22,151 Garden Web Discussions | Roses

My neighbor cuts hers back severely whenever she gets irritated with cercospora fungus on the foliage--she did that around July 1 and they are blooming again now. Don't prune hard during the fall months. I am not sure whether it is already too late in the season in zone 5. I would follow seil's advice.

I notice around here that the regular Knock out grows faster than the double Knockout...More vigor...
What you guys/gals observe in your areas?
Its been cooler here since end of July I have a feeling
that may mean early winter weather this year... :(
I hope not though.....

During the spring I was too cheap to buy it, rationalizing that I could make a similar mix from bulk stuff cheaper.
Now that it's hot as heck I'm snapping it up, mostly at pretty good prices, since it's a bit off-season. That hand-mixing bulk stuff is a pain.
The MG is so fluffy & well-draining. I'm re-potting the bands now in gallons in it. I have them in a 1/2 (good, bought) native soil & 1/2 pine fines (Hapigro landscape mix).
They almost all look very good. Dr. Grill, Mme Charles, Pink Rosette, Coronado, Atomic White are literally climbing out of the pots. The bands I put in the ground with that mix are even bigger. Sunsprite is a 3' multi-caned plant--a couple of canes are probably 3/8" thick. These are spring delivered bands that looked very nice on delivery.
Bands I potted up last fall in the native soil with some coarse mulch are okay, but not near as robust as the plants from spring in the fines/native mix.
The fruit trees we planted in a mostly MG potting mix this spring look fantastic & have never wilted.
Yeah, it seemed extravagant this spring to buy MG but when I look at how the valuable plants we did put in it last spring have thrived--I'm going to get it at the best price I can & stock up.
I just went out & priced peat--2.2cu.ft. bale was $20. I don't think I can duplicate the MG potting mix at the price it's already offered at--& consider the labor--in this heat! I have also tried several store brands but they seem to have less peat & more fines. For my caliche desert area with thin sandy soil, the amount of peat really fluffs the soil & holds the water when mulched without caking up into a dry clump.
I'm going to fluff up the store brands with a bit more peat to get them to a similar tilth. I've also been adding about a tablespoon of Osmocote per mixed gallon in my experimental native + fines mix.
Sorry for the ramble, bottom line: right now I'm leaning towards putting more stuff in MG potting mix when I consider price + labor.

Coir (ground coconut fiber) is signifcantly better than peat and is renewable, where peat isn't. It holds much more water without becoming water logged, so it maintains better soil oxygen. I don't care for Scott's, but so far, the MG Moisture control remains the best around here. Kim


That's OK, Kousa. I do the same thing. I think we all do.
Folks ask for a recommendation, and I race to suggest something I love -- forgetting that I live in a foggy niche along the Southern California coast. Our temperatures are so much gentler than those in most of SoCal.
I'm trying hard to train myself, tho -- to look at where folks are gardening, before jumping in. :-)
Years ago, tho, some friends who were "bigtime" rose exhibitors heard about one of these baking soda/dish detergent "recipes." They sprayed EVERYTHING with it, and lost their entire spring flush. Boy! Was that guy TICKED! So, we do have to consider location, when adopting new ideas. (He should have sprayed ONE bush!)
Jeri


Hi Steve,
It's an "ICEBERG ROSE".
Iceberg is a modern cluster-flowered floribunda rose cultivar. The cultivar is commercially available in two main forms. These are as a tall bush and a standard rose produced by grafting.
Leaves are light green and glossy. Blooms are about 5 cm in diameter and have 25 to 35 petals. Buds are long and pointed. The fragrant flowers usually appear throughout the year.
This post was edited by shrey.jagma on Tue, Oct 29, 13 at 1:35


Excellent idea, the way you overwinter them! I'm on Clear Lake west of Chelsea, how funny, I know your area, used to go to the Metro Beach boat show, loved it.
I used really good potting soil, and they are each in a pot that is ok for it's size, not too big, hopefully not too small. I will keep them from drying out and will get them where they aare just getting morning sun, thanks!

Not universally.
Here in my part of Southern California, half-day sun is fine. Even all-day dappled light. But it will be different in different areas.
One thing -- I think this is a rose that wants plenty of water -- moreso if it is in heat. And it should prefer acidic conditions over alkaline conditions.
Most of all, this is a BIG, BIG rose. It is going to need time to build an extensive rootball, sufficient to support the rose. I would not be at all surprised if it bloomed sparsely for the first few years.
As an example, our massive R. banksia lutea did not bloom at all for its first three years -- didn't grow a lot, either. It had been pickaxed out of a very old garden, and arrived as an ugly stump with minimal roots.
It did little until it had built the root system that it required. Then, it began to grow like crazy, and bloom generously.
Jeri

As Jeri said, the climate you're in does make a difference. Most roses will do OK with about 6 hours of sun light. Some will take more shade than that but most of them want as much sunlight as possible. But heat and sunlight are two very different things. If where you are can get baking hot than maybe a little shade would be beneficial. In my zone I rarely ever get that hot and even when it is that hot it's always extremely humid to go along with it. I also have a short season so I try to give mine as much full sun as I can.


