22,795 Garden Web Discussions | Roses

Glad to hear you are feeling better! Gardening is such a stress reliever for me. On rough days I come home from work & work in the garden before I even come inside. It really helps me leave my work stress outside the house. :)

And I love roses! Glad to hear yours are doing so well!!

Thanks guys I will post photos when I get the rest of the garden cleaned up. I bought some Dr Earth rose food today. I love my organics

WOW... you guys are wonderful! Thank you SO much for your thoughts and suggestions. I think I'll give it a few more weeks before I throw in the towel and replace them with something else. In talking with others here in western ny, it seems that most everyone is experiencing the same thing, and that most new plant growth seems to be delayed.
When I pruned last month, I followed directions and left about a foot of growth. Most of it doesn't appear gray-dead and brittle (I've removed those parts); the bark seems to be reddish and still mostly supple. Would it be better to prune back even more or should I just leave it? What kind of fertilizer is best at this stage? Again, thank you for your help... I'm so clueless :(

Fertilizer cannot help plants until they have leaves. But the most popular fertilizer among folks here is Espoma Rose Tone, Plant Tone is just as good if you find it priced cheaper.

If you are pruning down by sections, look for a ring of green inner bark in the cross section. This indicates life. Canes that are only one year old will have green outer bark. These young canes should have white center pith. Brown pith in young canes indicates winter damage and calls for further pruning.

I feel your pain. It's not uncommon. I purchased Mary Webb from Heirloom and it turned out to be dark pink and not fragrant. I took it back and they gave me another rose.

I just posted a rose that was supposed to be Heirloom but turned out to be Electron. Am glad that I did because I love it.

Hard to know what your rose is until the bloom opens, and you can tell if it is fragrant -- see how it grows.

if it turns out to be a climber and it's really fragrant then Cl. America.

Another way to gradually amend a large bed -- in Autumn, gather neighborhood leaves and shred them. Apply as a top-layer over existing mulch. In mid-Winter to early-Spring, scatter high-nitrogen organic fertilizer (blood meal, Milorganite, lawn fertilizer, whatever) over the shredded leaves. Don't worry about the fertilizer kick-starting your plants -- most organic granular fertilizers need to break down before they're available to the plants, and that doesn't happen until things warm up in Spring. But the extra nitrogen will speed up the breakdown of the Autumn leaves, and encourage earthworm activity which will further mix your soil.

:-)

~Christopher

You don't need to go deeper than a foot if the subsoil drains at all.

Thanks - Are any other rose varieties that would appreciate a handful of sulfur annually?

Any rose that grows out pale with green veins. But don't do it every year. It is a long-lasting treatment, and it takes a year to react on the soil.

Cecily I use Drench and systemics - Neem also.. Thanks for the suggestions. Diane nj I have been wishing to go to the M Arboretum for a while. I have an excuse now, might even bring some roses. The McCartney rose always gets the most questions in the garden. I always sing 1 2 3 4 like himself when in the garden. I love that guy. I helped with Shrek farmerduck and was thinking about some of the Kordes fairytale roses. We have a wedding this August dd, The Southern roses are intriguing.

If you can't make it to the shows, drop me an email. There are some great rose growers in SE PA.

Here on central coast CA it slowly declined over 5 years and finally removed.

Could be thrips. They love light colored roses. Can you post a picture?

Try to plant them deeper next time. I have a feeling they were planted more deeply in the pot, right about where the first leaves start. After they're planted, step down lightly on the soil all around the rose to make sure the plant is anchored securely in the soil.

My Lady Emma did this alot when she was a baby. Also..in my opinion too much nitrogen makes them grow too fast and the stems can't hold the flower up

Interesting to know Oklahoma and Alec red made it through the winter for you. I also have those. My hybred teas and more tender roses I have I stored in my unheated sunroom . I have them in pots. But the way I am acquiring them I will soon run out of room to do that so I would like to start planting them in the ground. All the ones I have planted are zone 3 but mostly 4. I too would love to be able to go up to zone five, so many more choices then. I would think you are zone 4 that that wouldn't be a problem. To winter protect on some I filled small groceries bags with shredded leaves and put under them. Some I put small square cardboard boxes on filled with shredded leaves. That gave the yard a ghetto look, so I guess that isn't the best but it worked well. Some I bought that plastic green fencing and cut it about a ft. High then filled with shredded leaves. Very interesting about the shavings..I remember when I was young the fishery use to pack their ice blocks (they used to put the fish on to ship)in shavings all summer. They never had the big spcommercial freezers like now. We have sawmills around here so it would be easy to get for me.

Here are a couple responses I got to my post inquiring about growing hybred teas in cold zones. You may be interested in them. As usual wonderful info from fellow GW members.

