Jeri
Coastal Ventura Co., SoCal

A related topic that I find intriguing is that there are a few additional sprinklers nearby that run on a different schedule. They are being used to water the hedge bushes that are separated from my plants by a very flimsy fence. You can say that the hedge bushes and my plants live side by side. Now the moisture runs where it will underground I would assume. Does the watering on the hedge bushes affect my plants at all? Or does the watering really needs to happen right at the area near the root of the plants?

2. Regardless of water, flowers of most varieties are normally smaller in hot weather. Dark-colored roses may burn in the hot sun. In hot climates, it is recommended to plant red roses in morning sun, afternoon shade, to minimize burning.

3. Place cat-food cans around the garden and see how long it takes for the sprinklers to deliver 1/2 inch or 1 inch. Generally you should never water less than 1/2" at a time on sandy soil, or 1" at a time would be recommended for heavier soils. One inch should last for a week in clay soil with high temperatures in the 80s. This is to provide ample water for continuous growth. To just keep plants alive, you would go much longer intervals.

4. 4-5 gallons per square yard is ~one inch.

5. Water will move laterally in the soil from wetter to drier areas. This is slow movement by capillary attraction.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7442569474/

1.The shape does not look right. The petals are kinda pointy and are not closely interlaced with one another. I would call it 'not well formed'. Does anybody agree or disagree?
2.The color is not right either. It actually looks ok in the photo. But in reality it does not look very healthy and lacks the elegance of a normal rose bloom.

And unless your drainage is really poor, it's very difficult to over water a rose. After a light (half inch) rainfall, are there pools of water in your garden that take several days to go away? If not, your drainage is probably fine.

If water is running out into the gutters, and down the street, please cut back on your sprinkler time. 90 (minutes??) is a long time. Or did you mean 90 seconds? 90 seconds is not enough.

NorCal has had a mixed-bag of spring weather, but your foliage does look good. Unless you are in very heavy clay soil, in sort of a bog, you're not going to over-water.

Jeri
Coastal Ventura Co., SoCal

The answer will be one thing for me.
Different for Sherry, in Florida, with sandy soil.

Where are you gardening? Northern CA is large, with many microclimates, and differing soils. Don't worry, we won't all come to visit.

The time will vary, also, with the amount of water flowing, and the sort of emitter. Our high-flow "bubblers" on one-inch lines put out more water-per-minute than my neighbor's drip lines. You have to adjust accordingly.

Put a container under your emitter, and observe how long it takes, to emit the desired amount.

Long waterings, spaced further apart, will give you roots that reach deep, which is important in times when water is precious.

Jeri

The rose in the photo is called Judy Garland. This is what they looked like last year (the orange one in this photo)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7443703610/

I was quite frankly stunned by their beauty. I never knew flowers can produce colors like that. And they were so well formed. So when I get blooms like that in this photo this year

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7442569474/

, it just won't do. It is not just this one flower. They all look like this all over the bush. This is the 2nd flush of blooms this season. The first flush was about 2 months ago. They looked even worse, like these

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7445295402/

I had to cut down all of them and was praying for a better 2nd flush. But this recent batch of flowers are not doing that much better.

But, look -- lawn sprinklers aren't an efficient water-delivery system for roses. A garden hose is better. Sprinklers are for grass. Put a container there, and learn what you're giving the plants, and adapt accordingly.

Jeri

Not sure how to put 3 links in one post. I remember seeing people putting photos directly in their posts. Not sure how they did that. But you can copy the link and paste it in your web browser's address.

Last year, drop-dead gorgeous
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7443703610/

April this year, very bad
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7445295402/

Now, bad
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7442569474/

Do you mulch your roses ? Do you have a lot of companion plants near the roses competing for water ?

I was able to view your photos by copying the link you provided and pasting them into my browser (FF) and clicking the arrow to go to the photo.

Were the photos taken at the same time of year ? Many roses age quicker and often lose petelage in higher temps. So if the first photo was taken in the cooler temps of spring and the second photo was taken mid-summer, the blooms could look quite different.

Looking at the foliage in the first and second photos, the plant does not appear to be water stressed.

Also, when you do a hard prune ... cut back hard after the first flush ... the plant has to put in more energy regrowing plant before it puts energy into blooms. If you just dead head the spent blooms, it doesn't set the plant back as much. Altho' some people might disagree with this because in their climates and gardens, summer pruning does not slow the plant down.

There are so many different variables that can impact your roses besides just the amount of water.

I live in an area where we get higher summer temps than you mentioned above and garden in clay soil. I do a deep watering at least once a week and what I call a "feeder root watering" mid-week. The feeder roots of a rose are near the surface of the soil .. within about 6" of the top of the soil. Keeping them from drying out truly helps the plant during periods of high temps.

