22,153 Garden Web Discussions | Roses
That's a very good question, Jim, because I am really just a beginner growing roses and I haven't got any breadth or depth of experience. But I have been growing them for something like 8 to 10 years, and because of living up north, and having to struggle with cold winters, shade and tree roots, it might be more relevant to ask how many roses have come and gone on my property. At this moment I have only five mature rose bushes �" Barkarole (HT), Great Maiden's Blush (Alba), Buff Beauty (H Musk), Souvenir du Docteur Jamain (H Perpetual) �" all with me the whole 8 years or so �" and the 5 year old New Dawn, plus Morden's Sunrise (this will be its 2nd winter) and another Hybrid Musk bought this year. Blueberry HIll has been struggling for 5 years, but gives me a few fabulous roses every year. But at one time I grew HT Crysler Imperial, which I gave away because it looked like its name; Savoy Hotel I gave away because it was too mediocre to have one of my very few HT sites. HT Pristine, with which I was dearly in love, came from the nursery not very healthy. It seemed winter hardy enough, but it was slowly dying and when I dug it up, it had very little root, which was its problem when it came here. I wanted to try again with Pristine, but the only place that carries it now is David Austin in the states and would cost me $50 to get it here, so I won't be doing that. A Shropshire Lad gave me flowers for 5 years before succumbing to a bad winter. Fritz Nobis was invaded by tree roots. Robert Bondar didn't hang around for a second winter. Sometimes you learn by failing. But I am getting too old to be digging out rose holes to plant new ones, so I paid someone to do it this year to give me one last fling. I've ordered another Barkarole, Dark Desire and Dainty Bess. Whatever roses kick the bucket henceforth, they're gone for good. I've scoped out some nice asters, beebalms, cosmos and such to take their place. Over the last 8 years I've seen a lot of blackspot. Barkarole is listed as prone to bs by at least one expert, but it is wonderfully healthy here. Pristine and Barkarole were about the same in that respect. Great Maiden's Blush and Buff Beauty have never known bs. New Dawn will get a little, but never enough that I've sprayed it; Docteur Jamain and Morden's Sunrise are very susceptible. What breeders and nurseries claim about blackspot resistance for each kind of rose may or may not be true. It certainly is contingent on the climate, and we might expect there is sometimes some hype. But every pathogen, even Ebola, reveals that some individuals are more resistant than others. We see that everybody exposed gets Ebola, but some few survive, just as when the various tree diseases go through a forest, some species and some individuals will be resistant. It's a fact of life in genetics, so I've always assumed that that was what I was seeing when certain of my roses stayed clean and clear (without sprayng) of bs while others succumbed. None of my roses have ever had chemical fertilizer. They live solely on manure, compost, alfalfa, bone meal, glacier rock dust and epsom salts, and my (non-) adherence to a watering program must be a holy terror to a rose bush, but as you can see some few have stayed with me. I've learned so much on this website from the knowledgeable people, in just a short time, it's amazing and inspiring to share our mutual enthusiasm.
Thanks for the info...
I personally would not lay anything under your roses to spray your leaves with the Cornell formula...
I'm lucky here as I can just apply compost and they seem to grow and bloom ok so I'm not going to fuss much anymore except for pruning and deadheading...
I doubt if you have killed them.
The roses in front of my home were deer pruned for years before I bought my home. The previous owner was in her 90s and had stopped protecting them every night as she had done for years.
It was a while before I could install deer fencing up to protect the plants. The deer pruned them any time they wanted. Now, that they are protected, all have come surging back and are over 6' tall.
Smiles,
Lyn
I bought them direct from David Austin. I planted them this year in the Spring. I've bought from David Austin before with no problems so I don't think they were diseased from day 1. I could be wrong. The Harlow Carr roses were going to a long hedgerow of roses. I hesitate to tell you how many I dug up.
I don't have a picture. I took cuttings of the canes to a couple of local nurseries and both places said rosette disease. The canes were very red with an abnormal amount of thorns compared to the green canes. The redness was the entire cane even where it emerged from the root stock. The canes were very limp too. Based on the pictures that I saw on the internet I think it was rosette disease. Maybe I jumped the gun but I have lots of other roses so I wanted to be preemptive.
