In article
aHlwYXRpYQ==.9454f2a38bcd48a154021dd2f13b0c62@106 2678330.cotse.net,
Shiva wrote:

"Cass" wrote:

Cass, I think I've just been too busy to take proper care of my plants.
However--at the time they died, those bare roots had maybe five inches
of growth at the most, and some had produced a bloom or two, so there
would not have been much to cut back.

And it could easily have been the combination of heavy rain and canker.
That's what nailed us last winter - 20 inches in December. Combine that
with canker, and it was ugly.

And Sonia Rykiel, virused as hell,
has thrived on neglect. Nice, smelly, quartered blooms. She has earned
ground space. I might order another. Have you got any of the Romantica
roses? Sonia has great old rose form and "meaty" substance, really
holds up when compared with the Austins (but then, so does smoke!).

I'm waiting for the rest of you to beta test them. That has worked much
better for me with Austins. The several I bought the first round were
not great, and I shoveled one that was a real loser. After reading
about everyone's favorites, this year I bought Golden Celebration and
Tamora. GC is a mega winner, constant blooms, very decent foliage
(slight BS at the leafy base), good scent. They blow fast, but they
flower constantly. So I'll do the same with the romanticas.

Is
this what some of the the old roses are like? The pretty floppy old form
but they hold their blooms?

They're all different. Many teas have a languid, limp-wristed look that
is very appealing in the garden on a larger shrub. OTOH, Mons. Tillier
doesn't droop much. They don't last long cut, but some are very
beautiful and distinctive. Some hybrid perpetuals are on stiff, 6 foot
canes. Noisettes tend to hang their flowers, but since so many of them
grow to be 15 feet, that's a virtue. Here, a lot of the noisettes
mildew, many teas are quite clean, and hybrid perpetuals are all over
the board. But...BS isn't much of an issue here.

however, in the bed where most
died there are healthy, beautiful own-roots that I planted Fall 2002
that are doing wonderfully and never missed a beat, have bloomed their
heads off, etc. They are Muncy Austins, Roses Unlimited hts such as
Granada, and some Michael's roses. Penelope and Paul Neyron are the
only "oddballs" in the group and are going great guns.

Are the oddballs part of the batch of BR's, the remainder of which
died? I don't understand.

Sorry. What I meant was that it was my usual crop of modern roses--hts
from the 1960s and up, floribundas and Austins. Penelope and Paul are older,
and, what, a hybrid musk and a hybrid perpetual, respectively. By the way,
the monster New Dawn is nestled between the dead Blue Niles and the dead
Barbra Streisand, healthy as a horse and with about as many blooms. G
All it has done is make great foliage, but this is its second year.

Ah, proof of the benefit of diversifying your roses. I have two New
Dawn seedlings, Penny Lane and Dixieland Linda. Both are reasonably
clean and floriferous. If you don't have a lot of time to coddle divas,
you might add a couple easy-growing blooming fools each year. Maybe
you'll learn to love the ones you're with if you can't love the ones
you want. I try to balance the ones I just can't live without ‹ stingy,
rust-laden, mildew-soaked, botrytis-balled miseries ‹ with the
Sunsprites of the world. Let's face it: there are roses you can't beat
back with a bat. That *can* be good.

So this is one big raised bed? What is the retaining material? Doesn't
NC have a county extension that does free or cheap soils tests? What do
you have to lose? Was soil imported for the bed?

The retaining material is weeds at the moment! It isn't a formal raised
bed, just mounded soil that stays put. There is a lot of ivy surrounding
it thatI have to keep hacked back. It is in a protected area, between the
house and a fence, and this house is on the side of a gradual hill that
drains toward the back property line. The soil is great--heavy, black,
but soft and diggable. I bought some of it and added aged manure and
pine bark fines, the stuff that is bagged and sold as "soil conditioner."
This is the bed the guy drilled holes in down into the sand under the
hardpan. But it has a good 2.5 feet of great soil on top of clay. This
neighborhood is old, so the topsoil has never been stripped. Years of
good decayed stuff.

When soil that good doesn't drain on a slope, there's not much you
could have done. Bad luck happens, just like 100 years' winters.