Zone 5

Posted by don555 3a (My Page) on Wed, May 22, 13 at 17:14
I grow hybrid teas (6 of them I think) and lately a couple of yellow ones that I think are grandifloras. They must have been growing for the past 8 or 10 years and I don't believe I've lost one yet. Most years they kill right to ground level but then bounce back quickly in the spring and get 3 feet or so by late summer. Start blooming just after the hardy roses, but then continue pretty much non-stop until a killing frost. I cover them with leaves or straw in the fall, but they still usually kill to ground level (though this winter the bottom 15 or 20 cm or so seemed to survive, I guess due to the early and heavy snows.
The key is how you plant them. Dig a deep, long hole and then lay the plant in on an angle, maybe 45 degrees, so that the roots and the bottom 20 or 30 cm of the stems will be below ground level when the hole is filled. Even when the tops are killed over winter, the plants quickly put up new shoots from the underground stems in the spring.

Hope that helps!

T

RE: Zone 5 roses

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Posted by northspruce z3a MB CDA (My Page) on Wed, May 22, 13 at 22:54
I have 30-ish roses and most of them are not considered hardy. When I plant them, I dig the hole quite deep and don't fill it in all the way the first summer. This also helps direct water to the roots when I'm watering them. The first fall I fill up the depressions and mound up some soil, then cover them with leaves and hold the leaves on with burlap. In mild years I might get a foot or two of live canes on the hybrid teas, but in worse years they die back to the ground and occasionally I lose a whole plant.

Posted by northspruce z3a MB CDA (My Page) on Wed, May 22, 13 at 22:54
I have 30-ish roses and most of them are not considered hardy. When I plant them, I dig the hole quite deep and don't fill it in all the way the first summer. This also helps direct water to the roots when I'm watering them. The first fall I fill up the depressions and mound up some soil, then cover them with leaves and hold the leaves on with burlap. In mild years I might get a foot or two of live canes on the hybrid teas, but in worse years they die back to the ground and occasionally I lose a whole plant.

Check out jack rosarian.blogspot. He is growing roses in Minneapolis.

I surely must have read your post wrong, I thought you said something about getting rid of some of your roses! Really?

I have several tender roses, (hybrid tea, miniature and Hybrid musk) which I planted the bud union 6 inches below the soil. It is lot of hard work digging a hole that deep! Yet all my roses came back, without a hiccup. I was especially worried for those planted in the raised bed, but they survived.

In retrospect I'll go for 4-5 inches below the soil line, or simply go for European OGRs or other hardy roses :-)

Hands down my new favorite and I would like to thank everyone who recomened this rose to me last year. I do use a systemic funguside. It has a good 20 blooms on it right now (third flush) in its first year. I can't wait to see in once it is established.
Liane

I only have space for 10 roses, and Day Breaker has been my favorite rose by far since I planted it about 5 years ago. The flower form and color are exquisite and it is the most prolific bloomer of all my roses, with 20-40 blossoms continuously from mid-May to late October. The bush is compact and I like its tall growth habit.

The climate here in Portland, OR is perfect for Day Breaker and mine has never had powdery mildew or black spot even though I don't spray. About my only minor quibbles with it are that it attracts aphids more than my other roses, and it isn't strongly scented. But in all other ways it is just about the perfect rose.

Thank you all for the advice!

yep, I am a splinter too - Iuse micropore surgical tape to hold in place until the stem calluses over. I actually saved an entire dwarf peach tree which had snapped off at the graft union, by ramming a broomstick straight down through the middle (drastic but you should have seen the chaos) and wrapping a generous roll of micropore round the join for a whole year. The tree is as good as new (apart from peach leaf curl of course).

I planted one of my three final Vintage roses over the weekend, 'Frances Ashton'.

'Shower of Gold' and 'W. Freeland Kendrick' are in pots, waiting for me to prepare climber-sized spots for them.

Sad to lose Vintage, but rejoice that they were here and that we have such wonderful roses to enjoy in our gardens because of them.

very envious of those who can grow Cooper's Burmese, PekeM.....but Goldfinch is currently my absolute favourite, blooming this moment . Apart from its short bloom cycle, there is nothing to dislike about this gorgeous rose - utterly healthy with perfectly sized wee flowers....,

Thank you all for your help. I'll definitely follow your advice.

If you had several hard freezes then that could well be why you had so much cane die back. It's very common here in the North country to lose a lot of cane to winter freezes. Just take off all the dead wood down to where the inside pith is white and not tan or brown and hopefully they'll recover. I often have to take roses right down to the ground in the spring but they do come back for the most part.