22,152 Garden Web Discussions | Roses


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

A VERY healthy white (with some blush pink in the center) that I would recommend is Glacier Magic. This may be a bit thorny. It's a very low grower for me. It may be a floribunda. It always gets loads of attention from visitors. I bought it a couple of years ago from a local nursery on clearance. It had dark glossy green leaves when most other roses were leafless. I don't know why this rose is not more widely known.
Robert

Hi Olga, that is a beautiful and healthy Iceberg. I am with wanttogarden. May I too ask how you get your roses to grow like that; especially Iceberg? I gave up on Abe Darby; it does not like the heat in my garden.
Lynn
This post was edited by desertgarden561 on Mon, Aug 19, 13 at 11:14

I wish you could get your hands on Alissar, Kim - it is one of the most insanely remarkable roses I have ever grown. It starts with the new foliage - a bright crimson, the like of which I have never seen before....and even variagated with creamy patches. Then, the flowers themselves - a deep coral colour which does not fade but seems to intensify - like those ridiculously expensive echinaceas (which never return) a few years ago. A very upright rose, looks fabulous grown with grasses and tall verbenas and gauras...but not, I suspect, selling millions for Harkness. I love it.
Yep, NH, what a trooper - I gave mine away to my regret although Harkness will custom bud another if you ask nicely. I can ignore the worst of Euphrates cos it grows with some deep crimson (Chocolate Soldier) paeonies and looks terrific for 3 weeks at least.

I wish I could, too, Camp! I'd shared my Nigel with Ashdown who had it budded many years ago. When I worked at the nursery on the beach, I'd ordered in all the goodies I'd given them to sell and Nigel was one. In the desert, he flowered for a few weeks, then was over. Two blocks off the Pacific, that sucker flowered for over four months until the plants were all sold! It's in the same climate where Banksieas flower all summer because there is only about ten degrees difference between "winter" and "spring" with both seeming really like the type of weather you'd get in a really nice spring to summer. Real "heat" doesn't arrive there until August, lasting until late October and that's when the once flowering things that will survive there, cease their bloom. It was interesting, and nice, to be able to go to work and be greeted my him for sixteen weeks! I'd grow Nigel Hawthorne again in a heartbeat. Of all the early Harkness hybrids, he seemed to hold the most hope for something really good to come from his genes. Too bad he refused to "play nicely" with other roses. Kim

Hi Alex,
The reason why we buy grafted roses in florida is because of the root knot nematodes found in our sandy soils. These microscopic worms can wreak havoc on rose roots which they find irresistible. Roses on their own roots can and most likely will fall victim and die after a few years.
However roses grafted on to fortuniana root stalk have two advantages. One is that they don't attract nematodes and two is that this specific root system sends down what is known as a 'tap root' which makes it very drought tolerant. A tap root is basically a very long deep growing root that searches for water deep in the earth. Not all plants have this but it is a feature of many drought tolerant plants such as vincas, gauras, cosmos etc. This tap root does have a down side and that is that they don't transplant well. Once the tap root(s) are broken, which almost always happens when transplanting because of their length, the plant then has trouble taking in water and may die or take a long time to recover (essentially trying to grow another tap root to hydrate itself).
Roses on fortuniana therefor can tolerate our intensely hot climates with much greater ease although they may not transplant well.
Keep in mind however that this does not mean that you can't grow any roses on their own roots. Many old garden roses and tea roses (not to be mistaken for hybrid tea roses mind you) are nematode resistant and like our hot climate. Also nematodes don't like organic matter, they like sandy soil, so you may have success with own root roses planted in highly amended soil.
I grow all of my own root roses in containers. I feel I can baby them better this way but that's not to say they can't be well cared for in the ground. Here are a couple of great links that go more into detail about this. As well as a great blog on rose gardening in Fl.
http://miami-dade.ifas.ufl.edu/old/programs/urbanhort/publications/old-roses-for-south-florida.htm
http://miami-dade.ifas.ufl.edu/pdfs/urban_hort/roses-for-south-fl.PDF
http://sherryocala.blogspot.com/
Also, you can purchase roses on fortuniana at cool roses and k&m roses

Hey DSD2682 - Thank you so much for sharing information about growing roses south of Central Florida. Its hard to find an experienced rosarian for this far south. But I am curious as to the Fortuninia tap root. I have been under the impression that Fortuninia did not have a tap root and had a very shallow root system that spread out rather than a tap root. I have never found one on my grafted roses and I moved a lot of my fortuninia grafted roses around. I always thought that it was Dr. Huey had the tap root and tap root was a bad thing in our sand. Whata I know! James Mills seems to agree with you that Fortuninia has a tap root. Of course other professional disagree. I will have to pay more attention to my grafted rose when I dig them up to move them.-)
When you make reference to roses not lasting more than 6 years, are you talking about hybrid teas? I moved away for HTs about 15 years ago. Growing hybrid teas did not suit my garden style. For me the bushes themselves were just plain ugly, beautiful flowers, but even fully leafed out, still not attractive bushes. Oh and the codling of the plants, wew, I am glad I am not doing that any more. So my experience with HT is very out dated. I found that many OGRs are much easier for me to grow and many of my OGRs are well over 12 years old. They also mix well with my other garden plants. Of course every gardener is different. My style is cottage type garden.
I certainly agree that fortuninia is the only way to go unless your roses are in pots. Like you have my own root in pots.
Again thank you for your information on fortuninia rootstock.
Kraig




The bush has 3 or 4 canes that have are sprawled on the slope. i went to home depot and got some small 6 foot stakes. I'll stake the canes and they should be tall enough so the deer can't get the tops.
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