After seeking input from you good folks last year on getting my Pink Simplicity roses to bloom better, I decided to do two things this year:

1. Give them a lot more water. I've been putting a soaker hose on them for an hour or two once a week, sometimes skipping a week, but trying for once a week. I've been doing this since early April, when they first began leafing out. This advice to give more water came from showing photos of the little flowerbuds drying up and falling off, even though the foliage was healthy, green, and vigorous. The consensus was that our dry air up here in Utah was causing the shrubs to prematurely abort those buds at a joint where they are later meant to separate from the plant after the flowers are spent.

2. Give them more fertilizer. I've been spraying them with Miracle-Gro about once a week, missing a week here and there. It's just a quick wetting of the leaves with the fertilizer, using it as a foliar feeding, not a soil soaking.

It's working fairly well, because they're now all blooming, including two that get shaded by my nectarine tree, which have almost never bloomed in the past. It still took a long time for the first bloom wave -- it didn't happen until just this last week or two. But there are many, many flowerbuds still developing, and it looks like I'll have a strong, continued bloom season.

But I'm still disappointed that they grow so tall before they bloom. I cut them back to around two feet high in the spring, but they still got six feet tall again before blooming. Here are some photos from this week:

{{gwi:304677}}{{gwi:304678}}

{{gwi:304679}}{{gwi:304680}}

{{gwi:304681}}

Anyway, thank you for your help! It has definitely made a difference. I think I can continue to improve my care of these roses by starting to feed the soil more, with some alfalfa meal or other things. But so far, I've made a good improvement with what I've done. Any advice on why they're growing so tall before they bloom? I've wanted to cut them back, but that would have cut all the flowerbuds off. Is this just a tall variety of rose?