow roses in Alaska, you will want to choose a specific variety like the Arctic rose or the Nootka rose. The Sitka works well here, also.
More Petals Take Longer to Bloom?
How often your rose blooms will depend on the variety, but you can usually expect roses with more petals to take longer between bloomings. Roses with 100 or more petals will normally take much longer to bloom.
Still, a rose with 100 or more petals will last longer than other roses in many cases. They will last for between 10 to 14 days. This will leave your landscape looking more beautiful for longer.
Plan Events in Time with the Blooms
Many skilled party planners will look at when their rose bushes bloom, and they will plan it in time with the roses blooming. Each species will differ, so it helps to understand the general timing before planning it this way.
To plan it skillfully, you will take a spent rose blossom and remove it from the bushes. Write down the date that you removed the bloom. Once the new bloom forms, you will calculate the days it took for the blooms to develop. In that way, you can count backward from the time it took to the last bloom. The number will tell you how many days before the event.
Conclusion
Through knowing your rose’s blooming season, it becomes more than a useful tidbit. You can use it to plan parties, and you can figure out the specific season for when your roses will bloom. Provided you have repeat-bloomers, your roses should bloom every six weeks. Once-blooming roses, on the other hand, will bloom in a specific time frame.
If you’d like to buy an interesting rose trinket, check out the Real Rose with Love You Necklace. It makes for a great gift for an anniversary, birthday or Valentine’s Day.