21,401 Garden Web Discussions | Roses


"Bend and Snap."
It's actually what my grandmother always did, and taught me to do.
Then, ARS taught me that was wrong.
Only, then, I found out it really was RIGHT for the roses I grow. So, I'm back to doing what my Nanny taught me to do.
I should have known my Nanny was right. She always was.
Jeri


I honestly liked Mrs. Graham better after seeing her interviewed. After discussing their life and the stresses of his schedule, the interviewer asked if she could ever see herself divorced. She responded, "divorced, no." Then with a hysterical, whimsical look on her face, she continued..."now widowed..." A very honest woman! LOL! Kim


For some reason I can't fathom, my Just Joey is pretty big. I got him as a Grade 1 1/2 grafted bodybag plant (on sale!) at a local hardware store about 9 years ago and planted him in an area that was fairly sandy/gravelly after removal of a funky old hot-tub.
I just took the photo below. The bush is roughly 7' tall and 7' wide and most of the blooms are now sadly hanging and spent, with a final frying from the mid-90s temps we had day-before-yesterday.
As michaelg says, he's probably a California guy; loves the sand-and-hot-tub scene.


Thanks to all of you for your frank advice. I had no idea JJ was so "delicate" in so many areas of the country. Perhaps a cheaper, banded rose would be my best financial bet.
It's just awful how I fall in love with certain roses! Well, maybe not awful in a bad way ---- just awful because I sense, from all of your comments, that my heart's going to be broken yet again. And I guess it doesn't matter if my next JJ is own-root or not. But I'm thinking that this time I'll try her in a wind-protected but still sunny spot. Catspa, maybe when I plant my next JJ, I'll throw some sand and rocks into the hole!
:)

Michaelg, my weed and feed question was a follow up to your 40 years of Round-Up use statement. I cannot remember when a significant number of gardeners started using Round-Up nor when a significant number of homeowners started using Weed and Feed type products. I was hopeing that since you knew about Round-Up use you also knew about Weed and Feed use (time wise).
It seems that most people have at most a few cases a year.
Why did you lose so many roses? Have you ever posted an in detail explanation of what you observed, when, and what steps you took, when? I know that you stated that you used Round-Up once on the roses. Did you use Round-up on anything else? Did you observe or ask the neighbors, whether they were using Round-Up? Did you use a magnifying glass and observe the mites? Also, how did you rule things such as a herbicide contaminated mulch batch. The last may sound far fetched but I have posted news articles about it happening and I did have bad mulch happen to me one season (I had posted it here when it happened. I immediately removed the mulch and watered heavily.)
Back to your statement: "So I think it is wise to assume that fat, thorny overgrowth is RRD."
H.Kuska comment. I still would like to see pictures of what you mean. Earlier I posed that Round-Up could result in "Particulary, please notice they include: "Strange looking, thickened growth, often dark red or purple in color"."
It would appear that "thorny" is the only property that could not be caused by Round-Up in your model.
On my web page I state the following: "I am hesitant to include the "excessive growth of thorns" rule as it may only apply to exclude damage from certain types of herbicides and not others with different modes of action. Also. often healthy young growth can have closely spaced needle like thorns which are not present in older canes. The opposite (no thorns, no RRD) is also NOT a dependable diagnostic that the cause is not RRV. Ann Peck (see E-book link at the bottom of this article) points out: "Hyper thorniness is not a dependable indication of RRD, it does alert rosarians to be vigilant. It appears on some HTs, but sick OGRs and roses related to 'R. multiflora' may have thorns no denser than ususal. Further confusing diagnoses, many classes of old garden roses are extremely thorny and no one could look at a sick rugosa, damask, or spinossissima and declare it�s hyper thorniness to be aberrant. Likewise basal breaks on some healthy HTs appear thornier closer to the bud union, but become less thorny with increasing healthy growth. This year, I have also seen a characteristic of some roses from cold hardy breeding programs to have denser thorns near the base; these roses have a built in rodent deterrent that I had not noticed until a question from New Brunswick about the possibility of RRD in that part of Canada.""

Henry,
I suppose one reason I lost (am still losing) so many roses is that my small garden was overplanted with mature roses, such that each was touching others, if not entangled. I lost four adjacent plants which included the original case, then it skipped one and got the next two. Also there are many wild multiflora in my neighborhood and even on my own very steep wooded lot (which I can hardly get around on nowadays). I did find some infected multifloras at the bottom of my lot and got rid of them. I was lucky to go so long without finding RRD in my garden. It made me a bit complacent about dealing with the first case.
I found a probable RRD shoot high on a cane of Tess, fairly late in the season, and removed the cane. I think it was early in the following season that I found a bad shoot on another cane and removed it. **I was not careful to bag the remains in either case.** Later I found a cane that was growing horizontally in the back of the plant and had produced a half-dozen nasty, fat, thorny lateral shoots, the green leaves having red veins. I removed the plant. By this time the plant had been infected for maybe 10 months. I then began finding symptoms on other plants, first in the immediate vicinity and then in other beds, usually in clusters of two or three adjacent plants.
Most (nearly all) of the plants for which I merely removed the underlying cane have relapsed and had to be removed. I have one apparent cure where I cut the whole plant down to grade. This spring, I have tried splitting the crown of a couple of roses and removing the cane-associated roots. It is too soon to tell whether that will work.


Looks like this:

Half-day sun is adequate. If they are blooming so little, there may be something wrong with the soil drainage or chemistry, or they need more water and fertilizer.
Pruning by 1/3 would probably encourage more bushiness. However, if they are leafing out, pruning now would postpone the spring flush of bloom by a month or so. Normal pruning is done around the time the plants start into growth, or in this case you can prune after the first flush of bloom.

Thanks! They have leaf buds, but they are not open yet. The floribunda is ahead of the knockouts, that has some open leaves.
So pruning should be done as soon as they show some growth? Looks like I might be a week or two behind. I might prune just half....


My parents would drive us from southern Alabama to Miami to visit relatives. It would rain like a fiend in Alabama, but when it starts right at the state line and rains continuously from there all the way to Miami, that was RAIN. I remember it raining so bloody hard, you couldn't see the edges of the road on the Sunshine Parkway as the water was level, straight across the road bed and into the swamps. As long as you followed the lights ahead of you (and they DIDN'T disappear!), you were fine.
Years later, when we lived in Miami Springs, it would rain like heck from a cloudless sky, fill up the front yard so the fish swam out of the fish pond. As soon as it stopped, you had to be out there to collect the fish which got stranded high and dry as the water quickly absorbed into the sandy grass. We'd have as much rain in a day as we now do in Los Angeles in a year! Kim


I got mine from a local grower ...with this winters freeze and thaw chaos I was so surprised how quickly it leafed out , I mean we just had a 24 degree night not two weeks ago. Lots of snow and very cold this winter , so I am now a believer and will get more from them. I love anything that comes back in frigid upstate NY :-)






Thank you sherryocala & ken-n.ga.mts!!
Good news.