Question
QUESTION: Hi, without reading the complete directions of weed and feed fertilizer of the lawn grass, I applied weed and feed to roses/tulips. 2-3 schoops on each plant. Withing 1 week the tulips flowers are gone, leaves look pale and roses leaves are looking pale. I understood that the too much of nitrogen will be bad for flowers or enven a plant. Question is - how long does the effect of weed and feed nitrogen will last? like 1-3 weeks or months? Will plants survive during that period? or what can I do to prevent it? Should I go and get the flower fertilizer? will it help remove effect of extra nitrogen? Any help is highly appriciated. Thanks in advance.

ANSWER: Oh dear. A week gone bye means the most damage is done by now. There are two kinds of Weed n Feed. One just has 2-4-D plus a fertilizer in it and this one will cause the least damage. However many others have a combination of herbicides plus fertilizer. It is the herbicide for broadleaf plants in this type that will do harm to your roses. The broadleaf type goes right down to the roots as well as killing the leaves. What happens then is that it also kills the feeder roots of a rose plus contaminates the soil around the rose roots by killing off the beneficial bacteria in the soil. The fertilizer won't do any good because now that the roots are damages the plant can't take them up and also will have trouble taking up water as well. Because tulips are planted deep, they may survive and come back next year. Take off all the leaves to stop the herbicide from traveling down them.
The most important plants are the roses. Because the roots are damaged, they will not be able to support a lot of top growth until they grow back again, hopefully they are not permanently damage. Let's assume they aren't. Cut the rose bushes back to 12 inches, take all the leaves off and place a mulch of any kind all around the base of the rose bush. No fertilizer again this year. Water, water, water daily. What you are doing is trying to keep the root area moist and cool which roses love and also provide a small amount of to growth for the damaged roots to sustain. In about three weeks time, you should see new leaves starting to grow, then the new canes will come and finally the rose bush will bloom. Not cutting them down hard means the herbicide on the leaves can kill it but cutting it way back means you might have gone below and removed the effect of the herbicide. Hope this helps.

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QUESTION: Thanks for your answer. It is a great help. One thing that I forgot to mention that I have planted roses just 2-3 weeks ago. I dug almost 18 inches hole, so the roots are really deep. We have been watering regularly and are in in a good quality soil plus lot of good mulch around them. So herbiside was really dropped on the surrounding mulch.  There are barely handful leaves on them. Very small, and I have not seen a bud on any of them. Should I remove all the leaves? Should I try to remove the old mulch (assuming that the mulch is bad) and replace it with new mulch? Will baby roses this kind of herbiside? You think it will take this punishment for 2-3 weeks and then come back up?
I have been feeling really bad about all this and not reading the instructions properly. If there is any help I can give to these roses/tulips, I am prepared to do it. I will surely water them everyday! Let me know, and I truly appriciate your help. :)

Answer
Ah, a bright light! Because the roses were just planted and don't have their new feeder roots or mature leaves yet, they are not able to take up the herbicide very well. Yes, get rid of the mulch and spread it somewhere there are no plants growing. The herbicide will definitely be in the old mulch. I would remove the leaves because this is the only way they will be able to get the herbicide into the canes. Roses are able to re-grow three sets of leaves so don't worry about removing their leaves. And again water, water, water to try and flush out the soil. I would also do the same with the tulips if you have a lot of them. If not then dig them up wash the bulbs well and re-plant where the Weed n Feed hasn't been put. If you do it in a few hours the tulips won't suffer and still bloom. No matter what you do, this is going to be awaiting game to see just what damage the herbicide has done. You could be lucky and the Weed n Feed that you used, has only 2-4D in it.