21,401 Garden Web Discussions | Roses

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.

Yes. Definitely burnt. NOT blackspot.
You're in the Antelope Valley? Here at the coast, we've had two sieges of high wind, low-humidity, and abnormally high temps. I'm assuming the desert was NO FUN. I'm not surprised foliage burned -- even if you HADN'T sprayed it with anything.
There are good images of blackspot on roses, at the link below. I always think, it looks a bit like someone dropped dark ink on a paper towel. You're unlikely to have it, in desert conditions. (Rust, yes. Blackspot, no.) But this is DAMAGE, rather than disease.
Jeri
Here is a link that might be useful: PIX OF BLACKSPOT ON ROSES

Bingo! Jim, in our heat and sun, it's always a great idea to make sure all the plants are as heavily watered as possible before using any fertilizer. Then, water that fertilizer in well after application. This year is even weirder than last with heat and sun spikes. As long as your drainage is OK, you can't water too much for the plant in our conditions. You CAN use too little, particularly with any fertilizers and other "chemicals", especially in the next four to five months. Kim


Yes, the rosebuds are coming directly from the bud union. I'll try to get a picture later today after the party is over. It has had the same attention as the rest of them. I feed them with Mills Magic Mix each spring and then during the summer I give them the Easy Feed??? I think that's the proper name. These products are wonderful!!
We had very little cold weather this year and since all of the other roses have been so pretty, I don't know if that could be the problem. I think anything is possible since the weather has been so erratic.
Thank you for your help and I'll get back later with a picture.

We are on "The Ridge" in Florida, which was the first part of the state to rise out of the sea. Very alkaline sand is our "soil". My flower beds don't resemble the soil found in our pastures due to the improvement of the soil in them, all done with horse manure, kitty litter, and wood chips.

One nice thing about an old lot on a slope that stops sloping before the end of your lot, just means some shoveling and a wheel barrow to get your fine top soil back.
The bad thing is you have to push all that dirt back up the hill. (Three guesses what I did today :) and those roses better appreciate it)
Last week I realized the downside of having amended the garden beds so well. I could not dig a strong hole for a fence post. The sides just crumbled in happily. Ended up pulling up metal posts (also too easy) and pounding them extra deep to attach the picket fence posts to them good thing the fence only has to keep out chickens and future grandkids. And will have a thorny rose to remind people not to lean too hard on it.
I wish I had amended the big rose bed more before planting. But no idea where I would want to dump that hard clay, so guessing it will just be a good place to layer more horse manure and oak leaves for the foreseeable future.


I found 2 websites that address the nitrogen testing problem. One from Cornell Univ. and one from Utah State Univ.
They are different, but the same. Seems as though N is too hard to test accurately.
Thanks. I wouldn't have looked any further without input from this forum. Now, as suggested, I will let the plants tell me if they require something.
ak

Available nitrogen is transitory in the soil. Once it evolves into the nitrate form, it washes out of the soil. But with organic N sources containing proteins, bacteria are at work breaking them down and liberating available N as urea (which evolves into ammonium and finally nitrate). In cool, wet soils, there may be a temporary shortage of available N, because the bacteria need warmth and air. Also, if you applied compost that is not fully finished, that can cause a temporary shortage.
If the plants are actually short of N, the leaves will be an even pale green all over the plant. As Jim noticed, they are good and dark.

Ha...yes i guess i did know pruning it would make it grow...I guess what I WANT is the part that's already trained onto the arbor to do the growing, to reach the top!
Last year I seriously butchered the plant, including some nice looking canes, because I thought I had to destroy the powdery mildew. But it seems to be happy nonetheless.
That said I know nothing about roses as this is my first. I guess I was thinking that cutting the canes I don't have room for on the arbor would push the growth to the ones already there. I do not fully understand the growing cycle esp of climbers since I know pruning them is different. I will leave the canes...and maybe try to find a place for them, or whack them back later?

ZD makes tons of basals. Mine was like a bamboo patch. with 20 or so 8-foot canes after a few years.
The old basals, insofar as they are semi-horizontal, will bloom heavily on laterals, and this will provide the early bloom. Then, if you let the new basals grow and bloom, they will prolong the spring flush into mid-summer, blooming at the top. Then any later bloom will come at the tips of late-starting basals. In other words, ZD does not repeat very well on the old canes, but the new canes help to compensate for that. At least, that is how mine behaved.
I fear your arbor is too small for such a lusty grower. But I'm sure you want to give her a fair trial. If you want to contain growth, here are some things to try:
Withhold water and fertilizer starting at midsummer, because you aren't going to get much late bloom anyway. Let the new canes grow out and bloom. Don't prune them out in summer, because the plant will just replace them. Next spring, cut some of the canes back to various lengths (2'-4'-6'). These will make blooming laterals at the various levels for the spring flush. After a few years, when you have too many canes, begin removing 1/3 of the canes, older ones, at the base every year. I would do this after the old canes have finished their spring bloom.

For in between, how about some daffodil & narcissus bulbs? Deer don't eat them - really - they are evidently poisonous. I have even had squirrels dig them up (this is only within 24 hours of them being planted), and then leave them untouched on the surface of the soil.
Jackie

I have a 20 year relationship with RDV, so I couldn't bring myself to tossing it. I dug a hole in the slope where I have my other old garden roses. I dug up the RDV and there was a large, deep tap root so things didn't go well. I put it in a bucket of water and planted Peace in the hole. Things went well; plant and soil came out of the container undisturbed and the plant wasn't root bound. I took the soil from the hole and mixed it with soil conditioner and planted RDV bare root in the container Peace came in. If it survives the summer, I'll transplant it next winter.


Here's a link to Rose Chat Radio's coverage of the Biltmore International Rose trials. Interviews with Mike Athy, Michael Marriott, Chris Pellett and others.
Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Chat Radio - Biltmore Rose Trials Broadcast

catspa, unless said noisette is blown down during a storm and has to be cut back to almost nothing...then you should see the new growth sprout up! I hated having to cut down my Reve d'Or before it bloomed, but the bright side is that it did have a lot of gall on one of the largest canes, so I got rid of that.

Buford, I wouldn't doubt it! (I was sorry to hear your report of this mishap, by the way, in an earlier thread.) The vigor of a tea-noisette that's doing well is a force to be reckoned with. I prune the MAC on the west side of the house really hard every year (taking off whole canes -- not, heaven forbid, by shortening them!) so the path doesn't get totally blocked. She responds to the insult to her quest for world domination with ever more vigorous sprouts -- all over, but the ones lower down tend never to make it to the sun and die. Ditto Jaune Desprez, also along the west side alley and pruned pretty stiffly every year.
Anyway, here's this year's picture of the MAC against a north-facing wall that has not put a basal up in years:

Here's the MAC on the west side of the house whose sprouts from the lower half of the trunk pretty much never survive:

Here's Jaune Desprez where, again, sprouts from the lower half of the trunk rarely make it up into the light:





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 ;-)