"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them. I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.