21,401 Garden Web Discussions | Roses



I grew rugosas in Rockport MA and agree with roseseek. All of the nurseries on the north shore sell primarily plain old rugosas, not named hybrids. Red seems to be the most common, maybe it likes the cold. I was about half a block from the shore, not pure sand, but average back yard soil for the area. I added mulch and bagged manure to the planting hole but probably didn't need it. There were ancient looking rugosas flourishing all over the neighborhood in yards that are often untended for months at a time.


It depends on the dirt, I think :) I was just digging in one of my beds and I'd definitely use that dirt in a pot. It's fine and drains so well, but it used to be clay, so it also holds moisture. I love that dirt.
I usually mix my regular dirt (more clay and not so nice), potting soil, and peat moss for containers. I like the microorganisms and stuff that's in my real soil, and the clay is nice if it's mixed with other things.
Drift roses sound pretty vigorous, so I'd probably just watch and see how they do. If the rose were a wimpy variety, I might worry. You said 'good garden dirt' so you probably avoided the really bad ideas, like my brick-making clay with no amendments :)


I should mention that it was just this year that the mite has been proven to spread RRV.
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg0516471625225.html
"This is the first time P. fructiphilius has been proven to transmit RRV and the subsequent development of typical RRD provides evidence that RRV is the causal agent of RRD."
Here is a link that might be useful: tink to earlier thread

Well, I can speak from experience abt. spreading 'whatever'...several years ago we had over a week of drizzle and gloom, so I took advantage of the cooler weather and stormed around the garden pruning and cutting, etc. with no regard for sterilizing my clippers.... a lot of my roses soon chastised me by dying, they had contracted canker.. and I was spreading it by not dipping my clippers in alcohol.... now I religiously 'dip and clip..dip and clip', I carry a coffee-can w.alcohol and dip-dip-dip after each clip..... the can is large enough I can carry 2 clippers and rotate them so they get a soak.... when I'm done I just put the lid back on the can.... and have not had any more canker..... bleach only causes everything to rust.....and Lysol is too pricey.....plain cheap rubbing alcohol works, full strength, and can be used over and over.....sally

There are about five plants, and I think two are the originals. Those two have a large rootbase. The other three I believe spread from the original and are smaller. There were more plants but I removed some when I took them over since there seemed to be too many too close together. The majority of the long canes are still thinner-- my parents used to just hack them back to keep them from sprawling out into our gangway, so these are growth since I took them over. They're quite long though, some have probably reached 10 feet.
I'm not sure what you mean by repeat-- do you mean do they rebloom? If so, no. At least not at any point that I can remember. They were always prolific bloomers though, even back when they were growing wild and mangled yearly by my parents cutting them back.
When I took the bed over (it's a small strip bed between the gangway and garage), I dug it out and weeded it (it was a mess of nightshade tangled with a knot of rose canes), detangled the canes and pruned out dead canes, then I made a trellis with wire and nails on the side of the garage, and wove the canes onto the wire. I also mulched the bed and fertilized in the spring with a 10-10-10 time released fertilizer.
They grew like mad after that. Since then I added more levels to the trellis. They go up to the top of the garage now. Lots of new growth, and other than the mildew next to no troubles. Last year was the first year I remember them ever having mildew, but it's possible that they did and we just didn't notice the way they were kept before.

Immature plants can easily become infected with any sort of fungal issues. Brunner and all of her variants are about as disease resistant as any other rose could hope to be in most situations and conditions. I agree, it sounds as if they don't require more water due to the weather conditions you've been experiencing. In our climates, usually when something as bullet proof as this contracts anything, it's likely due to insufficient water or having been severely pruned. Might these have been significantly cut back in the past year? Removing too much of the wood and foliage mass can also inhibit the plant's immune system due to reduction of food storage and production. Often, permitting them to rebuild that mass helps over come the infection. I guess it is possible that cultivar could simply be prone to mildew due to your conditions (air flow, sun exposure, climate, etc.). It's just one which is not susceptible to any of those issues here in much of SoCal, so it's surprising to hear of it misbehaving elsewhere. Kim


I grow Rock & Roll and Scentimental. Scentimental is always a white rose with red stripes for me, but Rock & Roll starts off in spring and fall as a red rose with white splashes and stripes and fades to the red & pink color as it ages. When the summer heat really sets in, Rock & Roll opens as a red rose with a few pink splashes and stripes. It does always smell wonderful and the red doesn't burn or blue in the sun, but the stripes and splashes just aren't as distinctive.


The first two blooms opened up much more coral orange with just cream shading at base, but the rest of the blooms opened as I was hoping for...creamy white with the coral orange edging. My pics don't do the coral color justice...it's not as red as my pics appear. They are small blooms...maybe 2 1/2 inches...I don't have Dick Clark, so not sure on comparison there. I have seven blooms so far on a bare root planted three months ago. It's been in the upper 80's and low nineties with full out sun since she first opened and first bloom that opened is just now starting to wilt a bit. The foliage is really very green...apple green. The contrast looks great.


My new 'Darcy' seems to have thicker canes than yours. We've had only the most mild and gentle weather here, so no test of their strength. Is it possible yours got too much N fertilizer such that the canes formed were soft and weak? Just wondering.
I use an inexpensive wire tomato cage for small, floppy young roses. That seems to support the canes well without having to provide a stake for each cane and doesn't show much. Then when the rose is older and stronger I take a wire cutter and just cut the cage away and out.

