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| Thank goodness it's going to rain again here because I swear, I'm impatient enough without the weather pretending to be an early spring when it doesn't mean it. I would love some advice- I have four roses in my back yard- two reasonably happy, a Mr. Lincoln and the other pretty solidy identified as Shot Silk. I have two others which are just tragic. Both are on single canes. One is another Shot Silk and the last is an as-yet-unknown yellow HT. All four are at least 20 years old if not 25+. They were horribly treated by past mow & blow gardening services which apparently cut the roses back to about 18" every year. Compounding this the roses were swaddled in landscape fabric 10-15 years ago with 6" of river rocks piled up on top of the roots. The single-cane Shot Silk grows to 7ft in search of sun so I've moved it to a better spot and I think it ought to do pretty well. But the last one- I just don't know if there's any hope. When I dug it up the foot long and 5" wide root (which was actually sideways just below the rocks/landscape fabric) was very dead and had mushrooms growing off it. But at one end a thick cane had sprouted new root stubs. So I've dipped it in hormone and put it in the sun and now I'm telling you guys mostly because I know you've been through this. I wouldn't even bother except the one flower I got off the plant last year was magnificent. It's a very full HT with the most incredible honeysuckle scent. Anyway- I kind of just wanted to share with people who understand how it's easy to get emotionally involved with a plant. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by wanttogarden USDA 9b, Sunset 15, (My Page) on Thu, Feb 7, 13 at 13:23
| Congrat, NewGirl. Can this "one cane wonder" be a standard? Just wondering. |
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| Yeah, you can sometimes rejuvenate an elderly gnarly rose. The most drastic (and risky) method is the single hard pruning - this can have astonishing results in a rose which possesses innate vigour.....but weedier specimens can easily give up the ghost. A much kinder method is to encourage newer basal canes to grow from as near to the crown as possible. You can interrupt the upward flow of sap by semi-girdling the main cane - make a shallow incision halfway round the cane, just through the thin cambium layer. Combined with a good hit of water and a general organic fertiliser, the rose can trigger previously moribund bud eyes into growth. Finally, you could accept the legginess of the plant by accentuating the single trunk and treating the bush like a specimen tree. Any canes which grow higher up the shrub can be bent to a horizontal when the young growth is at its most flexible while lower canes can be 'limbed up' much as you would raise the crown of a tree. A good pruning regime over the next 3 years can reshape an aged plant into dramatic and interesting bushes. |
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- Posted by NewGirlinNorCal 9b (My Page) on Thu, Feb 7, 13 at 19:03
| I hadn't even thought of making it a standard. That'd be fun! I'll see what I can do with the Shot Silk since it's a strong grower. Not immediately of course, but later in the summer I'll see what it's doing. The other one- well, I'll be happy if it just stays alive. |
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- Posted by Nippstress 5-Nebraska (My Page) on Fri, Feb 8, 13 at 13:48
| In my experience, the answer is "sometimes". I inherited a mystery rose when we bought our house that's a highly scented stingy blooming but gorgeous HT that I call Mr. Lincoln until I find out otherwise. It was absolutely a one-cane wonder, with maybe two blooms a year. I hadn't given it much care since I didn't plant it or know what it was, but after it sailed through the Easter freeze a few years back I decided it was worth some rehab. My solution was a relatively gentle approach - I watered it deliberately in dry spells as campanula describes, and gave it a good dose of alfalfa early in the season and mid-season. I've heard alfalfa helps to encourage basal breaks, which are those new branches starting from the base that would redeem it from being a one-cane wonder. In this rose, it actually put out two or three canes within the first year after treatment, and it's now a three-cane wonder. Still stingy blooms, but at least I get a "flush" of five or six blooms two or three times a year, and it doesn't look so gawky in between times. Now I can also feel better about a hard prune on the oldest tall cane without feeling like I'm jeopardizing the only blooming cane it has. Bottom line is that some of this depends on the rose - some roses seem to be prone to being one-cane wonders, but you can stretch them a bit beyond that boundary with some TLC. They'll probably never be very full bushes, but the extra water and alfalfa sure can't hurt anything Cynthia |
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- Posted by NewGirlinNorCal 9b (My Page) on Sat, Feb 9, 13 at 17:27
| I hadn't heard of using alfalfa- that sounds much less "dangerous" than the scraping methods some have described. I'm sure they work- but I'm not that brave. There's new growth on both of them today. I figure I'll just have to be patient and if it doesn't work out be grateful for the happy plants I do have. Thank you wanttogarden, Campanula and Nippstress!! |
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- Posted by Kippy-the-Hippy 10 Sunset 24 (My Page) on Sat, Feb 9, 13 at 19:24
| I have a Neptune from last season that ended up being a one cane wonder. Oddly my neighbor gave me hers, also a one cane wonder. (Seems both had a busy borer-but don't see much evidence of them in the other roses so I have to wonder if we got them that way or if Neptune is just a happy host for them) Because both roses are new and I have cut out the damaged canes, I am hoping they become happy multi cane wonders this year. |
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