21,400 Garden Web Discussions | Roses




bluegirl,
How do you think I feel? I've been gardening for a long time including roses and I just noticed. I think my long time prejudice for full doubles explains some of why. Also, the bugs have kept me out of the garden in the evening everywhere I've lived.
seil,
I love how you captured the closing and the color change at the same time!

It sounds like a water issue to me. Unfortunately both over watering and under watering can have the same symptoms. Check down deep and make sure that your rose isn't sitting on a bed of clay that is holding to much water around the roots. Roses do not like to have their roots sit in water. After that clear out the weeds around it and take out all that dead wood in the center as well as any blackened cane and see if it comes back. Do not fertilize it because it's already stressed out. Wait for it to show some healthy new growth before you feed it.

thanks everyone. seil. i think you are correct. it was only a week ago that i dug the dead one up and put in a different rose that died within a week after it rained for two days. (hoovb, i had the roses for 3 years. the photo of the dead canes are clippings and are no longer part of the rose bush.)
i will clean out around the bushes. perhaps even the mulch is holding in too much water.

Here's the link from the OGR.
It could be titled "why we need roses other than Knockout".
Here is a link that might be useful: try this link

I've never grown Cl. Tiffany myself, primarily because every one I have ever encountered was a TON of plant for very few flowers. Gorgeous, fragrant flowers, yes, but the bush provides significantly more bang for the buck for its plant size than the climber does in these parts. Kim


seil....my DE has come thru my z4b area winters just fine, only gave it winter protection the first 2 years & the canes above the mulch were green so quite using mulch the last 3 years. At the most I have to clip off 6" or less of the cane tips with winter kill.

When my wife was growing up her mom had roses planted near a huge statue of Mary.
They suddenly changed from there original bloom color to red blooms.
Seeing this my wife always thought that Mary had the power to turn roses to a red color... lol
I tried to tell her it was just the Doc paying a visit but she will not believe me...lol

LOL...it really is funny in a way! I completely know it can happen, but it still surprised me :)
Yes Mzstitch, she was grafted onto Dr. Huey and when the Marilyn part died, the rootstock took over. Not an even trade.
I had thoughts going through my head like "poor Marilyn has turned into a man!!!" and kind of like Merlcat's thoughts "nice quiet Norma Jean became a fierce Marilyn Monroe" ...only with her colors switched! LOL
Jim, I can totally see my grandma thinking the same thing! She's a devout Catholic and always on the hunt for miricles :)
Oh well, on the brightside, that gives me another spot to plant one of my potted roses.
Tammy
This post was edited by TNY78 on Sat, May 18, 13 at 14:08

You took the words from my mouth, Henry! In reading these forums and learning of the struggles with Japanese beetle, how often people spray, BS, rust, etc....honestly I just would NOT bother with more than a very few bushes, facing all those threats. I wouldn't dream of spraying anyway. We have some mildew on certain bushes and aphids too, but I mostly ignore except for hosing off aphids. In July it all goes away. I do feed regularly.
I've been to the Huntington when the roses looked bad, nothing deadheaded and bushes looking scraggly. My fingers itched for a pair of clippers! It might be volunteers who do the deadheading, and maybe it was an off week.

I haven't paid any attention to the 5-leaflet rule for twenty years. It is OK (not necessarily optimal) if you have only hybrid tea roses, but harmful with some cluster-blooming roses, where it can lead you to discard half the plant unnecessarily. These are varieties that form large trusses and candelabra.
Deadheading only helps the plant if that variety sets a lot of hips (fruit), and many varieties do not. Many roses do just fine without being deadheaded.
If you want to fuss with your roses, just pop off the blooms as they fade. When the whole cluster is gone, you can either leave the branching stem tissue or cut it back some, but don't sacrifice a lot of cane unless the plant is getting too tall. The branching stem tissue is capable of producing shoots wherever there is any kind of leaf or leaflike bract. Once the rose produces new shoots, you can cut off the stem tissue above that if you want.
The only rule I follow in deadheading is to remove the minimum stem tissue until the roses gets as big as I want it to be, and to take long stems if the rose is getting too tall or floppy.

I, too, am mystified by the popularity of the old pruning rules since I have observed that growth most certainly follows the knife and when deadheading back on the cane, the rose will push out an enormous amount of fresh green non-flowering growth which will only have to be headed back later in the season or at pruning time.
The only advantage to this (I could see, in my limited experience) was an increase in photosynthesising material.....and as I rarely grow the large flowered sparsely leafed climbers....or HTs, then, this extra foliage is not really any advantage at all.

Thank you all very much for the info. I read at some point that damasks seem to be well adapted to desert conditions.
I'm still suspicious of watering too much, but I have no clue... aren't damasks highly adapted to desert conditions? it doesn't make much sense tho I guess that water would dilute the aromatic molecules like it can the flavor of fruit. I'll keep tryin to find some more info.
I just found this site BTW that suggests rose fragrance peaks in early morning and when blossoms are half open.
Here is a link that might be useful: Rose fragrances info

That's interesting. I don't know whether the areas where roses are commercially raised are high desert or not, but that would affect ambient moisture.
There was a good discussion some time ago re. commercial attar production in Iran:
Here is a link that might be useful: Iranian rose production





And for me I think my roses did great this winter. I did lose 2 in the ground but they were very small to begin with and the fact that the rabbis chewed them up didn't help. And a couple of the seedlings didn't make it either but otherwise everything looks really healthy.
Valerie, did you have a lot of wind this winter? From your description of the canes it sound like they were dehydrated from wind and not from freezing temps.
Things were slow to leaf out here too but that was because it was a really long, cold, cloudy spring. We really didn't get any sunshine and decent weather here until the last couple of weeks. Since then things have just jumped out and I have buds forming everywhere. I've even had a couple of blooms!
I lost at least 2, probably 3 roses this year, plus some well-established clematis plants (one at least 6 or 7 years old). At least one of the roses was also well established. Several of my other roses, although not dead, really took a hit this winter. It was not extraordinarily cold, but we didn't have much snow, so I wondered if it was too dry for them. Normally, I might expect this if we'd had a really cold spell or two with no snow for insulation, but nothing like that happened, so I'm glad to hear that someone else had an unusual winter (although I'm not glad that you had a bad time, just that maybe it wasn't only me). I also would like to know the cause.