Preparing Your Roses for Winter: A Peninsula Guide
May on the Peninsula means the roses are winding down. Leaves are dropping, the last blooms are fading, and your bushes are getting ready for their winter dormancy. This is a good thing — roses need a rest, and your job now is to help them settle in.
Stop Feeding
If you’ve been fertilising your roses through autumn, stop now. You don’t want to encourage soft new growth heading into winter. New shoots are vulnerable to frost and fungal disease, and they waste the plant’s energy when it should be conserving it.
The last feed for roses should be in March or early April. From May onwards, let them wind down naturally.
Clean Up Around the Base
Fallen rose leaves are not just untidy — they’re a source of fungal disease. Black spot and rust overwinter on fallen foliage, ready to reinfect your roses in spring.
Rake up every fallen leaf around the base of each bush. Pull away any old mulch that’s mixed with leaf debris. Bag it and bin it — don’t compost rose leaves if your plants have had any disease issues.
A Light Tidy, Not a Hard Prune
May is too early for the big annual prune — that comes in late June or July. But you can do a light tidy now:
- Cut off any remaining dead flowers.
- Remove obviously dead or crossing branches.
- Trim back any very long canes that might whip around in winter wind and damage the bush.
Think of May as a haircut, not a restyle. The real pruning job comes later.
Spray for Disease
Once most leaves have dropped, give your roses a spray with lime sulphur. This coats the bare canes and kills overwintering fungal spores, giving your roses a clean start in spring.
Lime sulphur smells terrible — fair warning. Do it on a still day and warn the neighbours. One thorough spray now is worth months of disease management later.
Mulch and Wait
Top up mulch around the base of each bush — 7 to 10 centimetres of coarse bark or woody mulch. Keep it away from the trunk. This insulates roots through winter and suppresses weeds that compete for nutrients.
Then leave them alone. Roses on the Peninsula rarely suffer from serious cold. Our winters are mild enough that frost damage isn’t a major concern in most bayside areas. The combination of a clean base, a dormant spray, and a good mulch layer sets your roses up beautifully for their winter prune and the spring flush that follows.