I always move own root roses into 3 gal nursery pots and keep then in there for a least one year. A great root system almost always spells success. If you have an area where they will go in the garden, dig an area and put 3/4 of the pot in the ground. This way you don't have pots laying around the garden and your rose will get use to it's new home.

I would leave them in the gallons until they've filled the soil balls with roots. That may require a few months to a year or more, depending upon how vigorous a root system the individual variety, even the individual specimen takes. My climate pushes roses faster than yours probably does. I have some five month old cuttings which have already filled the gallon cans with roots, knitting the soil ball together into marvelous root balls, which have already been put up into two gallon cans. I have a few which are still in the 16 oz foam cups and quart pots because they just aren't filling their soil balls quickly. There are also some which haven't completely filled the gallon cans with roots. The root ball will be much better if you permit them to generate roots to fill each size before you put them in the large pot, or even into the ground. Often, the roots will grow more quickly in the warmer soil in a can than they will in the ground. Of course, they will be inhibited by too dry soil and too high heat in an overheated pot, but keeping them shaded against the worst of the direct sun and making sure they remain damp will help push them to mature faster. Add regular weak feedings and keeping them disbudded from flowering will push them to mature much more quickly. Kim

Oh thank you! Exactly the information i needed! I'll half-bury the pots and give them benevolent neglect till next spring. The own-roots i put in the ground last year have all struggled or croaked. Wish i had asked you last year!

Ken I liked your suggestion of half burying the pots. It's always a struggle to figure out ways to get things watered by the sprinkler system and worrying about pots overheating when on vacation.

You're welcome Laura. I'm glad I could help. Kim

I had seen Kim's suggestion on potting up to progressively larger sizes depending on root ball development in one of his earlier posts. My bands did much better with this method than popping them directly into five gallon pots.
Mary

I put mine directly in the ground. The only losses I have had is with the more cold-sensitive varieties if they are planted after August/Sept. Now I [try to] limit myself to spring and summer planting. If they are in the ground, they are on the irrigation system and I don't have to remember to water them.

Cat, you're a better rosarian than me. The few own-roots from last year that aren't already dead are selecting the hymns for their funerals...kinda flippant, but they do look pretty far gone. So i'm going to gladly try Kim and Ken's good advice, while remaining envious of your success.

Here are four examples of own root plants I wrapped this January. They are now five months old. Five months from cutting to these. They are all four in one gallon cans in full sun. They're kept regularly fed with half strength water soluble All Purpose fertilizer and all flower buds have been pinched as they have formed. The results are good, and they do show how some varieties really push roots, while others take their time. The Moore Bouquet is an unreleased Ralph Moore climbing rose. Rayon Butterfed and Porcelain Rose are two of my seedlings. Lamarque is the 1830 Noisette, propagated from the historic Atmore Lamarque which has grown in Ventura County since 1869. Kim

Porcelain Rose
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Rayon Butterfed
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Moore Bouquet
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Lamarque
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Kim, do you plan to put any of them in the ground this season? They look terrific...although i find it reassuring that even you get different rates of growth. A good reminder that it's not all up to us!

Would you treat roses that you only just rooted from this past fall/winter the same way as bands/baby own roots from nurseries? I have about 5 in one big pot that rooted (a mixture of HT, mini, OGR, and shrub). I'm worried that their roots may all grow together if I leave them too long in the one pot, but I'm not sure when exactly I should move them to separate pots.

Yes Laura, several are going to be planted this week before the real heat hits. The lovely thing about wrapping cuttings is, you use hard wood instead of the new, soft flowering wood. The only soft growth you have to "protect" is what is generated after the cutting roots. Since that is accomplished in the open instead of under cover, it's already hardened off, conditioned for whatever the weather throws at it. The ones to be planted definitely have sufficient roots to go in to the ground now, and should continue thriving even when the high heat hits. Ones like the illustrated Lamarque will continue being held in pots until their root systems are as well developed.

The two factors you have to be concerned about when planting newly propagated plants are whether their root development is enough to support them on their own; and whether the new growth is too soft, too tender to handle direct sun, heat and any wind without frying. If the plants have been grown under cover, whether that cover is a green house, bags or plastic bottles, they may be very soft, requiring hardening off, acclimating them to the hotter, drier, brighter conditions being out in the open require. Propagating out in the open eliminates the second issue. Growing them in increasingly larger pots, in a warm, sunny spot, in good soil with consistent nutrition and preventing them from flowering, helps accomplish the first more quickly. There really is no difference between these plants and "bands", except none of these have been held for months (or longer) in pots which are too small to prevent them from continuing to mature. A nursery can't do that. They must maintain them in a size economically suitable for shipping, and which also permits them to maintain a large number of plants in a relatively smaller area. Bands permit all of that. Gallons can at least triple that room and shipping. I use gallons as I'm not raising as many plants and none of them are to be shipped anywhere.

Amerique, "winter protection" where I am consists of pruning any plant mass which will act as a "sail" in the higher winds we can get with any winter storms. If we are to receive any rain, it will come in "winter". It doesn't freeze sufficiently here to damage any roses. If any roses (and most other plants) are to be transplanted, moved, "winter" is when it's best here to do it. I can't give you dates for your climate when separating them would be safest, but you should be able to safely accomplish that any time the weather isn't so hot that any root disturbance will cause them to collapse.

If you still have periods of rain expected, particularly a period when you should expect it to last several days, I'd think separating them just before the rain starts and putting the pots where they will benefit from being rained on and receive primarily morning sun (if there is any) would be most suitable. Otherwise, separating them when the weather is suitable for transplanting established plants or planting bare roots would be best. I hope it helps. Kim

Thanks, Kim, for the info. That helps. These roses were not rooted under cover and get morning sun only. They have buds on them, which I understand I should be removing to enhance the root growth.