22,795 Garden Web Discussions | Roses
I'm not in Florida, but I ordered some roses this year from two nurseries down there -- Rose Petals Nursery and Angel Gardens. Their roses are own-root, and they both have nice selections of a wide variety of types. If you're not bent on modern roses, I think you'll do very well with Chinas -- they'll bloom pretty much year-round for you down there. Teas and Noisettes are probably too big for pots. Many Polyanthas will also work. As far as other types, perhaps contact the nurseries I mentioned and ask what they think. They're not that far South, but they'd have a better idea than I do.
:-)
~Christopher
The key is sharp draining soil. My biggest problem with growing roses in pots is root rot. I've lost many roses to it. They start to die back and then you can see the stem getting black from the bottom up.
I started to look closely at what kind of soil they came in from the nursery and I noticed it was very barky and not very dense at all. So I tried to mimic that. Now I just buy a special soil that comes for bougainvilleas and its been the perfect fix.
I get it from home depot and it looks like this:
I still sometimes loose roses, but not nearly as many and the ones I've lost have not been in this special soil. The heat works against you because in pots the soil will get very warm (with the sun beating down on it) even warmer than the ground. Combine that with too much moisture and its a double threat for root rot.
The down side to this is you'll need to fertilize often because this barky, loose soil wont hold nutrient as much.
Here is a list of roses that have done well for me (Ft. Lauderdale area, zone 10)
Belinda's Dream-pink, modern pointed form, fragrant (this is an excellent starter rose that is very forgiving. If you get one rose in South Fl it should be this one).
Easy Does it-orange/pink blend
Cecille Brunner-many tiny pink blossoms about the size of your thumbnail
Quietness-pink, old fashioned, fragrant
Duchess De Brabant-medium pink, open loose blooms, fragrant, easy to grow
Don Juan-(not suitable for pots but an excellent climbing rose, the best for the area, large red fragrant blooms)
Tamora-(apricot colored David Austin rose, old rose form)
Darcy Bussell (also a D.A. rose with old fashioned bloom form, deep red)
Miss All American Beauty-hot pink (magenta) a very tough little rose
Fragrant Cloud- red orange, very fragrant, very large blooms, excellent rose
Fragrant Delight- somewhat sloppy form but very large fragrant blooms
Love-very floriferous light red blooms with white reverse on the petals, somewhat sloppy form but always blooming
Ingrid Bergman-(red) very fragrant nice disease resistance
Dick Clark-very floriferous, beautiful deep pink/yellow blend
Julia Child- yellow blooms, great rose, blooms a ton, good for a pot
Secret-pink and yellow blend, good for pots
Bride's Dream- good for a very large pot. very pale pink and excellent form. A very elegant rose
A few things to keep in mind. When it comes to containers always go taller as opposed to wider. If you put a little mulch on top it will help keep the soil cool and retain moisture but should not cause root rot (especially if you use the soil I recommend). Lighter colored containers are better at keeping the roots cool. Don't get black as this will make it worse. Terracotta pots are controversial. Some say they wick moisture away from the roots keeping them cool. Others say they act like an oven and "bake" the soil. You'll have to try them at your own risk but I think if you keep them well watered, they are a good way to keep the roots from rotting as they 'breath'. Assuming of course its not glazed terracotta.
Plastic pots work well in any case.
If you decided to put the roses in the ground you'll want to get them grafted on fortuniana, but otherwise you can grow pretty much any rose you like in a pot.
Chamblee rose nursery online is a good source as well as the two mentioned in the posts above (angle and rose petals).
Good luck and post photos once you get them going :)
PS
Pruning is done either in January, or at the end of the summer (or both if you want to keep them small). I find mine are usually at their peak in Jan so I prune them in the fall after the summer has them all tall and gangly. You don't have to prune them too hard (or at all even) unless they are grafted on Dr. Huey in which case you'll want to give them a nice hard pruning at least once a year. If you don't they will die in 2-3 years because of lack of rest (no winter rest here), but pruning them hard lets them have that rest and will increase the life span. I usually prune mine when they look like they need it (getting tall and leggy) and not by the calender.
I burlap and pack with leaves all my potted roses for winter because I don't have a garage and there are WAY too many of them anyway, lol. It does help protect them from the wind but it's not fool proof. Some winters I hardly lose any and some winters I lose a ton. You never know.
