By Andrew Bowman

Master Gardener

About the Virginia Master Gardeners and Virginia Cooperative Extension: Virginia Master Gardeners are volunteer educators who work within their communities to encourage and promote environmentally sound horticulture practices through sustainable landscape management education and training. As an educational program of Virginia Cooperative Extension, Virginia Master Gardeners bring the resources of Virginia’s land-grant universities, Virginia Tech and Virginia State University, to the people of the commonwealth.

Dead Heading and Pruning of Tea Roses!

The Master Gardeners of The Blue Ridge, in cooperation with Brady’s Market, located at the Southwest Virginia Farmers Market will host a session at the Market to teach any individual that is interested in the proper techniques of dead-heading and pruning of tea roses. These roses are located around the landscape of the Farmers Market and were donated as well as set out by Brady’s Produce .

This is only one clinic that the Master Gardeners will be involved in this summer and will enhance the purpose of the Master Gardeners mission.

Anyone wanting to take part in this project as a participant or as a spectator, please be there.

This clinic will be conducted on Saturday, July 23rd, beginning promptly at 9:00 am. It should be finished within about an hour. Please bring your own clippers, if you wish to take part as well as some good garden gloves to avoid the rose thorns.

Items to be discussed will be: dead-heading and its purpose, Pruning, and its proper timing and techniques as well as mulching and fertilizing of your roses.

Hope to see a good number of individuals there as we have a lot of persons with roses around their home.

And as I end all my columns, just let it grow!