Spring 2007

I just gave my roses a good long drink of my "for roses only smoothie" recipe. I have been keeping up my end of the fight against black spot for a month or so now (it's June here in NJ).

Last year I almost lost all four rose bushes to the nasty fungus. This year I decided to be proactive. I filled my spray bottle with baking soda and soap and have been doing a strenuous battle against the nasty disease by spraying the leaves every other day or every day if it rains. Than I read that bananas were a good support for roses because they had so much potassium. While surfing the topic on line, there was a product that I saw advertised for the prevention of black spot that contained potassium and bicarb, it came to about $20 per 8 ounces container with the shipping cost.

Duh, I thought, I can duplicate that right in my kitchen. I filled my blender with a banana for the potassium portion of the mix, I added a heaping table spoon of soda bicarb (aka; baking soda) I put in a few calcium rich antacid tablets for calcium because, well it can not hurt to add them, I know that plants like calcium. Later after thinking about my recipe I added two large cloves of very crushed garlic to the mixture. Knowing that garlic inhibits the growth of almost all viruses and fungal diseases inspired this. I than added enough water to cover the banana and antacids in the blender and gave in a whirl. I ran the blender until the mixture was velvet textured. The result is my "rose smoothie". I added about an ounce of the "smoothie" mixture to a pint of water shaking it well, I let it 'brew for about an hour and strained it to get it through the spray bottle nozzle. Than I put it in the spray bottle. It's been a week since I started spraying, I spritz after each rain (twice this week) and the new growth is phenomenal. The bushes seem very happy with the garlic, banana, bicarb, calcium smoothie.

Early spring 2008.
Additional information, by the end of the year I was burying whole over ripe bananas and banana skins in the rose garden to enhance the roses. This too made a big difference too. My roses are going to be better than ever in 2008. They are going bananas.

End of May, 2008

I buried two more over ripe bananas in the garden last week, I am cutting roses for all my neighbors and not a trace of black spot is anywhere in sight. Bananas rule my rose garden.

Spring 2009

I added three more rose bushes to my garden, they are very happy with bananas buried by their roots. I still spray regularly and my garden looks great. It's bursting with rose blooms.

Happy gardening.

Learn more about this author, A. C. O'Brien.
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