I'm in Akron, and the last two winters have been uncharacteristically bad for them, with brutal temps and a lot of wind. At least in my garden, there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to which ones lived or died. Some of my hybrid teas were fine while supposedly super-hardy varieties were killed to the ground.
I wouldn't blame the garden center. Most of mine have come from Donzell's and Dayton's, if you know those places, and many of them are still thriving after more than a decade. Potted roses do better for me than bare-roots, probably because they have a more established root system from the get-go and seem to be better prepared when winter hits.
Wind seems to do more damage than cold. The roses that are on the leeward side of the house do better than those with more western exposure. I used to mound up the canes with dirt but don't bother anymore. I do tend to leave fallen leaves in the beds until spring, which seems to insulate the graft somewhat, although sometimes I pay the price with canker. I also encourage my husband to pile snow onto the roses by the driveway when he's shoveling, and those tend to do well. I've tried burlap and Wilt-Pruf but not on a consistent enough basis to say whether they help or not.
I try to do my last fertilizer around mid-August. I've always been told that the rose needs to slow down flower/leaf production and store energy as the weather cools down, so you don't want to juice it up at that point. You'll still get a nice fall flush with a dose in August, and I've had blooms as late as mid-November in a mild year.
Peter Schneider is a wonderful resource and a great guy. Read his book, and go to his open garden days next year -- usually on two weekends in mid-June. He has hundreds of roses on his property, most of which he grows with no winter protection and no supplemental water. It'll inspire you.
The winters are just so unpredictable in Northeast Ohio, sometimes a killer like the last two, while the year before we had daffodils blooming in March. It is frustrating to lose roses, and I've lost many over the years, but to me they're worth the trouble.
OH, I misread your post too! Sorry. I know where the sweet gums come from in mine, but cannot figure out where the cedars come from. And I am always finding oaks, pecan, and hickory trees - presents from the squirrels, I guess. Yes, I don't use the cheaper top soil in containers because it is too heavy, if that makes sense.
Antique Rose Emporium is the one I order from. I love them. They ship in the fall. Chamblees sells smaller plants, but very durable ones. You could drive to Tyler easily for CHamblees and get larger plants than the ones they sell to ship. I think Texas is a great place to live for rose nurseries.
Sammy
Just a caution, fall planting is risky for those in the colder zones. Small own root plants should be planted in late spring to give them a chance to gain strength before damaging cold sets in. Grafted plants are best planted in early spring and covered up. (I realize this is not an issue for the OP.)
Cut it down as low as you can and then smother it with cardboard. I killed "pricker bushes", poison ivy, grass and assorted weeds this way when we put in our gravel paths. Cover it with mulch to hide it then take it up when the grass is dead, probably in about 6 weeks or leave it if you won't be planting anything in the space. I've also used bleach which will kill anything including poison ivy and pricker bushes. Just try to keep it off the roses. If you accidentally spray them just wet them down with water to dilute the bleach. But the cardboard obviously is the most environmentally friendly and will work well as long as you're patient.
Sharon
Crabgrass is an annual and will begin to die off soon. You just want to keep the seeds from coming up and repopulating the soil for next year. So just pull out the seed heads. The crabgrass will be easy to pull out (when it starts to turn reddish). Wait for a day after it rains and it should be very easy to pull up. However, the seeds that caused this outbreak can cause crabgrass to come up for years. So you will need to apply a pre-emergent next year or pull up the crab grass as soon as you see it sprout.
Cut everything that's black off being sure to go about 1/4 of an inch below it, well into nice green bark, but don't sacrifice side shoots that are green, just cut it as close as possible to the side shoot. (A side shoot is a branch that shoots out of the main branch.) Then just leave it. It looks like you're doing a good job. It definitely looks better than how you received it. But the dead wood can actually travel down the branch (like gangrene) so you want to cut it off. But don't go too crazy, because the plant is recovering, you want to leave as much cane as possible but try to stop the dead wood (aka dieback) from spreading. Then give it a nice dose of liquid fertilizer at half the recommended dose. This should get it back on its feet.
Once you see new growth you can start fertilizing regularly according to the directions on the liquid fertilizer.
Beth, that is so funny. Wow, $15 X 30, I hate to think how much that would be. I'm sure your husband was relieved to find out you only bought three. When you think how much store bought cut roses are, a rose plant is a real bargain for how many blooms they give us. Hope you enjoy them.
