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They're HERE!!! S&W order arrives! [LONG]
Lavaglut - one of my absolute favorites. Mine must have a hundred buds /
flowers right now, just covered... "Kim" wrote in message ... Almost as soon as I'd sent off the earlier message saying the container roses were on the way, I heard a van pulling up in the driveway. Who might it be but Airborn Express....and I could see a couple of VERY LARGE BOXES through the back windows of the van! I can't tell you how excited I was -- my first real "bunch of roses"! Shiva asked me to let her know my impressions of S&W's container roses, so I'm going to end up rambling on and on, since I don't know a heck of a lot about this business. So if I say something that's actually a stupid thing to have said, you'll understand. :-) I will also be asking a couple of questions before I'm done, too. I had ordered 8 roses -- 5 floribunda, 1 polyantha, 1 climber and 1 miniature. I'll describe each one in turn. "General things" They are all Weeks roses. Packaging: The two large boxes were actually made up of 4 smaller boxes each that were stapled and taped together. Each was 30" tall and square, just a fraction bigger than a 3-gallon nursery container. I figure they were sized that way to avoid rattling around without having to use cushioning material. The mini was actually inside a second, barely smaller box, since it was in a 2- gallon container. You had to literally cut the boxes off them to get them out. The only one with any "damage" was the mini, and I shouldn't even be calling it damage -- one of the staples that held the boxes together had penetrated the container just a little bit so it "snagged" as you took it out. Pot packaging: The pots were closely & carefully wrapped in heavy brown kraft paper and taped up so there was no chance the paper would slip around or tear in transit. I say carefully, because each was wrapped up to just snuggle up to the main cane without bothering leaves. I am trying to decide how to "go on" about each plant, and not sure how to. So for now, I'll comment that upon initial examination the leaves on all plants looked fine. Some of them had dried water spots on them from their last watering/misting. Soil was moist in all cases. I couldn't tell if they had been shipped on Monday or Tuesday, so I don't know how long they had been in the boxes. I'll now give you comments about each one. Bud count is what I could easily see w/o digging around through the leaves. Intrigue: Plant was 31" - 32" inches tall, so the top stem was slightly bent over. There were 6 buds on that cane and 1 on another. The bud that was alone had already bloomed and was almost ready to drop petals...but boy, was it "smelly"! LOL The Fairy: 2' tall with bunches of delicate "baby budlets" (for lack of a better term to call them?) that appeared to be not yet fully formed. There was a lot of active growth (that's what I'm calling how "new leaves" look since I don't know if there's a particular term for that appearance) on most of the cane/branch tips. Baby Grand: Large for a mini - 2' tall. It had 7 flowers that had already bloomed and one more bud that's getting ready to open. Easy Living: 27" tall, 2 buds. George Burns: 30" - 32" tall, with 7 buds. Like Intrigue, it was a little bit tall for the box so it drooped a bit. Lavaglut: 31" tall and at least a dozen unopened buds. One bud that was 1/3 to 1/2 open, and boy, is it pretty! :-) A little droopy like *I* and *G.B.*. Margaret Merril: 29" tall with at least one bud. Active growth on the end of some canes/branches. Berries 'n Cream (CL): One obvious bud. Canes look very healthy and almost like they are getting ready to run a race to see how big they can get as fast as possible! I don't know if it was the right thing to do or not, but I couldn't wait to get them planted. They are all in the ground now. Never having gotten mail order container roses I don't know if I was supposed to let them "rest" for a while or something. That brings up a question. Once they were all in the ground I noticed that the ones I'd mentioned earlier that were a bit tall for the boxes, and had a bit of droop because of it, were looking somewhat more "droopy" now. They hadn't been watered at that point. I watered them very lightly for now for a couple of reasons -- one, the bed area is in full sun and I had always heard that you shouldn't water during the full heat of the day because it can hurt the plant, and two, we're expecting rain/thunderstorms over the next few hours and I want to see how much rainfall we get. It's 81 - 82 here today with about 40% humidity. Is the "droopy appearance" something to be concerned/worried about? Are they in distress in some way? Do they need water, or what? Advice here, please!!! Another question -- In looking over the plants to see what needed to be pruned off, I noted that a number of canes that I would have chosen to "prune" had new, active growth, some even with buds, too close to the end of what I thought was a "dead" cane. Some of the healthy looking shoots with buds were hardly 1/4" or so away from the end of the bigger, "dead looking" cane end. Is that usual? Not knowing which of the roses are grafted ones versus own root (mini I know is own root), and not having found a site (yet) that lets you search a database on "own root", I don't know if any of my new babies are "own root". Can a rose be found in both an "own root" and a "grafted" form, or are they only one OR the other? Of the ones I got, are any of them "own root"? In any case, to wind this up, this novice is very happy with the container roses from S&W (unless someone tells me there's something grossly wrong with something I've described here). Any comments will be greatly appreciated. -- Kim "We have done so much with so little for so long that now we can do anything with nothing." -- Dave Marcis |
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