Ann is right. I live in a heavily wooded area of CT. I removed wild roses when I first moved here but there might be other roses nearby. I'm sort of in shock and wonder if I should give up on roses altogether.
Thanks for all of the comments.
CT,
Also look UP in trees. Multiflora can reach several tens of feet up into any available tree.
One thing I didn't type above was to ask if these particular roses happened to be planted in a place, were it a snow fence, where snow would have accumulated.
The vector mites do drop out of the air when the air currents drop significantly.
I've got one place where I expect to loose a rose each year because of the air currents that tend to slow there.
Hope this helps.
If the clay is too hot and baked and therefore hard to dig in, run the sprinkler for several hours and let the water soak in overnight--or for 24 hrs (or more) if it is still to wet. When it gets down to moist but not wet, try digging. Should be much easier.
But don't tromp around in it while it is wet, or you will definitely have compacted soil (if you didn't before).
Kate
Michael is so right about preparing the whole bed.
On the house pad where my primary rose garden in located, I have what amounts to glacier slurry/subsoil. The house pad was cut out of a slope created by glacier runoff eons ago.
Once the decorative rock the previous owners used for the back of the house was scraped off, I was left with soil that was mostly rock with clay and silt between the tightly compacted rock.
My huge novice mistake was to dig rose holes instead of preparing the whole bed. I created a gardening nightmare.
I cannot buy soil or mulch up here, but I could buy bags of compost.
I mixed a lot of compost with the native soil and screened out a lot of the rock from the native soil that I mixed with the compost when I planted my first roses. As the compost decomposed, the roses sank! How much they sank depended on how much organic material I mixed in with the native soil.
I have since found that all of those rocks do not decompose and allow for good drainage in clay soil. I don't screen them out any more. In fact, I add rocks to my back fill instead of organic material and mound the soil in the planting hole UP so that when the rose sinks due to the OM around the root mass decomposing, it settles at the level that I want for the rose.
Over the years, I've applied all of my organic materials on top of the soil. I have perfect drainage due to the rocks and the clay between the rocks held moisture quite well. I found that it is much easier to correct the nutrients values than to try to correct drainage.
Putting the OM on top has actually improved my soil. Until the extreme drought, I had plenty of earth worms and the soil gradually became more friable. It is not fertile, yet.
None of my roses died and except those that are not suited to my climate, all of them have done quite well.
I do think that had I prepared whole beds properly with as much OM as possible and allowed it to set until the OM decomposed, I would have had an easier time of it in the long run.
Kate ... I have so much rock in my soil, I can walk on it when it is fully saturated. Common sense would tell one that this is not the soil environment to grow healthy roses. The good news is that the roses don't know that. They just want to grow.
Smiles,
Lyn
I wouldn't take off any of the leaves it still has. Let them feed the plant while they still can. They will fall off on their own eventually. They also provide some shade for the canes if the sun is still hot. Just keep it watered as needed and let it be until next spring.
After learning where you live, I understand that heat was not a factor, but roses just don't transplant easily unless from small or medium pots. When you dig them, the fine roots are lost or disconnected from the soil, and the coarse roots are not able to supply enough water. So they will wilt and maybe defoliate, even in mild BC weather, because lots of water is being lost through the leaves. The particular problem with transplanting this time of year is that any new leaves that grow out will not have time to replace the energy spent in growing them out. If you waited till late October, your alba (or other deciduous rose) would have withdrawn and stored nutrients from the leaves and there would be no loss of water from the foliage. Dormant roses can be transplanted without much pruning.
As to excess watering, soil being saturated for two weeks will kill the feeder roots and cause yellowing and defoliation. Soak the transplant in with a very heavy watering, let drain, and then water normally.
So overwatering may have caused defoliation, but it can happen without that.
Ann, yes the canes are thicker.
So far, the infected roses are:
Maggie
Melody Perfume
Crespuscle
Heritage
Radio Times
Zephyrine D.
This is so disappointing and sad! :(
That's horrible. So many at the same time. Sorry.