21,400 Garden Web Discussions | Roses

I have a Sir Edward Elgar that has done well for me. It gets about 5 to 5-1/2 ft tall, and it reblooms dependably. It is a dark pink color similar to the color of the HT Electron, if you know that one. It is a bright, electric pink. The picture below doesn't quite do it justice, but I think you can get the idea. I'm not sure why this rose doesn't appear more often in catalogues because it does reasonably well, at least here.


I actually bought "Sombreuil" from Home Depot this past Fall. That's what it was labeled as. I planted it in a sunny spot, and I'm interested to see if it will survive our tough Winters. I also have "Colette" and she's a great rose. Mine grew really tall this year and I might have to move her to another spot. I'm surprised that the roses mentioned in Ms. Kimmel's article don't list any Canadian Explorer roses. These are super hardy and beautiful roses. I have quite a few - John Davis, William Baffin, John Cabot and I just purchased Quadra. If you're searching for hardy roses, give these a try.

Tantau doesn't have an agent in N America, according to the owners of Palatine when I inquired last year. This is why we can't get all their newer beautiful roses, though some have been "poached", as I put it, perhaps because Tantau didn't patent certain roses soon enough. This seems to be what happened with Blue Bayou, a Kordes rose. You can still purchase Ascot and Augusta Luise, but Astrid seems to have disappeared from the general market, just like Blue Bayou. Diane


Tough call for me between OLOG and Sexy Rexy. I've grown Sexy Rexy for >12 years, and it blooms like crazy (lots of blooms with each flush and repeats very well). I finally got OLOG about 3 years ago, after circling it for years, and love it very much. Sexy Rexy is a more true pink, and has more petals and substance. Its blooms are flatter than OLOG. OLOG is a lighter pink, but has more classic HT form upon opening (less flat). It repeats very well, and while the blooms don't last as long as Sexy Rexy, they last well. Since you're in OK, you might want to check zone hardiness to make the choice. Like I said, tough call since they're both great roses for me.

Liqui-Cop is copper, which is effective as a dormant spray type of product, if that is what you are after. It would be considered more of an "organic" treatment than a fungicide such as Banner Maxx, Bayer Rose & Flower spray, that type of product.

Copper in that form works fairly well as a "contact" type fungicide -- it kills whatever fungus it comes in contact with while it's still wet. When/after it dries, I don't think it has any effect, which is true of most of the "organic" fungicides -- contact only/no residual effect, but they kill what they touch.
I use it occasionally, but I don't like to use it during the growing season because it leaves blue spots on the leaves, which I find ugly. If you don't mind blue spots all over everything, it's fiine. Wear old clothes when you apply it, again, unless you fancy blue spots. The main advantage copper has over other fungicides is its cheap price -- most everything else is five to ten times as expensive, if not more than that.



Hi redwolf
Among the roses you list, Pomponella and Margot Koster have survived our winters unscathed and are healthy happy bloomers here in my zone 5. I had OLOG but it wasn't a strong cultivar and it finally gave up the ghost last year - that doesn't detract from its overall worth, though. I'll be replacing Belle Epoque and Lavender Pinocchio this year and in my experience those are marginally hardy in our zone with protection, but worth the trouble. I gave Silver Cloud every benefit and planted it in my zone 6 pocket, but it died a rapid and unavoidable death over the winters, and like most lavenders it's wimpy. If you want a robust and healthy blooming lavender, look at Poseidon - it's a real keeper!
Cynthia

Thank you!
I think I'll go for Pomponella and Lavender Pinocchio. Belle Epoque is tempting but I have an About Face coming and it seems quite similar in colouring. OLoG is gorgeous, and if it shows up at a Canadian nursery I'll jump on it.
Cynthia, thanks so much for the info on Silver Cloud. You've convinced me to give it a pass this time. Poseidon, now THAT:s a different story! :)

No, you don't need to cover them if they are in the ground. In fact sometimes it can do more harm than good by breaking canes. As Kate said, if you planted them deep to begin with they'll be fine. If not you should have mulched them some in the fall but if you want to go out and try to now I guess that would be oK. Be careful not to bang them up though. At these cold temps canes can snap easily.
Yes, you're going to have cane damage. There is nothing you can do about that and it will need to be pruned off in the spring but in the long run you're better off just letting them be. The snow on the ground will be good insulation for the roots and that's the most important thing.
Most roses aren't really lost from the cold temps but more from the freezes and thaws of early spring when they try to leaf out too soon and that new growth is repeatedly frozen off. The rose uses up all its stored energy before true spring arrives and has none left to bud out with again. That's usually when I lose roses here. So the best thing is to keep them dormant for as long as possible so that doesn't happen. That's really the purpose of the mulch. People think the mulch is to keep them warmer but it's just the opposite. It shouldn't be put on until after the ground is frozen and the roses are completely dormant. Then it can keep the cold IN and the ground frozen to keep them dormant through any early warm spells that you know aren't going to last. They save their energy for when it really does warm up for good in the spring.

