Question
Is there a way to time the blooming of roses? I have lots of buds on my iceberg roses and I would like them to open sooner, rather than later. I live in Southern California. These roses are in pots and are about five years old.

Answer
Hi Diane,

You can time the roses to bloom for the most part once you have your first bloom of the year. More on that in a minute.

To quicken your current buds to bloom, move your pots into direct sunlight for 8 hours or more.  The good thing about pots is they heat up quicker than roses planted in the ground.  It is the soil temperature that stimulates plants to grow and then bloom.  Another thing is to give them a fast acting (water soluble fertilizer) like Miracle Gro for roses.  The plants take this up very quickly and it can hasten the blooms to open.  Please remember pots dry out quicker than plants in the ground so watch the moisture content in your containers.

Now to time the re-bloom. You can control the next re- bloom.  Typically it takes 5-6 weeks for roses to rebloom from the time the first flush of roses are removed.  If you want to delay the bloom for some reason, just remove the spent blooms later.  It is the removal of these blooms that triggers the plant to start setting new growth and flowers.  Of course Mother Nature plays a big part with temperature and cloud cover.  

We cut our roses for rose shows and it is alway fun trying to get the perfect bloom for one day of the show.  But it is all for fun.

Hope that helps,

Jay