22,151 Garden Web Discussions | Roses
Hi again, Kim,
Up here nothing is going on in the garden--all looks gloomy and dead, but I know it isn't. Things are just sleeping, but it's hard to be patient. We have a short, intense growing season.
I'm glad you were able to obtain bud wood from a friend. What will you be doing with the grafted plant now that it has taken? Will you be crossing Blue Bayou in the future with something else? What if you came up with the ultimate blue rose? I've thought of that quite a bit, and wonder if it could be done. The rose world would beat a path to your door.
Is it legal to cross a rose like, say, Augusta Luise (Tantau) that is still under patent with another rose to produce something new? I'm very uninformed about this kind of thing. I mention this rose because I think it is so unique and might produce more unique offspring. It's all so intriguing.
Have fun with Blue Bayou and all your other projects.
Diane
Hi Diane, thank you! I was thinking of taking the healthiest lavender/mauve and crossing it with the healthiest copper/apricot/amber to see what might be accomplished in the tan/russet shades. There are a few which come to mind to use, but we'll see how they progress. Oh, yes, it is legal to use patented varieties for breeding, unless you happen to have one which contains a patented gene. Not that they "created" the gene, they've simply moved it from one genus of plant to another and we mistakenly permitted them to be patented. So far, the only rose known to contain such a gene is Applause, the "blue" florist rose, which isn't blue. There are newer contracts being written for new roses being released for testing and distribution which demand the return of any mutations and promising seedlings obtained or discovered by the distributors and testers to the originator of the variety. Fortunately, those don't pertain to you and me, the end purchasers who wish to explore and experiment with them. Good luck being patient until spring! That isn't something I think I would be very good at! Kim
Here is a link that might be useful: Applause
Wow, I have never seen roses like yours, Diane. They are gorgeous and almost otherworldly to me, very sculptural. I think it is one of the things that we don't often see for those of us living up in colder climates. I may have asked you before but are those just one individual rose plant especially the JC?
Hi, JJ,
Thank you so much for those nice comments. I give Julia all the credit.
There is one Julia plant on each side of the sidewalk. The Bernstein-Rose plants are below the Julias and much smaller. I love both roses, but Julia outblooms Bernstein-- and everything else, for that matter.
Diane
Thanks Jerijen, Diane & Dan. It make a lot of sense Jeri after you explain it in that perspective. I guess I never thought about genetics in plants. I only think about it in human terms. I guess I took it for granted. I always assume that the seedlings would be "similar" in appearance to the parents and would inherit any mutations as well. I guess in modern terms, cuttings would be its "clone" if you want the exact plant. Makes perfect sense now. It makes more sense now after many readings that refer to when hybridists wanted to "create" new plants through its "seedlings" by pollination. Thanks for the info. Much appreciated.
OH I hope they sell Chihuly here in WA at the box store, that would be a find! Got Marmalade Skies there last year, but they wanted full nursery price. I got it anyway.
BTW- your Gigi is SO cute! I hope she continues to do well and bring you joy.
Well, perhaps I've jumped the gun but I've pruned 3 of my well-established roses, one old Hybrid Tea & 2 White Meidillands. I've noticed that my Rugosas haven't broken dormancy yet but everything else has. I live in coastal W.WA, hope I don't regret my early pruning but they seemed to need it, breaking out everywhere.
Hi to all fellow western Washington rose lovers! I have to admit- I got the itch too!
Red Intuition was leafing and I had a Neil Diamond and Veterans's honor waiting to be planted.
It may be too early and as Morz8 said, we might still get a freeze. Yes I know better but couldn't help it!
Perhaps I'l regret it later, but let's cross our fingers we'll continue on with this mild winter and feel lucky we're not back east.
Hi there, welcome back to the forum. It is nice to meet you. I wish you all the best on your new job. Unfortunately I don't live close to you or to your zone but I think it is nice for you to offer your roses for people who wants to grow them. Please let us know how things are in the near future, especially in the new area where I hope you will still grow roses. Good luck.
Water them very well the day before you move them. On the day dig your holes in the new spots first. Then dig them out and move them quickly to their new homes. You can use a wheel barrow or drag them on a tarp to so you only have to handle the root ball as little as possible. As Jackie said water them in very well and keep them watered, but not soggy wet, for the first week. Don't panic if there is some wilt at first, that's fairly normal, but they should perk back up within a few days to a week. Good luck and let us know how it goes when you do it!
