22,153 Garden Web Discussions | Roses
The rose came from my friend's spray garden, so there probably were no thrip predators. Hopefully, I talked her into using something less toxic like Serenade when her roses get mildew instead of the stuff she used this season.
I found this interesting article from Paul Zimmerman: Got Thrips on Your Roses? Get Aphids? It talks about how aphids are food for the thrip predators. I used to reach for a bottle of soap and water to spray on aphids, but now I think I'll leave them alone so the beneficial predator bugs will have something to eat early on. A few aphids aren't nearly as bad as thrips and the good guys like the hoverflies will soon follow :)
Thanks, again. Hopefully this rose will look better next season. It looks terrible now.
This might all be moot. A day of rose shopping netted nothing much that might work. I think I should have tackled this project a month ago. And the narrow space and the tracking of petals is a valid concern. I am thinking it ove. Meanwhile, I do thank everyone for the good advice.
You have the most important thing Morning Sun. This is good (so the Rose leaves don't get wet for too long, to fend off diseases.). Alnwick Castle is the greatest smelling rose. Mayflower smells good and is very cold hardy. both are very upright, so try to prune to just above an outward facing bud eye ( set of five leaves pointing away from center of plant.) to get them to spread out.
Sam
The other thing you can do as you plant roses, and obviously plan for more roses in the future (as you'll be hooked), is to prepare the soil across that bed as well as possible. In many places, simply amending the planting hole with compost and manure can encourage the rose to hunker down in that small amended space and not really expand to the real soil where it needs to be. If you have time to spade in some compost into the whole bed, that's a quicker solution. The lazy solution (obviously my way) is to add a lot or compost, leaves, grass clippings, wood chips to the top of the soil across the bed and let the worms do your work for you. In Virginia, you have to watch not keeping too much moisture near the rose, since you're in a prime area where blackspot and other diseases can get particularly annoying. Some folks like to pot up their bands from places like Heirloom in a gallon pot till they get a few more roots on them before planting in the ground, and that might give you a chance to add some good stuff to the soil. None of this is probably absolutely necessary, but since you're asking ahead of time what everyone is suggesting are some ideas to boost your chances for these roses.
Oh, and don't forget to be patient with these roses. They may sit there and look like nothing much all this year, bloom a little here and there next year, and you'll think - what a dud! Roses take at least 3 years to really get settled in, and the more they grow good roots, the stronger the plant will be in the long run.
Cynthia
Beautiful garden Cynthia!
I actually "broke" the rule and has been growing climbers close to each other. Then again, in my zone, most climbers don't really climb as I've found out this spring. I was hoping that if they climb to eventually train their canes crossing each other. I don't really like roses to be "visually segregated" unless they are mass planted.
Thanks for the comments folks - I like this view and wish it would stay like this longer in the year! It's a little hard to tell exactly which roses are which summersrhythm, since I let everything mix up together. I don't like visual segregation either, as JJpeace says - give me "rose chaos" every time!
At a guess, from the left I think I see Compassion (light pink), Bonica (medium pink) and maybe a little Caldwell Pink from the far side of the fence, mixed with Madame Bovary climber (also medium pink), with Laguna (dark pink), Red Riding Hood at the feet (red), Ghislaine de Feligonde (cream/apricot small flowers), Elina (light yellow) mixing with Frau Eva Schubert (light pink) and Larry Daniels poking over the fence (pink), blending into some of the hybrid musks cream/apricot to the right, probably Cornelia and Felicia, but one could be Guirlande d'Amour.
The nice thing about all this is they seem to do this reasonably happily in part sun under limbed up pine trees. The edge of the fence you see stretches out into some sun, but you can see the lamium is quite happy at the feet (groundcover) as are multiple hostas and other shade plants. Climbers are great because they can reach up for some sun, but they don't rebloom as often as in more intense sun conditions. Ah well, I have a lot of fence to fill, so I'm not complaining.
Anyway, Gibsongirl - feel free to keep us posted on progress and have fun with your plans.
Cynthia
Well, I feel silly, yes I can, I just did!, so I'm Sara-Ann again! Kentucky, all my olds posts are still here.
Great! Glad you are the name you want to be :)