Hi all!!

Remember me? Well, after carefully planning my roses and garden,
getting my wonderful husband to give me 12 Almighty Rose Holes in clay
soil (2 more to go...), I'm ready to start my first rose garden! I now
am the happy owner of 3 roses (11 to go!) (Jeanne Lajoie, Carefree
Beauty, and Princess Marianna - wow she's got scary prickles!!).

Some questions:

* How far down to I plant the bud union on a grafted rose in MD? I've
read that the wisdom on this varies by location. Any experienced
Marylander's with advice?? What about an Own root bareroot rose (of
which I plan to order 3 which I can't find potted locally. They are
William Baffin, Belinda's Dream, and Hawkeye Belle)? Does the location
of the bud union planting differ if they are bareroot roses?

* I saw another poster post about the continued threat of cold
weather. I take it I can plant the babies, and then cover them for
protection should we get temps 28 degrees, which we could still get.

* I plan to alternate fertilizing with something like Osmocote (or
whatever, I'm sure I've got that name wrong), and also alfalfa meal. I
thought I'd do the alfalfa meal first. Do I do this when I plant them?
When they leaf out? Not at all now because they are babies? In June?
In late summer? I thought I read somewhere that I should not fertilize
the babies, but I don't know if that was "until they leaf out" or "until
much later."

* Despite massively amending the holes, raising the beds a little, and
preparing the beds in the fall, and heavily mulching, I am still
concerned about the drainage. We did a half-baked drainage test because
I was stressed out about this. We had about 1.75 - 2 inches of rain on
a Thursday - so it was WET. No standing water in the beds, but very
wet. We dug 2 1-gallon holes on 2 sides of the deck, in designated
already-prepared Almighty Holes, and filled each hole with 1 gallon of
water. Unfortunately we did this late in the evening. One hole was
empty (mucky at the bottom, but empty) in less than 1.5 hours. The
other drained overnight, and was empty (albeit mucky) in the morning,
about 14 hours after we filled it. Again, it was a half baked test
because 1) we didn't watch it very closely, and 2) the results might not
even be viable since we did this after an exceptional rain. We plan to
do 4 more tests (more regularly spaced) on Friday, digging down 18
inches, after not having precipitation for almost 6-7 days, and watch it
more closely. What SHOULD we look for? The "drainage test" guidance
I've seen varies greatly!

Thanks as always for any help you can provide!!

Judy G. in MD