Eat Them Roses
Here are a few of traditional recipes plus an unlikely organic gardening tip that can change your saddest rose bushes into the showpiece of the homestead.
March/April 1971
by LOUISE RIOTTE
Almost every original homestead in the midwest—sooner or later—had at least one rose bush somewhere near the back door. Sure, roses are pretty to look at and the real old-fashioned variety (unlike many of the current hybrids) are unbelievably fragrant . . . but your grandmother grew them for other reasons too: She made rose water and sachets from their petals and she even cooked with them. That's right . . . COOKED with them.
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Here's a few of those traditional recipes plus an unlikely organic gardening tip that can change your saddest rose bushes into the showpiece of the homestead.
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My beautiful New Dawn rose (Inter-State Nurseries, Hamburg, Iowa) spent the first three miserable years of its life just trying to stay alive because—if I had tried to make every mistake in the book—I could not possibly have been more successful. I not only planted the newly arrived rose in the shade of some large hackberry trees but—being pressed for time—I just dug a hole in the ground, stuck the rose in, watered it and hoped for the best.
The plant grew very little and put out only a sickly looking pale pink bloom or two each spring to remind me that it was still there in the tangle of honeysuckle which eventually surrounded it and almost choked the poor thing to death.
Then one year in early spring, having a little more time than usual, I decided to transplant the New Dawn rose to the other side of the fence where it would receive more sunshine. And this time, having learned more about such things, I carefully prepared the ground by digging a hole as big as a bushel basket two feet deep and filling the first foot back with well decomposed cow manure and the last foot with compost mixed with peat moss and sand.
At the time, I had on hand a pint jar of iron cuttings which my husband had saved for me (these can usually be obtained from a machine shop) and—-remembering what he had told me about his father intensifying the color of roses with iron filing—I thought I would just give this a try... Accordingly, I thoroughly mixed in the filings with the soil, compost, peat and sand.
Then I dug up my sad looking, weak little rose plant and transferred it to its new location. It's just a "nothing" rose I thought . . . probably will die . . . but what have I got to lose? It certainly wasn't producing anything where it was so I figured the chance was worth taking.
I watered the plant well and continued to do so until it was established and new growth was evident. That new growth came on surprisingly fast but I wasn't really impressed until the first buds began to show in late spring. They were amazingly pink—a deep shell pink—and of exquisite texture. Their fragrance was almost unbelievable.
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