Under Shaded Light - Miniature Rose

by Richard Chew



In this posting, I wish to share some experiences of growing miniature rose under shaded light.



I purchased this miniature rose in beginning Dec 2008 and placed it at my window sill since then.

As I have mentioned in 'Photosynthesis - How many hours of sunlight does your rose need? ' posting, that a rose plant would require a minimum of 160,000 lux hours of light to survive.



Assuming indirect sunlight produces about 30,000 lux (light intensity) in an hour, easily this rose will get about 270,000 lux hours each day (about 9 hours indirect light per day), which is sufficient to fuel growth.

New flower bulbs started to emerge after about a month since I last pruned off the spent flower. However this time, the size of bloom is noticeably smaller and the new leaves texture is lighter than the earliers ones. I believe if the fertilizing is enhanced, the bloom quality may improve.

Though it may not produce the same bloom size when it was grown at more direct sun light, the important thing to note is there is no ill effect or any serious detrimental effect when its grown under shaded light. Despite lacking direct sunlight for more than a month, the bush looks healthy.

And to add on, this miniature rose was never been treated with any insecticide nor pesticide. This goes to show that miniature rose can aclimitised with minimal human intervention and without chemicals. Based on this observation, I can safely conclude that roses have the capability to adapt to its surroundings. The only difference is that the quality of bloom shall varied due to different environment conditions. The important point to note is that growing miniature rose under shaded light do not cause any detrimental effect.

At this point of time, I am inclining to the idea that miniature rose can be grown under shaded light.

Some questions to be considered as these findings are pursued further ...

1. Why are the blooms noticeably smaller? Was it caused purely by lack of direct sunlight?



2. Or the fertilizing dosage was weak therefore contributed to smaller bloom development?

3. Or perhaps both?

In my next prune, I shall increase the fertilizing dosage and examine the size of next bloom in February.

Its a Hot Tamale!!

by Richard Chew



I looked up the word 'Tamale' in the web and learned it is a kind of spicy Mexican dish.

However what I have here is a miniature rose known as Hot Tamale. It is called with this name, simply for its flower characteristics. It can grow up to a height of between 60cm to 90cm. The flower size is about 2 to 3 cm.


It has a unique bloom characteristics. Its petals are mainly orange red and its center is yellow in colour. It looks like lava glowing within the rose!


Gradually the orange colour fades and turn into pink, where as the yellow will fade into white. It is quite unusual.


I got my Hot Tamale bloomed with some flowers, unfortunately I didn't get this effect. The rose bud was already pink in colour when the bud started to open.






Below is picture taken at the following day. Fully opened and fully pink in colour, with darker pink veins appearing at the petals.






This is the side view. It has a nice full bloom. I wonder how it would really look like when a cluster of these miniature blooms burst out.









Earlier on (about 2 weeks earlier), I capture some photo shots on the shoots and new buds. I noticed some distortion on some leaves shape (not symmetrical). Though the leaves colour looked healthy, the distorted shape suggest that during the growth stage it lacks certain nutrients for stem and leave development.






Below is another closed up shot, and very obvious the shape of new young leaves looked odd, where as the older ones looked more symmetrical.

I believe this is due to some unsuccessful experiments (it was a trial and error thing) on the top soil, thus causes some 'bio-chemical' shock in the soil which affected the growth of the stem development.




However after correcting my soil, as I am writing this post, there were another 2 newer shoots. The newer shoots seemed to be doing well. Its leaves are darker tone (almost black) in colour , suggest it is growing well. Gradually the leaves will turn to lighter tone when its growth has reached maturity.

Below is another closed up shot. The little bud emerges. Notice the little 'bulge' at the tip of the stem?

Hopefully within 3 to 4 weeks time, I get to see the red hot lava flower bloom!

Other interesting things happened, decided to post it here.

I noticed a tiny weeny bug resting at the edge.

Remember the rotted chili that I used as fertilizer. The seed germinated! Initially I thought it was weeds, but soon realised it wasn't when I noticed it sprouted in clusters. I covered it, by over turning the soil.

Well I got to wait for another few more weeks. Hopefully by Christmas, I wish....

HOT TAMALE .... FLAME ON !!