22,152 Garden Web Discussions | Roses

Moles loosen the dirt, disturbing the roots. They eat earthworms, NOT plants. Gophers eat the roots of the plants. I've never had gophers eat the entire plant. If the WHOLE plant is gone, someone stole it.
Get out your hose. Turn it on high. Begin poking it into the mounds of soil you find to see if the water flushes the plug out of a tunnel. If it suddenly finds the tunnel and the water flushes into the soil, you have gophers. Mole tunnels run just under the surface. Gopher can tunnel many feet down. If you have pocket gophers, you CAN flush them out with the water. I have stomped three this way in the past two months and literally drown one with the hose four days ago. The one I found eating a perennial (whose name will not come to mind) in the highest front raised planter night before last, I flooded and couldn't catch him. I took the dogs out and in the front lights I could see the plant shake. It's at eye level from the house level. I grabbed the flash light and hose and easily found his tunnels but not him. Dangit!
I have tried EVERY trap known for gophers and none work well with these. Ours are smaller than the usual, not even the mole traps work. They just tunnel around them. Cooke's Gopher Bait (poisonous) works well and I use it where I know the Toy Fox Terrors won't be able to get to it or the carcasses. Otherwise, I flush their poop and lots of water down the tunnels until they either stop activity in the area or I continue working with the hose until I can find and stomp or drown the critters. If you do actually get him, put his carcass back in the hole and leave it. Not only do they make great fertilizer, other gophers stay away from the decomposing animal until it is fully gone. Good luck. You may need it. Kim

There's not enough water in the world to flood the gopher tunnels here. The warren of tunnels extends all over the hillside. Maybe all of Camarillo . . .
I have found that gopher holes DO make a great place to put dog poop. And it DOES seem to drive them away from that area. Katie has a real talent for digging them up and killing them, but it does play h*ll with the "lawn."
We have a new vermin-control device here lately, however. It seems to be effective on gophers, rats, and squirrels . . . NESTING HAWKS. I sort of wish we could keep them here ALL the time.
BTW -- this is why we do not use poison on vermin. I don't mind if a gopher dies in agony, but I don't want to chance harming the hawks.
Jeri


Hi Mark
Roses Unlimited (rosesunlimitedownroot.com) has both Christian Dior and Livin' Easy listed. I don't think you'll find all three from the same vendor - I got my Singin' in the Rain from Rogue Valley. Both are great companies, and Roses Unlimited has large gallon pot roses that will settle in well even relatively late in the year as now. Given that you're in Iowa, it's definitely rose planting season, and the extra size is a boost toward winter survival. The postage isn't too bad from Roses Unlimited for you being on the edge of the Mississippi.
Cynthia


Thanks everybody.
Yes it is all roses but the program only gives you limited plants to work with in the trial version so I had to use begonias to represent white roses LOL.
We are still a ways off before being able to plant. We will put the buxus in the ground in November and I think the roses will go in the following autumn. Currently we are working on clearing the land. We dug out 6 tree stumps from that tiny front yard LOL. Someone also thought it would be a good idea to dump a ton of rocks into the ground and then cover it up with dirt making it impossible to put a shovel in the ground. So now that the tree stumps are out we are taking the rocks out one by one. Its tedious!
The buxus is ridiculously expensive to buy in the size I actually want them to be in so I will be buying smaller versions and give them a chance to grow before I plant the roses. The difference in price by doing this is immense. If I bought them in the size I want them to be it would cost 1800 Euro (roughly 2100 dollars) but If I buy them in smaller sizes it will only cost around 640 Euro (roughly 800 dollars)
Anyways glad you guys liked my design. The original design had the buxus in an octagon shape in the center and the four corner boxes had an angular row (see picture) this really limited the walking space but looked nice. I still havent sold my husband on the new design yet lol but i'll talk him into it unless he manages to talk me out of this one.



Small rose bushes that do well in (some) shade in my garden are Marie Pavie (or is mine Mary Daly?) and the Towne & Country series of groundcovers by Poulsen (hard to get now in the US).
Marie is thornless, so that's nice by a pond!