Hoovb -- I think you are right. Being a newbie, I made the mistake of allowing Darcy to get plenty of sun while overwintering it in the garage. Due to the cold snaps we have had here this past spring, poor Darcy, which leaved out too earlier to start with, has had a lot of cold damages once it was moved out of the garage. It suffered more "winter" damage than a Tea that is planted in the ground/did not have any winter protection. I had to prune away a lot more than I would like. I agree that the canes being so brittle has something to do with the exuberant new growth. I only fertilized with Rosetone and fish emulsion, but might have been a little too liberal with the amount applied....
Thanks

Patience. That is a brand new rooted cutting and it may be 2 or 3 years before it matures and starts to look like a decent bush. Whether you see them or not there are leaf nodes along that cane but there is no way of knowing if or when it will sprout them. It may send up new shoots from below instead. Just take good care of it and watch and wait. It's all you can do.

Thanks. I will be patient. :-) I've never had a cane that long decide to be a bush. I think the process of watching it grow, as opposed to my short little cuttings from my floribundas, is going to be different. I shall emerge from the experience a more patient person ;-)

Another word of caution. Chicken wire is designed to keep chickens in, but it is not very good for keeping predators OUT! We lost 14 of 15 pullets this spring learning that important lesson. A raccoon pulled a seam in the chicken wire, opened a hole and created terror and mayhem in the coop.
The good news is that the single surviving chicken, without any chicken-sisters to distract her, is very personable. She follows me around while I garden, will jump on my shoulder (what's a little chicken poop down the back?!) or cuddle in my lap if I sit down and take a break. I haven't worried about any special deposits creating a problem.
It is possible that the reason he is so sweet to people is because that's you are all he has for socialization. He might change his behavior if you add in some good looking women!

Oh Subk3 - thanks for making me laugh this morning (2nd half, not first half of your post!). I think you've just given me motivation to keep humans his only company - I'd be real disappointed if he suddenly became mean.
Good to know about the chicken wire - I feel completely dumb about chickens although I'm reading as fast as I can. Good news is that the horse stall he is in, has 3 sides thick metal walls - think they're about 8' high, with one window with thick metal grate every 3 inches (over that I have chicken wire). Then the stall front is metal (wood fronted) about 4' high, with metal grating to height of other panels. Metal grating is then covered with chicken wire. And then panels to barn ceiling covered with chicken wire. So - he's like in a little chicken Fort Knox. A stall meant to keep in a 1200 lb animal for a little chicken. Which now of course is filled with all sorts of boxes with hay and roosts, it looks like a little chicken playground. I think I better put my attention back on the real compost producers - the horses! But very glad we had a spare stall - the barn is full of new life with a rooster crowing and cackling all day.


The second is a post about 'Therese Bugnet.'
Here is a link that might be useful: Trailer Trash Therese

To the OP if you're still reading - I would pay attention to Mad Gallica. NYS it hilly and once you leave NYC, the altitude and temps are not always rose-friendly.
Down in NYC, most of those roses aren't going to be no-spray. I can grow teas and I'm about a mile from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and they can't,. We're on the perimeter of the zone for those and I happen to have a protected area, whereas in the BBG, they don't, so the winters are much harsher for them.
I'd say forget teas altogether.
I pull out anything I have to spray - I'm not going to spend weekends suiting up and spraying toxins just so I can look at some roses.
What grows no-spray for me is La Marne, a great polyantha that should do well for you too because it blooms into December, Knockout, Prairie Sunrise and Serendipity by Buck, Isabella Sprunt which will die in your region, Climbing James Galway - which gets HUGE, Lyda Rose, Darwin's Enigma, Pink Above All, and maybe Pearle d'Or, which might survive in your area.
Some of them actually do get some blackspot, but they don't defoliate. Most of the other roses I grow are going to die in your climate. In Michigan I also grew Prairie Harvest, Belinda's Dream, William Baffin, and Rose de Rescht and those seemed to do OK except that the first 2 would die down to the ground every year. They did again but I was out there last week and they've sprung right back up. I prune them down anyhow, so the fact that they get significant dieback isn't an issue.
All of the roses are own-root though, so I don't know about grafts as I've only grown 2 roses in my life that were grafted.
Good luck. Just remember, there are thousands of roses and one way to cut down on your choices is to limit yourself to roses that will thrive in your area.

You didn't respond to my point about whether the veins are greener than the background. This would indicate iron deficiency caused by the high pH. I would add 1/2 cup of sulfur per square yard of pH 7.6 soil. It will take a year or more to work. Meanwhile you can apply an iron supplement. The yellow foliage has less chlorophyll and so captures less growth energy than green leaves.

All my established roses and the peace I just planted all have dark green glossy leaves .
I planted three bare root hybrid teas and they all have matte light green leaves. I thought there might be a problem so I looked them up and they are all suppose to have light green matte foliage.



I share your pain, Mori. For many decades, oleanders have been the go-to, all purpose, cast iron shrub in these parts. Once established, the require virtually no water. They're always in flower. They can be left alone to do their thing and look acceptable without pampering. NOTHING eats them due to their toxicity. They exploded back into growth and flower after a chainsaw attack. Since the Glassy Winged Sharpshooter made its way across country from the south and began spreading the oleander specific version of Pierce Disease (grapes), the Oleander Leaf Scorch has decimated them all over the place. Many sources simply won't carry them anymore. There really isn't anything to suitably take their places for color, erosion control, many months long color, durability, privacy, etc. Not that I really LIKE them, but having such a versatile tool taken from your repertoire really puts a dent in things. Kim
"Fortunately, there are varieties of grapes which, to date, have appeared to be immune and resistant to Pierce's Disease. You may not be able to obtain the exact wine you seek, but there should be SOME sort of "grape booze" to satisfy you."
This is true. But were I to substitute the word 'roses' for 'grapes' in the above phrase, I just don't think it would bring great cheer here.
There are, apparently, a few resistant roses, but as with grapes, there will be significant sadness and loss because of the mentioned diseases.