I have 2 Apricot Drifts and 2 Coral Drifts. I love them, but they don't get tall enough to be seen over your wall (at least not here in my climate). Someone posted a couple of months ago about their Peach Drift getting way taller than expected...I want to say 5 ft. Not sure if that was a fluke or if Peach Drift is taller than the other Drifts. I had 3 Lady Elsie May roses in another garden when they first came out. Those were great landscape roses and would fit your height requirement. I would definitely recommend them as continually blooming, low maintenance shrub roses with very good disease resistance in my climate. Currently, I have 2 OSO Easy Paprika roses that would also work behind your wall. They bloom all the time and are at least as disease resistant as Knockouts for me. Sorry, but no experience with the Carpet Rose series other than the original pink when it first came out, and I really can't remember how big they got or how well they performed.
This post was edited by pat_bamaZ7 on Fri, Jan 3, 14 at 11:11

I have to say that my Appleblossom Flower Carpet is pretty much bullet proof. RARELY even gets any kind of diseases and blooms all summer long. It's pretty much self cleaning too as I hardly ever have to dead head it. Mine spreads out in a nice circle about 4 feet wide with an occasional cane that goes up to about 3 feet in height. But if you want to train it to go up that wall it's pretty flexible and should be easy to do.


I use Facebook as a photo depository for most of my rose pics. I post them there anyway to brag :) . When I want to post a picture here, I do the following:
Open up the picture in FB.
Right click on the picture, a menu will pop up. You want to click on 'Inspect Element'.
A screen will appear at the bottom with a portion highlighted. This is the script you must copy and paste into a GW thread body. Right click on the highlighted area and click on 'Copy Inner HTML' or 'Outer HTML', it doesn't matter.
Paste that into a GW thread:
img style="width: 520px; height: 390px;" src="https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1397747_10151768534973316_772910428_o.jpg" aria-busy="false" aria-describedby="fbPhotosSnowliftCaption" alt="" class="spotlight">
When you post it with the 
You can then post multiple scripts in the post which will then become pictures:


Lol, you just asked the $64,000.00 question! Because they only hear the hype and are scared away. So they never try them for themselves to see that they aren't the prima donas they're touted as. In truth, they are no more or less work than any other perennial in your garden. They need sunlight, water, fertilizer now and again and a pruning about once a year. The same things most people do for their hydrangeas, lilacs, peonies, iris, azaleas and hostas, etc., etc. In fact, when you think about it, your lawn requires more care than roses do!
And people have much too high expectations when they purchase a rose. They expect to see those florist shop perfect roses in their garden. Unrealistic! Those roses are force grown in unnatural conditions that no one can duplicate in a garden setting. And they are meticulously groomed! So people are set up to fail and be disappointed. Hence the myth that roses are so hard to grow.
If you purchase the right roses for your area and don't expect them to look florist shop perfect you'll be much happier and enjoy them more for years to come.

My bloomed so much 15 buds were killed by snow. it wouldn't quit! The hardest thing I do is spray them with Milk water and kill rose slugs. That just gives me a reason to be outside! I love it that's why I love roses. (Also they took out a greenhouse full of roses for a pop eyes grrrr)


I use a mixed approach to pruning our roses --
With roses, I use a power trimmer gently, with an eye to creating a natural shape. It's a useful tool at times for cutting a shrub down to size. Afterward, you can refine the haircut. OTOH, hand pruning is just about as quick and cleanup is not as messy.
The tall Knockout tree roses are pruned with a long, gas-powered articulated hedge trimmer, followed by selective hand trimming. These bushes are not heavily pruned, but rather lightly trimmed to maintain the desired shape.
Most of the other mature Knockouts get pruned with non-power hedge clippers and hand trimmers. Occasionally, if I think I'm in a rush, I use the power trimmer.
All other roses -- HTs, shrubs, climbers, OGRs -- are pruned by hand.




I've read the no blue pigment theory. I'm not convinced that it is correct.
We already see many permutations of "purple" in roses from very reddish purple to very bluish purple.
As I stated at the start of my previous post, the statements are "from the not so technical side." If you reread that post it almost contains more disclaimers about opinion, thoughts, ideas, and beliefs than actual statements.
I hold with my opinions, thoughts, ideas, and beliefs on the subject. They may not be correct; however, they may in time prove to be true.
I can imagine a case where the "blue pigment" was not identified. I can also imagine a case where the identified purple pigment expresses itself as blue, etc.
I hold with my opinions, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and conjecture on the subject.
I found this somewhere around the internet. Check it out. According to this research, the blue pigment "delphinidin" does exist on roses! But only on the leaves. Specifically of the 1964 Kordes rose SAMBA.
They've also studied bluish purple roses like BLUE MOON, MME. VIOLET, and RHAPSODY IN BLUE. They have found cyanins in these rose and from what I understand, are copigmented with purple pigments that makes them more purplish that blue. They also found that cyanins start accumulating in fading petals of Rhapsody in Blue so it appears bluer as it fades. The same happens with other fading purple roses like BLEU MAGENTA.
In the end, they've come to a conclusion that roses are among the many genera of flowering plants that are capable of producing blue pigments and thus true blue flowers, but roses also produce other pigments that are able to counteract or overpower the blue pigments so that's why we haven't seen true blue roses so far.
Here is a link that might be useful: Research regarding blue pigments on roses and bluish purple roses.