The common rootstock varieties will not bloom on canes that are new this year-- only on canes that have been through winter. They are once-blooming or June-blooming varieties. New canes (of repeat-blooming roses) that started in April will bloom soon, while canes of once-bloomers will just keep growing through the summer. You may have some plants with a mixture of rootstock canes and scion (grafted, repeating variety) canes. These will have different leaves and maybe different thorns. Locate the graft, and remove the canes coming from below it. You need to rip these out at the point of origin, and not just cut them back.
I'm guessing you are in the PNW or your roses would be in full bloom by now.

Heres a pic of our Rose Slugs. They have turned a white
color from being sprayed with safers insecticide soap...
These guys are still little... Our guys can be found on top of the leaves but they also hang out on the UNDERSIDE of leaves...



There are two or three kinds of rose slugs, but the ones in my garden are only on the underside of the leaves. If I don't find any there, it's because the wasps have picked them off. Usually the predators get on top of the rose slugs after a while and they are not a continuing problem--but in some gardens they can be. I wouldn't use spinosad on them for fear of hurting the predators. For soap to be effective, you have to coat the underside of the leaves where there is feeding damage, and it's about as easy to wipe the worms off with your thumb.

It's rather late to give advice to the original poster (who posted in 2009!), but since this thread has been called up again, let me just add my experience with Double Delight--my most BS prone rose in my garden.
We've had continual rains here also--which means more BS than usual. Predictably, DD came down with a major BS attack. On a dry day, I sprayed it with the Bayer fungicide. Then I pruned it back a bit more than usual--but not drastic pruning, but a bit more. I was hoping the pruning would stimulate DD to put out new canes and other growth. Then, because I had no alfalfa cubes on the property, I got out my Plant-Tone which contains alfalfa (plus some other goodies) and generously spread it around the base of the plant and watered it in. Then I went off and did other things for a week or two instead of hovering over the plant.
Checked Double Delight out yesterday--it has so much new growth that I can hardly believe it. New canes from the soil line (I bury my grafts), strong growth along the old canes, red leaves everywhere. It's looking better than it did at the beginning of the season after its early spring pruning/feeding.
I don't know which of those things produced the "magical" transformation of my DD--the continual rain probably helped since it has not really been heavy rain--just continual. I personally think it was the combination of pruning a bit heavier than usual plus Plant-Tone with alfalfa in it that made the difference.
DD has so much heavy, beautiful new growth on it that I snuck in a preventative fungicide spray of all those red leaves. Normally I don't spray ahead of time--but I didn't want to lose that wonderful new growth this time--cuz it is still raining almost every day here!
Kate

Dublin, I'm so glad you posted this because that's the exact reaction I would expect a rose to have and therefore the advice I gave above. (Sorry, I revived this old thread because I felt the question was a good topic, what to do once BS has had its way with a rose). I live in a frost free climate and since I don't have the winter to let my roses go dormant and prune I do my pruning when roses in my garden become lanky and defoliated. I just prune it, give it some fertilizer (rose tone is great) and they bounce right back with more foliage and more flowers. Yes you get a smaller plant for the season perhaps and there will be a longer wait for blooms, but over all you'll get better health/blooms and the plant should be stronger come winter than if you left it long and lanky with no leaves to try and support itself. :)
PS my Double Delight is also the MOST BS ridden rose in my garden. But love those blooms!

Hi Zumajay, I hope you get several answers because I am so new to this but the blooms look like my Trumpeter and if I am not mistaken the Trumpeter is on the small side. I planted some in front of my house because they aren't supposed to get very tall. The blooms are small but I think the color is just breathtaking. Some of you folks that really know your roses please correct me if I'm wrong.


