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seil_gw

Out of winter storage report

seil zone 6b MI
9 years ago

They're free! We got all the potted roses out of winter storage yesterday and today. All the leaves are picked up and bagged too (that's actually the worst part), We had 19 bags of leaves last fall and we have 19 bags of leaves this spring, so it came out right! 76 pots altogether. I didn't think I had that many but at the last minute I threw in a bunch of seedling pots that I had culled and intended to throw away. Now I'm glad I did because a lot of the keepers that wintered in the little greenhouse died. So I'll hang on to the best of these also rans instead.

Al had a brilliant idea to use the shop vac to suck up the leaves out of the pots. Wow! Hardly any scratches on my hands! Usually I'm a bloody mess, lol. Cleaned off a lot of the dead leaves on the branches as well. He's been coming up with some really good time savers lately!

Some of the roses have green leaves already. Others just have green cane. Some appear to be black all the way down to the grafts. Surprisingly a lot of the minis are black all the way. Those are all own root so hopefully they'll come back. My three tender zone pushers (I'm 6, they're 7), two chinas and a tea, Mutabilis, Archduke Charles and Duchesse de Brabant, all have good green cane one them!

I haven't touched anything in the beds yet but they don't look good at all. I only see a few with any green cane on them. I'll probably be filling in a lot of spots with the potted ones that wintered better. I would have to say that if you know you're going to have a really frigid winter it does pay to use some kind of winter protection on your roses. Obviously my potted ones in full protection did way better than the ones in the ground that I do no protection on. Even with record breaking snow fall!

Now on to the pruning. I'm so excited! Let the season begin!!!

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