22,152 Garden Web Discussions | Roses

Thank you so much for all your suggestions. They have been very helpful. I think it was Ann that mentioned Goodwood Plantation--we previously lived in Tallahassee and bought a few of their old roses. In fact, I brought one with me that didn't have a name on it but it will grow into a little tree with boughs of branches and clusters of little pink roses. It is doing well so far. Thanks for the idea of getting their CD. Sue

Thanks for the Petals from the Past info! I've got 2 daughters at Auburn and I've been thinking it would be worth a little detour to take I-65 north home by way of Montgomery instead of 280 for the return trip after I drop them off at school next month. I can pad my new "empty nest" with more roses!

I figure anything looking good in August in Alabama has a chance to look good here!

Heirloom ships year round but they won't ship until the weather in your area is okay, so there may be a small delay if its way too hot. I have two roses that should be here Fri and two more I just ordered today that should ship next week. I've placed about 4 orders in total with them since the beginning of June. I haven't had to wait long for anything so far and everything has shown up in great condition. I hate that you had a mix up, but they should ship Joey pretty quick :)

Solved the mystery of this rose. It is fragrant plum!! I emailed heirloom roses and they said it looks like the fragrant plum I ordered from them.

I tried to keep everything properly labeled but apparently failed. This does look like the fragrant plum although I thought it was more of a purplish blueish color. My bad! I thanked them for straightening it out for me. So much for trying to stay organized and not mix up my roses ha?

What you can do now is hose off the roses well, and then give them a LOT of water, every day, for a while. That might help.

In future, everyone is correct that anything that will kill poison ivy will kill roses. If this was in my garden, I would clothe myself in long sleeves, gloves, etc., and dig out the poison ivy with a shovel. Then throw everything, and myself, into the wash.

Jackie

One spring my daughter sprayed all my roses with poinson ivy killer when I asked her to spray fungicide...The best thing to do is water throughly every day. I only cut back as it turned brown. Out of 58 roses I only lost 4 and those 4 were the ones that were struggling anyway. Good Luck

Thanks, should I take any action to get the pH to 6.5 or so?

If you have typical roses from the garden center, these are usually grafted on Dr. Huey rootstock that is fine at pH 7. If you have roses on their own roots, some varieties will develop iron deficiency at around pH 6.8.. The new leaves will be pale with greener veins. Other varieties will be able to take up enough iron.

To lower pH of heavy soil, add 1/2 cup of plain sulfur per square yard and wait six months for it to work. Use less in light, sandy soil. At pH 7, treatment is optional.

They're here, but compared to fire ants, they're a minor problem. I got in fire ants this morning and had to come out of my pants and shoes and socks out in the garden. It's good I have no neighbors.

** Rasberry, however, isn't so optimistic.

"It's gone too far," he says. "There's no turning back." **

Unfortunately, this Rasberry person is probably right.

Kim,

I didn't really make myself clear....I was only asking if deadheading in this heat was good for the roses. I'm afraid that I fall into your friend's category. I make goals for myself and generally complete them.

No problem deadheading early in day when it's not so hot. Now, putting up the shade cloth was a chore!

In the middle of this reply, I just ran out and deadheaded the babies. Also, remember that I have only 13 bushes, so it's not really a big deal.

Thanks and have a lovely 4th.

andrea

Thank you, Andrea. Happy Fourth to you, and everyone else, too. Extreme spikes stress everything. If it's the same old, same old summer stuff, go for it. I figure if it's a good time for me to rest, they probably won't mind one, either. Kim

Thank you, Michael and Tom! I am at a stage that I know RRD exits, but don not know nearly enough to tell what's normal and what's not. Being a newbie to roses does not help either.... Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge here and elsewhere on this forum. I personally have learned a great deal from both of you.

It's really important to be vigilant about RRD. You SHOULD be suspicious. This one was worth asking about because of the multiple shoots.

Generally very vigorous but healthy growth will start looking more normal within a few days, while RRD growth becomes weirder.

Shoots go blind because they run short of water or chemical energy. Chemical energy is sugars and starches stored in the tissues below. Sugars and starches are manufactured by leaves in sunlight. The blind shoot now consists of leaves in sunlight, producing food energy for the plant.

A clump of blind shoots on an established plant usually means something is wrong with the underlying cane (canker or winter damage). These canes should be removed as they will never support strong growth and good flowering. Meanwhile they may be casting shade on healthier foliage.

However, blind shoots on a young or weak plant are normal. They are beneficial and should be left alone. The only thing that can build strength for growth in a plant is leaves in sunlight.

