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| Our weather this Summer has been rainier, cooler, especially nights. We've had roses, yes; but not the over abundance of blooms like I've had in the past years. Plus more foliage disease (rust, black spot starting already, some mildew). I don't know if this is just the rebound from our 4 feet deep ground freezing last winter or what. I'm sure it can't just be me in Milwaukee, WI. A little sad and disappointed this season. Anyone? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Yes, several of us were lamenting on this topic on another thread just a day or so ago. In my garden, it was like the roses just had enough energy to put out a decent spring bloom and after that, just didn't have enough energy left to do much, performance-wise. Even worse, a couple of my favored Austins just went into decline after the spring bloom and dwindled away to nothing. I dug both of them up last week. So sad. I think we may not be fully sure how much damage that brutal winter did to our roses until next year. Hopefully, most of the roses will perk up by then, but I worry one or two may not have enough strength left to deal with the upcoming winter even if it is not a bad winter. Right now, with cool weather having entered the region, I'm hoping I'll get some decent blooming from some of the roses that haven't done much this past summer. Kate |
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- Posted by nickjoseph 5 Milwaukee, WI (My Page) on Thu, Sep 11, 14 at 16:58
| Kate, I know.... I have two David Austins (Heritage & Fair Bianca). They did okay, but even these which normally bloom constantly and a ton of blooms wasn't nearly as much as years past. Plus.....they were the two that I never saw disease on the foliage. This year seeing blackspot. Most of my bushes that were full an lots of beautiful green, healthy foliage have been spindlier and attacked with rust and blackspot (early). |
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| You are not alone, Nick and Kate. Once we got rid of all the ones that died last winter I watched several of the ones that I thought had made it dwindle away too. The rest have struggled all season. With the cool, gray and damp summer we had none of them rebounded as well as I'd hoped. Both my Golden Celebration and Graham Thomas are less than half their normal size and have been struggling to give me any blooms at all. The only roses that did really well were the new ones I purchased this spring. Seems like they hadn't suffered that winter and had more strength. I think we were all so worried about how much cane damage we had but in fact there was probably a lot of root ball damage as well that we just couldn't see. With weaker root balls and less than an optimum summer none of them had much energy to perform as well. I'm hoping that they regained some roots this season and will manage to winter through this year but there's no real way to tell. All we can do is provide them with the best we can and hope it's a better winter! |
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- Posted by Nippstress 5-Nebraska (My Page) on Fri, Sep 12, 14 at 16:43
| Yep, same story here. Very minimal spring flush at all, and only scattered single blooms on most bushes. Even among my reliable all-summer bloomers, there has been a much longer wait between flushes than usual. Bad Worishofen lost so many canes over the winter that it's only about a foot tall, but 2-3' wide, and is just now starting to bloom in a reasonably abundant fashion, but on a small plant. We've had plenty of rain at the right time, except for a few weeks in July and one in August, so it's not the amount of water. They were just so damaged from the winter cold that they've all had to rebuild cane from which to bloom next year. I've been steeling myself to only expect those few blooms, and have been sacrificing even some of those to build up a better cane structure again. Last thing I want next year is a garden full of one-cane wonders that used to be full bushes! So every time I see a cane stretching up over about 3-4 feet, I trim it down to about 2 feet to encourage some branching. Even if I let it bloom, it's only going to have one solitary bloom at the end of a 5 foot cane, and that's actually more depressing than cutting off the cane and watching the rose bush out. I simply think of my roses as "bushes" this year, rather than flowering plants, and I've emphasized the annuals and other perennials for the needed color. Sympathies on the roses that grew backwards, Kate. I agree that there have been roses that had no visible cane damage and normally would be considered a winter survival, that this year collapsed and died mid-season. Likely this is the root damage Seil is talking about, and she certainly has had some work rebuilding her roses from the winter carnage. It's amazing to me how much difference there is between one foot of cane and pruning a rose to the ground. With even a foot to regrow from, my roses are usually indistinguishable from ones with 3-4 feet of cane, at least in terms of richness and frequency of bloom. Pruning almost everything to the ground seems to be restarting the rose clock from the "sleep" stage, and we might have to resign ourselves to a bit of "creep" next year even. That is, assuming we don't have another Polar Vortex winter (sigh). Hang in there, and let's hope for at least some fall flush! Cynthia |
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- Posted by farmerduck (My Page) on Sat, Sep 13, 14 at 21:34
| First frost Sunday night in New England and much of NY State! We are a little further South and won't get frost, but frost in mid-September! Hope that we won't be getting hit by another vortex this winter. Where is Al Gore with his slides on global warming when you need him? |
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| I hope we have a better winter and everyone's roses do better next spring. |
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