Thanks for the personal reviews. It looks like Medallion will stay for now. In all fairness it's been slowly coming back from near oblivion due to cane borers. As Kitty said, retaining wood may be the secret. Her trellised plant must be quite a picture. However with no luck in your CA gardens both north and south, I very much doubt Antigua would fare very well up here folks. Too bad :(
As for your recommendations:
Maid of Honour - I tried years ago - very vigorous here too Beth, and of course the bloom is beautiful. If I recall I let her go because the apricot faded quickly. I lacked patience back then and maybe didn't give it enough time. Her parent Folklore is a beautiful monster in a neighbor's yard.
Beth, Kitty and kstrong have recommended Brandy who I've wondered about for some time. Glad to hear she's still got fans - I'll put her on my list.
Bunnicula - I'm trying Polka this year for the simple fact that it looks like Just Joey. While I'm very pleased with Polka there's been a JJ at the corner store with a huge fat bud just calling to me...
kstrong and Beth mentioned Marilyn Monroe - she gets points for health and long lasting blooms but I wonder if the green cast makes them appear "cold"? I've never seen her in person so will take your advice.
Charlesstpete you've hit on two I've tried before: Apricot Nectar and Charming Apricot (Charles Austin?). Apricot N. was another I may have judged prematurely. I yanked 3 out thinking they weren't double enough and faded too quickly in my garden. Like I said I didn't realize how much roses can improve with a few years under their belt. Charles Austin here was rangey and slow but the positive reviews have me rethinking both. I wonder could Charles supplant Breath of Life, who struggles for me.
(Apricot Vigorosa I'll read up on more, but the HMF photos show a smaller bloom than I'm looking for.)
Over the Moon - Oh My kstrong that's a nice one - and healthy too. It jumped right onto my list giving poor Lucille Ball a sharp elbow!
Thanks again all for your help. Your personal experiences are invaluable.

Ugh, I never could use blood (or feather, or bone) meal after witnessing how they are collected. No snark to people who do, I just don't want to use them. Yeah, they are by-products of the slaughtering, so they might as well be used, but..
Anyhoo, it's easy for me to get nitrogen from alfalfa, cottonseed meal or whatever.
Yeah, feed stores are a great resource for organic fertilizers.


Spinosad is effective on sawfly larvae...
Spinosad is toxic to bees when wet.
So, I spray right after the sun goes down so the spray has time to dry...
Remember all gardens are different. In some gardens rose slugs may only cause minor damage, some others moderate to severe damage. It depends.
Here some damage on our Dogwood bushes from Dogwood Sawfliy larvae... I do not worry to much about these bushes...lol


Ok this Heirloom Rose own-root band was planted by me
about 3.5 weeks ago.
I recently found rose slug damage and 2 mature sized rose slugs on it.
So that leads me to believe Rose Slugs can crawl up into a rose bush...

This post was edited by jim1961 on Tue, Aug 20, 13 at 8:29

Link is below but I found this short video on You Tube of a close-up of a rose slug eating a leaf...
Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Slug eating video

Also, if you have some larger pots (14" on up) they weigh a TON when moving, and you can't stack them on anything or each other - unless you have shelves in the truck/vehicle where you can wrap them so they won't fall over or down (I had lilies in bud that were very fragile) - so, you need lots of flat surface that isn't going to be damaged by water drainage. A friend of mine used a double layer stock trailer on her move from Tennessee out to California. (Truthfully, she used 2 - 1 for the stock, and 1 for all her house and garden plants).
AND, you need a decent cart to tote them around from yard to truck/vehicle to yard. I happened on a great cart at Costco a few summers ago, rated for 1200 pounds, so as long as I could fit the pots in the cart, the cart was good to go. Funny, DD quit pulling it anywhere after 2 trips, so I did the rest of the hauling. It's easy to carry one or two large pots from yard to truck. After that, your fingers are on fire and not very functional.
My pots jammed all over the truck floor were fine - they were too tightly packed to slide around or fall over. The things hanging on the rope I strung across the width of the truck were fine (I tied them into the multiple strands of rope going across), but the things hanging on the side of the truck itself didn't fare too well when the truck went over some bumps/dips/speed bumps in the road, even though I had slowed to a crawl for the actual speed bumps. Road bumps were taken at freeway speed, as I was ON the freeway and had no warning. My biggest epi came unpotted and lost some very long leaves. A spider plant bounced clear out of its pot and looked completely bedraggled for months after. There was a lot of other minimal damage to things that grew out fast enough that I didn't mind the damage.

You can't reverse time and change having cut it off, but if it had been me, I would have waited. Alot of times when my roses put out new growth, it will look red, kind of limp and different from the rest of the bush. Sometimes that just happens.. Dont worry though, it will grow back.
Maude

You should have posted pics before cutting it all off. It sounds to me like it was probably just normal new growth. All roses have their own look when they produce new growth. Much of it is red and soft until it has time to mature. That's why they call it "hardening off" when it matures. New leaves are often crinkled until they grow out and green up too. You need to be patient and observant to see how each of your roses grows normally so you'll know when something is different. And don't compare one variety to another. They all have different personalities.

You have cercospora, spot anthracnose, and powdery mildew (just beginning). We call it the midsummer trifecta because that's when they often show up around here, but it can happen at other times. You might have a little black spot too.
You can see the beginning of powdery mildew by the curly leaves.
Cercospora and spot anthracnose often show up simultaneously because their conditions for growth are essentially the same. Around here, we tend to look for them following a midsummer heat wave. . YMMV
Generally, the standard rose fungicides that you use for black spot are also labeled for anthracnose and cercospora . So if you are spraying your fungicides on a schedule, you shouldn't see much of them. Those fungicides will usually take care of your PM as well
This post was edited by nickl on Mon, Aug 19, 13 at 10:11




In zone 7 you should order bare roots for delivery in March--or potted roses in late April.
I think you got last autumn's leftovers. Wait for fresh stock--it makes a huge difference.