• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Home Garden Joy
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Start Here
    • Seed Starting
    • Composting Basics
    • Vegetable Gardening
    • Growing Fruit
    • Growing Herbs
  • Recipes
    • Canning and Food Preservation
    • Vegetarian Meals
    • Salad Recipes
    • Soup Recipes
    • Dinner Recipes
    • Dessert Recipes
  • Books & Classes
    • Classes
    • Books
    • Books for Christian Herbalists
  • About
    • Advertise
    • Awards and Accolades
    • Privacy Policy

How to Grow Mini Roses Indoors

February 12, 2015 by Jeanne

grow mini roses indoors

Valentine’s Day is just a few days away and the stores are filled with miniatures roses, little potted rose bushes that are just to adorable they fly off the shelves this time of year. Before your sweetie gives you a miniature roses, learn how to grow mini roses indoors successfully. Show a little love to your new plant this year by understanding what it needs to be happy and healthy.

Miniature roses are ‘true’ roses in that they are actual floribunda roses hybridized into petite forms. The definition is a rose with blooms that are 1 1/2 inches across or smaller. Mini roses themselves were developed from Rosa chinensis “Minima”, with smaller and smaller versions hybridized from the parent plants until we have the diminutive rose bushes you see today. They come in a wide range of colors including white, pink, lavender, yellow and red, and are often sold as house plants. They can be grown indoors and outside successfully.

How to Grow Mini Roses Indoors

Like the “big guys” or full-sized rose bushes, mini roses need plenty of direct sunlight. It’s best to grow them indoors with a bright south-facing window. Even with such bright sunlight, you might need to add a full-spectrum plant light to supplement the sunlight, especially during the winter months when the sun’s rays are lower.

Mini roses also need high humidity, and this is where most homeowners make mistakes when caring for mini roses indoors. The average air inside a home lacks humidity; mini roses need 50-60% average humidity. To add much-needed humidity to your rose growing area indoors, take a deep saucer, fill it with fish tank gravel or pebbles, and fill it with water, then set the rose’s pot on top of the saucer. As the water evaporates, it will increase the humidity around the mini rose plant. Be sure to keep the pebble tray or saucer filled with water and clean or change it to prevent mold and mildew from forming.

Mini roses should be watered when the soil feels dry to the touch. The timing will vary according to the type of container your roses are potted in, the potting mix used, the amount of drainage and more, so the “touch test” is the best way to determine when your mini rose needs to be watered.  Fertilize your plants with a balanced time-release fertilizer. The American Rose Society recommends Osmocote 14-14-14 scratched into the soil.

Spider mites are the worst pest that afflicts mini roses grown indoors. When you bring home a new mini rose, keep it well away from your house plant collection for 1-2 weeks until you’re absolutely sure it’s not carrying those darned things or else be prepared for a battle to the end with spider mites. (I never win). Spider mites are tiny insects about the size of grains a pepper. They spin webs between the leaves and suck the juices from the leaves, killing the plant. They are voracious, tenacious, and a total pain in the plant, so do all you can to avoid buying plants with them and spreading them to your other plants. The American Rose Society says that a strong spray of water can knock the mites off the roses. Once they’re off the roses, they can’t feed. A kitchen sink spray hose may be just the right thing to knock spider mites into oblivion.

mini rose

Growing Mini Roses Outdoors

For my birthday a few years ago, my eldest sister sent me an adorable florist’s gift of three mini plants in tiny watering cans. One of the plants was a miniature rose. I moved it outdoors into my rose garden and planted it as a shrub; it’s about as healthy as my other roses. I’ve also picked up a few miniature roses after Mother’s Day at the home store in town. Once the mini roses stop blooming, they tend to be placed on the discount rack, and you can pick them up for a song. I’ve added several red mini roses to my rose garden by waiting and watching the discount racks until they’re marked down. They make adorable little garden roses, perfect for fairy gardens and small spaces.

This Valentine’s Day, ask your sweetie for a living gift instead of a dozen red roses. A miniature rose plant will live for several months at least unless your black thumb gets the best of you. In the meantime, it will provide you with plenty of beautiful roses to enjoy and remember the holiday.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Jeanne
Jeanne

Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.

Tweet
Share
Pin
Share11
11 Shares

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: min roses

Previous Post: « Identifying Good Bugs from Bad by Their Cocoons
Next Post: Easy Homemade Soup Recipe »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jamie

    January 17, 2016 at

    What great info!! I used to always love seeing these at my Grandma’s house and never knew that I could grow them!! Living in the mountains, they won’t grow outside very well, so this will be great! Pinning this! #HomeMattersParty

    • Jeanne

      January 18, 2016 at

      Thanks Jamie!!!

    • Jeanne

      January 18, 2016 at

      Glad I could be of help, Jamie! They should do well inside for you.

Primary Sidebar

Let’s Connect!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • YouTube

Featured

logo of the american horticulture society

Home Garden Joy was featured by the American Horticultural Society on #plantchat.

My Books on Amazon

cover of plan and build a raised bed garden

Visit my author page on Amazon to find all of my fiction and gardening books.

Herbal Academy Teachers

Footer

a browned overcooked coconut bar on a blue flowered plate

Recipe Fail – Coconut Bars

Each weekend, I dig out my favorite cookbook – the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 13th Edition. I flip through the pages, skimming the recipes, checking to see if I have the ingredients to make those that catch my eye. And then, I make the recipe, usually late Sunday afternoon after all the chores are done. It’s…

Read More

peach tree cuttings in a pot on a windowsill

Propagating Peach Trees from Softwood Cuttings

We decided that propagating peach trees from softwood cuttings was the way to go when we couldn’t find the variety we wanted at the store this past week. The best eating peach we’ve ever grown here at Seven Oaks Farm is “Red Haven.” It was recommended by our neighbor, a man whose family has farmed…

Read More

soul in a yellow mug against pine panelling

Made From Scratch Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe

This is the best made-from-scratch chicken vegetable soup recipe you’ll ever taste. It’s a favorite of my family and I’m betting it will quickly become a favorite of your family’s, too. As part of my ongoing quest to test and taste every recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook 100th Edition, I’ve made the Vegetable Soup…

Read More

A loaf of bread on a plate

Water Bread – Recipe Review

Once you make water bread, you’ll never eat store bought white bread again. In fact, you won’t be able to look at a loaf of “white bread” from the market and consider it bread, in any sense of the word, after you’ve taken a bite of the real thing. Hot. Crunchy crust. Tender, flaky, soft…

Read More

Copyright © 2022 Home Garden Joy on the Foodie Pro Theme