In greenhouse rose production, there is a technique called "bent canopy." They break the blind shoots over and let them hang in the aisle to catch sunlight and feed energy into the plant. This maximizes the amount of photosynthesis and increases cut rose production.

Michaelg--apologies to original poster for hijack--I've been on these rose forum boards for 10 + years and continue to learn so much from your posts. Thank you!

Thank you Andrea. I'm working on making tags for the roses. Going to try and include a pic of my 2nd prototype. Third is in the oven now.

Oh to be 30 again!

Oh, I have first time blooms today too. Will post those at some point too.

Scott

No problem.

(If you wonder if something is frass or insect eggs, the way to tell is to take the things and immerse in water. Frass disintergrates, eggs don't.)

so sorry, i thought i had posted my zone. zone 8 NC.

when they bloom again i will try to get pics. thanks for all the advice so far

No need to wait until they bloom... You can post clear closeup pics of any spotted leaves etc.
So the problem can be positively ID-ed...

If you want to know the name of your rose bushes then you would need clear pics of the entire rose bush, blooms, leaves, branching, etc.

Of the four roses I planted, DD is doing the poorest. It was a young plant and got sprayed with a lot of deer repellant when it was young. If it doesn't shape up by the end of the season, I will replace it with another DD next winter. I've had excellent luck with DD in the past in the same garden.

There are many reasons a bloom may pancake. It's just that at this time of year, heat is the most likely suspect. The growth and nourishment normally required for the bloom is short-circuited by the tremendous pressure on the bud to open. Lack of water can excerbate this, too.

St. Patrick is known for being hugely heat-tolerant, but under the right conditions during high-heat, its blooms will pancake with consistency. Double Delight is another one I've seen do this. Mister Lincoln will do it, too.

Some roses get smaller under heat stress, some pancake, some do both.

Nickl's advice is a good rule of thumb for gauging your preferences for how your garden looks. Another thing to consider is competition for water resources, and how much water your rose and companion plants want. A well-established rose might be able to share water with a perennial where a new planting might be happier with more space around it. If water is a low commodity (as in California), I'd think folks would keep the perennials farther away and save the water for the roses. In VT, you probably have enough water to go around.

You also want to consider the water conditions each plant wants, which is why lavender may be a poor companion for roses in some places, since they want it drier than roses do. Coreopsis is pretty adaptable so it should be fine if the rose is fine. I'm definitely on the cottage garden side of things, so there are perennials or other plants bumping up against virtually all my roses, or at least within the drip lines, and they're usually fine with that. The only thing I have to watch is to make sure the mulch doesn't gather up too much around the woody base of the rose, or it'll encourage canker.

If you like the look of the coreopsis under the rose, and the threadlead variety should stay low enough not to compete for vertical space, then you could try letting it share the space for a while and watch the roses for signs of water stress (or canker). If they seem happy, then you can suit yourself as fits your style.

Cynthia

Thanks. Right now, in Vermont, we're drowning in rain, but even under normal conditions, water isn't an issue. I guess I was more concerned about the coreopsis shading the bottom of the rose and hurting it that way. It is certainly within the drip line of the rose. It's not really an esthetic issue, but canker might be a possibility with the rain we've had. Thanks for the responses.

Check out Lavaglut , a dark rich red, & Black Forrest, an ADR rose, both sold by Palatine. 2 good red Easy Elegance roses that should be hardy for you in z5 are Kashmir & Como Park & also Dr. Buck's Polonaise.

Hi Zaphod

First, to be perfectly honest, I'm an unrepentant zone pusher and I don't mind trying roses that aren't supposed to be hardy in my zone only to find that they are. There may be some roses that'll survive in MY zone 5 (but not other zone 5 areas) because we have really hot dry summers, which may give them a stronger start to survive the winters. Also, I do winter protect the roses with leaves around their bases, though I've been getting slacker about that in the past few years.

Having said that, I grow Peggy Rockefeller in the ground, an own root from Roses Unlimited. She's on the side of my house that's a zone 4 pocket, so that speaks well to her winter survival odds. As I recall, I think she's one of the roses that appreciates having the winter protection and I usually remove most of her cane that's above the protection (in that case, it's an intact bag of leaves rolled up against her side for the winter). Still, I think she's at least root hardy in my zone, and I'd definitely give her a try. She has a great dark red color and grows at least 3 feet for me, probably average on the blackspot resistance. By now, the BS sensitive roses have defoliated for a while, but she's OK (I'm also pretty tolerant of BS, though).

Cynthia