Question
QUESTION: I have had this rose bush for the second year and no roses no bud no bloom but, I have another rose bush close to it.  It blooms great  Why? help

ANSWER: You have a Tea Roses, Cindra?

Tea Roses and Floribundas can be very fussy.  Some hardly bloom at all no matter what you do.  Others only ask for perfection -- perfect light, perfect air, perfect soil and perfect Fertilizer and temperatures -- but most of all the LIGHT.  They expect HUGE amounts of light.

You say your other Rose 'blooms great'.  Does it get the same sun?  Same soil and food?  Is it blooming now?

If you are fertilizing, make sure you are using a good Rose fertilizer -- and for blooms, that would be one with a high-Phosphorous formula rather than the high-Nitrogen formulas usually given to Roses.  You can tell a high-Phosphorous formula by looking at the 3 numbers on the bottle or box.  They are shown as 'N-P-K'.  The N stands for Nitrogen.  The P stands for Phosphorous.  The K stands for Potash.  You want a fertilizer that has the highest number of the 3 in the center.  That would be something like 2-20-5 or 20-30-10.  NOT 30-10-10 or 5-1-9 or 0-0-4.

Get your sulking Rose a high Phosphorous flowers formula food.  See if that helps.  At the end of July, go back to a regular Rose food for the next feeding and then stop feeding completely.  If you feed it until the end of the summer, you will be encouraging growth -- and that is the OPPOSITE of what you want your Rose to do at the end of the summer.  Late summer is the time to start preparing for the long cold winter days and nights ahead.  Feeding your Rose at that point will be telling it to stay outside without a winter jacket; if you stop feeding, you are telling it to go hibernate until winter is over.

When you do finally see a Rose, and the bloom is finished, CUT IT OFF!

TONS of energy is used for making seeds.  It should be used to make more Roses.

If you can get this Rose more light, that would also be better.  6-7 hours is really the MINIMUM for a Tea Rose or a Floribunda.  A full day would be better.  Any extra is better.
 
Cindra, give your Rose as much TLC as you can.  Roses are not easy or rational flowers.  Please let me know if the leaves are doing well -- no yellowing, no black spots, no dropping?

If you remember the NAME of your uncooperative Rose, let me know.  It may be on the Nonblooming Rose Hall of Fame list.  Your zipcode will also assist in knowing what Roses do well in your region -- and which ones don't.

rsvp

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Yes my other rose bush has plenty of flowers and buds.
gets the same sun and light 6-7 hrs of sun.
same water, soil, and fertilizer.  Thats why I don't understand why the other won't bud or get roses on it

Answer
Poor dear.  Cindra, like I said, some Roses just don't do what they're supposed to do.  This is actually what makes people LIKE growing them so much!  Roses are demanding, but sometimes they're tricky or mysterious.  I remember reading once about a 'blue' (violet-gray) Rose named Sterling Silver.  There was a joke about this Rosebush.  One dowager walked up to her friend at a Rose Society meeting and asked her, 'Do you have Sterling Silver?' and the friend replied, 'No, I just use silverplate when I'm at home.'  So when I read later that Sterling Silver was one of those Rosebushes that needs to be charmed into blooming, I knew right then that the Rose in the joke had to be in my Garden someday.  And I ran out and bought it as soon as I could.

And they were right.  All summer, every year, I would get one bloom on this thing.  It sulked, it pouted, it would not bloom.  Around it everywhere, everything was coming up Roses.  Flowers, flowers, everywhere.  But not on Sterling Silver.  I, too, was there wondering who else had Sterling Silver in their Garden.  Who else was all thumbs with this Rose, none of them Green.  What could we figure out if we put our heads together.

Today, I just know it's in the genes.

Your Rose may just not be genetically preprogrammed to bloom a whole lot.

The one next to it, those genes are working overtime.

Count your blessings, my friend!

Give this bush 2 more Summers.  Roses as a general rule take 3 years to sit there before they get going.  See what happens in the Summer of 2009.  Make a note for yourself.  Write down when it blooms.  If you don't see noticeable improvement, it's time to think about giving this one away to charity and using it as a tax deduction, then buy yourself a new Rose.  Just clear the new one with me, please, before you buy it?  You don't want to go thru this again.  And don't replace it with Sterling Silver.