Sister Elizabeth is beautiful and I love its cool lilac-pink color but it may do better if you can provide some afternoon shade. Still, worth trying even without the shade, since mine was planted in what is probably the hottest area of the garden near large, heat-reflecting boulders and that's not a fair test for any rose. I moved it later but then it was in too shady a spot. I hope to try it again some day. Young Lycidas is said to be a very unruly bush which grows every which way. I wouldn't know since mine hasn't grown much at all. The flowers are gorgeous, though. I'm now trying Charles Rennie McIntosh which is also supposed to be a rich lilac-pink color but it's just a small own-root plant at this point.
One thing you want to do with a new bush is to cover the canes and pile it high over the canes. The rose has no roots on it yet. It has no way to replace the moisture lost. The mulch helps protect the canes.
The other thing you can do is to use Wiltpruf.
Dan Keil
ARS Q&A
I've started using cardboard,too,and am finding it very helpful,though i do see Jeri and Kim's point.Here in Tuscany the pattern tends to be for rain in autumn /winter, and a very dry spring/ summer,so what I am aiming for is to get as much as possible of my garden covered up with cardboard BEFORE THE SOIL DRIES OUT. Last year I found that the cardboard, when covered by organic matter, broke down extremely fast; I had to re-mulch two or three times at least. This year, my ideal aim would be to do my first mulching with the main idea of conserving the moisture. This will rot away too quickly to be of much help once bindweed season really gets underway in summer,so I'll have to re-do the whole thing then. But my main goal is to try to basically prevent my soil from drying out for as long as possible into the summer months,and to try to get control of the bindweed and some of the worst, most aggressive perennial weeds,and I don't think I could do that without the help of the cardboard..
Hi Lily
Thanks for the photos - they help a lot. Good job too of sleuthing out the types of roses. For John Cabot, I think the best plan for you in spring would be twofold: First, prune out the deadwood after the spring weather starts to kick in (i.e. when the forsythia start to bloom) - in that first photo everything black or brown definitely needs to go, and even the green canes with the purple behind them need to be pruned until at a fresh cut the cane is creamy colored in the middle (no dark brown centers). That will leave only healthy cane to support the blooming canes. Don't worry if it gets pruned down to a foot or less above the ground, but leave as much healthy can as you can to work with. Then second, tie the canes as much as you can toward the horizontal and put up a support between the rose and the wooden fence for the rose to climb on. If you cut the canes down to their stiffest parts you may not be able to bend these original canes sideways, but work with the new growth after it puts out new canes in the spring (these will be more flexible). What I might do for support of a big heavy caned climber like John Cabot is put a few deer panels (from a feed store) behind the rose and stake them into the ground. Then there's something sturdy to tie the rose canes onto but it will disappear as the rose puts out leaves.
In my experience, John Cabot is a heavy spring bloomer with only sporadic bloom later in the summer. That is one of several reasons that you want to leave as much healthy cane as you can, since the rose will bloom mostly on old wood. That may be why you didn't see much bloom when you last pruned it. You particularly want to keep as much as you can of the main central cane, since climbers want to grow their main cane out to their preferred height before they do much blooming. Still, the dead cane will do you no good so you do need to prune it out. If you still don't get much bloom after it has more like 4-5' surviving cane after a winter, part of the problem might be the relatively limited sun in that spot (at least as far as the pictures look). Roses prefer around 6 hours of direct or at least filtered sun a day, though some will bloom on less.
Darlow's Enigma is a good example of one that I have that will bloom on less sun quite well. The guidelines for tying up a climber don't apply to this rose as far as my experience goes, since this rose wants to be a big 6' or more bush and at least 4' wide, with a multitude of thin canes that will all bloom when happy. You'll need to get in there and (carefully, for your skin's sake) prune out obvious dead wood. I only prune Darlow's Enigma once in the spring and he gets a surface trim, since he's full of tiny branches with major prickles that catch me every time. In my experience he blooms off and on all summer with almost no care from me, though the blooms are quite small and mostly impressive as a group rather than individually. I'll attach a shot that has him in the background to give you an idea of his habit - he's the white bush at the back blocking the neighbor's windows. The limited sun will bother him less than John Cabot, so mostly give him plenty of water when needed and let him be.
Hope this helps!
Cynthia
Ingrid, thank you for the website suggestion, and Sam, thank you for the weather info. Our neighbors here had beautiful roses, so in my case I'm thinking it was my excessive pruning :/
Cynthia, thank you so much for the detailed info about these varieties and pruning and climbing supports!! And thanks for the picture!
The fence with the roses faces SSW, so I think that the roses get full sun, except for the ones that are partly blocked by the chokecherry tree.
I really appreciate all the help! :)