Regarding growth w/o an agar source. Apparently the paper always used at least some agar. It is based on a Ph.D. Thesis. Perhaps there would be some information in the Historical Section that would answer your question. This is what the paper states: "The basal-synthetic culture medium was the glucose-asparagine medium of Lilly and Barnett (1951) adjusted to pH 6.0.medium."........... (H.Kuska comment: In one kind of experiment) Cellulose and starch were incorporated into the basal-synthetic medium which was solidified with 2 per cent agar. High-grade filter paper cut to a pulp in a Waring Blendor was used as a cellulose source, and soluble starch was employed at approximately 10 g./l".......... "Growth on cellulose and starch, though not dense, is quite good after six weeks."
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There appears to be a pH effect on germination. The following is a quote from the full paper: "The greatest mycelial growth occurred at the lowest pH value at the end of the third week. As the pH started to rise more growth would be expected to take place, but on the contrary, the mycelial dry weights were less at the end of the fifth and sixth weeks."
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Glad my question helped some other people out too! Thanks. :) This has been a very informative site and very helpful for a newbie like me.
I hope I don't start bugging people with questions! I've been reading back posts too to keep them down some LOL. And it's good to know that becoming obsessed with roses isn't a new thing :) My husband won't have to cart me away to the mental ward.
Cas

I grew a couple roses for 1 season in miracle gro moisture control potting mix and they grew quite well.
This year the same potting mix is 2-3 years old and I'm
growing tomato plants in the pots... I sprinked some Dr Earth (Life all purpose) granular fertilizer in the pots and there growing really good...(Tomato plants)
The Tones are much easier to find local though so that's probably what I'll get when this runs out.....

I really like your idea!
I would purchase 4X4 outdoor lumber posts. Use a post hole digger and sink the posts into the ground. I would then attach the benches to the posts vertical as trellises. Paint the posts the same color as the trellises.
Make sure the above ground height of the posts is at least 2/3 of the height of the trellis.
This post was edited by lsst on Mon, Jun 3, 13 at 19:21

Oh gosh, mine is a monster! It gets a good 6 feet tall every season no matter how far I have to prune it back in the spring. But it's typically tall and narrow like most HTs. It blooms in flushes with about an 6 week cycle so I usually only get 3 flushes. But they're gorgeous and huge and last on the bush for at least a week if I let them. It's fairly healthy although it will spot some but it's never defoliated on me. It's potted on the patio where it gets the best sun. It's been very winter hardy too. All in all I'm very pleased with mine.

i know how you feel. i have one that has ben passed down though 5 generations. there are several at my 92 year old great great grand mothers sisters house. its ben there some where near 100 years. it was there mothers rose. i do wish you the best of luck. i hope it blooms for you next spring.

Do a bunch of cuttings before you move it if you can, imho, yeah. Then the move won't be so scary!
It'll probably do great. When it's cooler sometime in September is probably when I'd do it since you don't know about the winter hardiness of the rose. That gives it a few months to settle in before the real cold comes.
Cuttings are babies and not as hardy as they will be later. I make 2-liter-bottle open-top greenhouses for them outside in the winter, and that seems to help. I do it for any marginal small plant, and it works much better than being in the open cold in my yard. I just cut off the very top and bottom so there is a clear 'collar' that's several inches tall. Then I put it around them.
Hardiness here is usually a matter of 5-10 degrees (on Teas or similar, not most roses), so I don't know how it would work in places that need more extra warmth than that.


If it was a body bagged rose, there is a liklihood of it being a rose that is not named - just a rose that was bagged up and given a name. Usually not the correct one. I bought some beautiful potted roses from Walmart a few years ago, was excited to get roses like New Year, Old Timer, cant recall the rest. I put them in a great raised bed, coddled them all winter and when spring came - they were all the same orangish colored rose and were most certainly not what they were supposed to be. Worse......even with the best of care, they all sickened and died. That did it for me on the bagged or potted roses from stores like Walmart. What a waste of time. My guess would be its an unknown, unamed rose and unless some more knowledgable than me can come up with a name - I would just enjoy it and not worry about a name. Hope I am wrong and it can be identified - but I have become suspicious of bagged/potted roses from box stores since my experience. Good luck!
Thanks, guys!
Good information, Cynthia!
Alameda -- I had no idea that there were just random roses out there, I thought they were all something named (possibly mislabeled, but still named) unless you were growing from hips/seeds yourself.
This is only my second year growing and I kind of threw together this bed with body bags from Lowe's and online orders from Heirloom and Rogue Valley so I'm hoping I didn't mix anything up although I'm pretty sure that the Gene Boerner was a bagged one.
Anyone grow Carefree Beauty or Neon Lights or do you all think this one is just an unnamed mass produced one?