Article on controlling nematodes in potted plants
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/kill-nematodes-houseplants-25731.html
If you dig the rose up and the roots do not have knots on them, then you should be ok. If you have knots on them you may need to cut them off. Once you go to put them in a new pot you will need to make sure that it has plenty of organic material in it. Nematodes hate the organic stuff. They prefer sand..... So when you originally planted the roses if you had put in lotss of good organics you may not have nematodes. Make sure when you have them in the pots that the pot does not touch the ground. It needs to be raised because the nematodes can travel from the ground to the pot which will defeat your purpose.
On another note, I just posted that I am having a couple of my roses decline because I have this mat that is growing and choking out the roses. I really don't know what it is and haven't gotten any answers as of yet. Someone wanted me to post a picture, but I do not have a way to do that. I haven't seen anything like it before. It looks almost like roots but they are very very dense and not actually attached to any plant. I know that this mat thing was not there when I planted the rose there last fall. This mat thing is very aggressive. I think I am going to have to remove the bush in order to dig the mat out.
Good Luck on your roses.
THIS is 'Dr. Huey.'
He is a very vigorous once-blooming rambler of impressive proportions.
In his spring bloom, he will cover himself with an extraordinary mass of dark red flowers, centered by bright golden stamens.
Unfortunately, the deep red fairly quickly grows a bit muddy, as the blooms age. When they are gone -- you will see no more for the rest of the year. That is the time to prune him.
The bad news is that the good Doctor, once his spring bloom is done, rapidly settles down to rust, mildew, and blackspot to an unpleasant degree.
It depends on what you want and like. He can put on that spectacular display in the spring but only on last years, one year old, wood. So what you're seeing come up now will not bloom until next spring IF all those canes survive the winter. If he dies back to the ground over the winter and then starts to grow back in the spring he won't bloom again until the following year. 
He can be quite pretty during bloom but afterwards, as Jeri said, he's a spot magnet.
Please cut out all that brown stuff--we are tired of looking at it, if you arent'. OK--so brutal surgery is required. Well , then, do it!
Now, with the left-over healthy stuff, water deeply, and then water regularly in the future. You don't want the rose to dry out.
I agree with Pat--probably your roses suffered more winter damage than you realized or you were too timid with your pruning in the springtime. Trying to "save" weak or questionable canes is not a good idea. Prune back anything that doesnt' look healthy. Yes--that sometimes means pruning back nearly to the ground--if there was a lot a winter damage. If that were done early in the spring, the rose would jump back with spring growth and there would be no problems now in the summer heat.
Canker is a rose disease--looks like dark splotches on the canes. Always cut below the canker spots.
Good luck.
Kate
I have pruned the brown dead areas which are dry inside but not hollow, believe me I was tired of looking at the brown areas as well Kate. I am watering regularly and have planted one rose bush in a pot in the shade after pruning it back. The roots on the rose bush still looked healthy. The only dark spots on the stems were the brown thorns which I assume were because of lack of water and/or nutrients.
Is it possible that your Sugar Moon has produced a sport which is not unlike the 'viridiflora' arising from one of the China roses 'Old Blush'? Not all sports have to be pretty. If you cut the weird flowers off and the new shoots from that stem produced the same flowers again it is likely a sport.
We see this in a lot of roses during extreme heat or when the temperatures fluctuate from one extreme to the other. The buds open before they are fully developed so they tend to have a greenish hue and are deformed. Your rose should be fine once temperatures drop again. Also, sucker growth will come from below the soil level and the leaves will be more narrow than the standard rose leaves as Weeks uses Dr Huey rootstock. Sometimes roses will shoot up long reaching canes like the ones you have looking for more sunlight, but they aren't necessarily sucker growth. It looks like you have a very healthy rose that is just a little stressed in the heat!
I think the benefit regarding insect pests is more about attracting beneficials which eat the pests than actually repelling the pests.
:-)
~Christopher
I agree with Christopher. And I think aphids are a pretty easy pest to deal with in most cases. There is a whole universe of nastier insect pests out there to be vigilant about. I find mint to be quite invasive also, and what a time waster pulling the stuff up. It's so easy to let it get away and become a neighborhood plant pest.
I was interested to learn from madgallica that hardy geranium is not tasty to deer. I assumed it was, and didn't want to plant it in back where the deer come to dine. I plan to now enjoy having it in the back flower beds. Diane