You can experiment by doing some additonal hand watering on your roses before giving up completely on the automatic watering system and see if that makes a difference.

Good luck with your roses.

Smiles,

Lyn

This was taken in May last year
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7443703610/

I removed all these crappy looking blooms in April this year. They bloomed 1 whole month earlier than last year due to warmer temp. These blooms were basically dying, or almost dead as soon as they fully opened up.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7445295402/

This was taken this month, June. Somewhat better than back in April. But still nowhere near how they looked last year.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7442569474/

I looked at your photos on Flickr, the flowers look like maybe it was really hot in your area? Maybe you could post some info on the temps

You might want to go over to the soils forum and learn about gardening in sandy soil. If you do a search first, you might be able to get your answer right away because it's likely this question has been asked by other gardeners and already answered.

In my experience, roses put their moisture into the roots and foliage then the blooms, so if your soil is not retaining the water, that may be the real problem. "Might" is the operative word.

There are still more variables. I have a bed out in front of my house that had not be re-worked in decades and the water had found a way through the bed and out the weep holes at the bottom. The roses never got a deep watering. I re-worked the bed this year and they are doing much, much better and the blooms are larger and not as sensitive to heat stress.

Some years the roses in the first flush look fantastic. But in the mountains, spring weather changes from year to year. We can go from day temps in the 40s and low 50s to mid 90s in less than a week. My blooms look fried from the get-go because the plant has not had time to adapt to the rapid change in temps.

You are going about solving your problem the right way. Checking your assumptions, experimenting with a solution and moving onto another possible problem.

However, roses are plants, so they don't always perform perfectly every year ... depending upon many variables.

Smiles,
Lyn

To do this most efficiently, put a bubbler head on the hose so you can lay it down as you deadhead the plant or pull a few weeds. Get a little electronic timer with a beep to wear around your neck so you don't have to count seconds.

If the soil won't accept water as fast as the hose puts it out, build a little dike around each rose that will hold a few gallons. This also helps capture rainwater.

If your soil is very sandy, watering an inch at a time will just waste water downwards. Better to water a half inch two or three times a week.

This is another cluster of Judy Garland
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7456155604/

This is how they looked 10 days ago
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626826@N06/7456199024/

(Sorry have to ask you all to cut and paste the address again. Does anybody know how to embed the photos in the message directly?)

Judy Garland starts out yellow and slowly changes to bright orange. This transition is very, very stunning as I saw last year. This year there has been none of that. This cluster of blooms turned orange too soon I think, and are basically withering at this point. Kinda makes you wonder - all the efforts for a few days of viewing pleasure each year. Is it worth it? :-

Three significant factors I can think of are
1.Warmer spring this year nation-wide in the US. My rose plants, and the cherry blossoms in DC from what I heard, bloomed a whole month earlier (April) than last year (May).
2.I used Bayer fertilizer/pesticide this year before they started blooming. This has resulted in much bigger clusters with more buds.
3.I pruned away pretty much everything off the Judy Garland after the growing season last year. It was suffering from blackspot and just looked very sick in general. So I basically stripped the bush naked, but was very happy to see the new foliage grew back looking healthy this spring.
I think the Bayer has kept the blackspot at bay. But did it somehow affect the quality of the blooms?

The reason people are giving you lots of advice about water is that gardeners need to know how much water plants need and how much their plants are getting.

Maybe you did not know this, but modern roses store their nutrients in their canes and really do not go dormant. The linage of JG is mostly hybrid teas and floribundas ... no species or ogrs, so it's safe to say it is a "modern rose". When you prune the rose back in the fall, or as you said, after the growing season, you've just taken away the nutrients the plant has stored to carry it through winter and into spring.

You can find all kinds of conflicting pruning practices, but basically, you prune in a way that suits the rose. Some roses do not like a hard prune, while others need one. You might want to do some reading/research in this area.

No, I do not think what you are seeing in the blooms has anything to do with your pruning last year.

Bigger clusters and bigger buds require more plant energy. You might want to disbud some of the buds in a cluster and allow the plant to put all of its flowering energy into the remaining buds.

Again, this is is NOT true for all roses. There are many roses where their plant habit is to bloom in large clusters and they are genetically programmed to bloom in this fashion and support the large clusters. It depends on the rose and lots of other variables.

Smiles,
Lyn

I'm in northern California too, and I use spray irrigation on my shrub roses for half an hour once a week. I have a sandy clay soil with a thick wood chip mulch. My larger and well-established climbers also get 30 minutes, but every third week. Young or small plants would not be able to tolerate this.

If your roses start to get leaves with chevron brown or yellow tips, that is a clue that they would like more water than they are getting. I would not worry about one or two, but if you start seeing a lot, water a bit more.

Rosefolly