Yes, do not fertilize them for a few weeks unless it is with a slow release fertilizer like Rose Tone, but just put a little in there and don't jar them, just scatter some around and water. Water them more than once a week. Don't move them, jar them, shake them, let them get established.

Those bare root roses may not have as good a track record as leafed out container roses, but they absolutely can turn into some very nice plants.

After a few weeks if you want to fertilize them with something easy like Miracle grow, go ahead, but not more than once every two weeks or so.

Anyway that is what has worked for me. Good Luck! It sounds like you're going to have a BEAUTIFUL Garden!

oh, and before winter come back here and ask some of the other zone 5 folks how they winterize their roses, there is so much advice on this forum, it's great!

Thanks so much for the reply! I messed up and already fertilized them with some Miracle Grow for roses! Yikes! I hope they will make it. I really just went at this blindly and without doing any research, which is so not like me, but I just got so excited about planting roses :)

How long do they usually take to establish before I could see some growth and know if they will make it or not or could I not know until next year? I will definitely be asking about winterization when summer ends!

They'll be fine. The big box store roses aren't the best quality but they're good to start out with. You'll learn a lot about roses by watching and caring for them so that when you go to purchase more expensive ones you'll feel more confident. There are as many ways to grow roses as there are roses so experiment with them and learn what works for your garden. Everyone's is different. And roses are much tougher than people give them credit for. As you've already learned with your Birthday Rose. Even neglected for 5 years it's still growing and blooming!

You're in such a different climate than I, I feel unqualified to give much advice other than say - welcome to the nuthouse (in the most awesome of ways) - of co-enabling rose addicts!

Like Seil said - roses are way tougher and easier to grow than the average person has any idea of. The more you glean from the internet (or any educational sources, although this forum has been my single source for 3 years) the more success you're likely to have.

Enjoy, learn, experiment, and mostly - listen to your roses. They'll tell you volumes.

keep reading here about roses and you will learn so much. My favorite advice is to mulch your roses. Roses do better with mulch around them.

Thanks for the replies!

I am really enjoying all of the reading and knowledge gathering so far! Just woke up and had to peek outside and check my roses :)

Heading over to check out Roses Unlimited! I'm already having visions of a digging new bed in my backyard along the fenceline that will get a ton of sunshine :)

Trying to include a photo...

You should have planted the roses deep enough so that the bud union or knot between the rootstock and the rose you want is several inches below the surface of the soil. If not, I'd plan on adding extra soil to bury the bud unions before winter--doing so makes a big difference in whether roses survive winter in cold climates. They will die back to the soil line--a few inches of live cane helps the roses get a quick start in the Spring.

Those boxed ones are better quality than the ones in the bags usually so you did OK! The biggest problem with the packaged roses is that they chop off so much of the root system to get them in those packages. They'll need time to build new root balls before they'll do much growing and/or blooming. But they should be just fine with some TLC!