On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 23:12:17 -0700, Cass
wrote:

In article , dave weil
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 10:33:01 -0700, Cass
wrote:

In article , dave weil
wrote:

Have you ever done the mounding thing with bare roots? I'd think this
would offer sufficient protection from wind and dryness. I've always
had great luck with this method. Having saidthat, one should do what
one is comfortable with and what works in their climate.

I always mound bareroots. I mound in pots too, using the cardboard
collars. But my yard isn't flat and it's very exposed. And it's March
1, not June 1. Big difference.

Well, in your climate this might be necessary. With me, I'm not
confident in my pot growing (for roses) ability. I also don't like the
idea of additional transplanting. I'd rather just pop 'em in the
ground and have done with it.

I always wait until April 15th, which is the last frost date.
Normally, we get our last frost around the 7th, but you never know. I
would never plant in March. I don't even do my pruning until
mid-April.

I'm just waiting for a year like 1966 (I think it was). I was living
in Memphis and we got our biggest snow in history there. The date?
Third week of April (the 22nd IIRC). 18 inches of snow. I think the
same thing happened here in Nashville as well...

One thing I *didn't* do that I always have done in the past is cutting
the first buds. Usually with hybrid teas, you get one or two buds, but
in this case, the first flush all happened at once and I got over 30
buds on the three plants. I figured that the plant knew what it was
doing chuckle.

You mean you disbud bareroots? Not me.

I had read, and friends had told me as well, that it was good to
disbud the first bud to force more energy into the newly developing
root system.

I sometimes disbud OR's, tho, if
they are very small and clothe themselves in buds. And I disbud plants
that aren't doing well, if I notice.

I'm guessing that I'm going to have one more flush before it's all
over. The downside to such massive bud growth so early is that when we
had a big rainstorm a couple of days ago, it caused weepy blooms the
next day (because there just isn't the substance to the stems yet).

"Yet. " Heh, just how many roses have your grown that get more
substance in the stems as they get bigger? So far the count in my
garden is approximately 0 to 259.

Most of my roses get more substance (and longer stems as well) each
year. Stems get thicker and longer. In the case of Belami, the stems
weren't strong enough on these plants to support the weight of the
blooms with the added water. Most of them drooped because of it. On my
third season Belami, I had no such problem because the stems
supporting the blooms were larger and thicker. Remember, these plants
are only about 2 feet tall right now. They will eventually get 6 - 8
feet tall.

shrug

On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 23:20:13 -0700, Cass
wrote:

In article , Anne
Lurie wrote:

"Cass" wrote in message
.. .
snipped]

Nice roses. You put 3 in a wankle engine shaped bed?

Wow! I never thought I'd see the day when *anyone* managed to use "roses"
and "wankle engine" in context!!! Kudos to Cass!!!

cackle You caught me. And I misspelled it. Wankel rotary engine.

I was going to point that out but I thought, nahhhh, why be a Scrooge
g.

I thought Dave would like it.

And you were right. I've got another little bed that I've used that
shape for. I like it a lot better than straight sides.

Now I'm thinking about the first decent car that I bought with my own
money - my Mazda RX-7. What a car...

But Shiva said the bed drains, so I was taking her word for it. And..
I'm still surprised that she didn't see signs of stress in the
established plants in the ground.

I can explain this one. Some times the roots die but there
is so much moisture that the canes seem to be able to directly
absorb it and use there stored nutrients to keep growing.

Then it gets dry and death occurs quickly usually over night.

Talking about rain we had an incredible 16 inches fall in my backyard
over this soggy labor day in a 36 hour period.

I was driving back from Wichita in I-35 Saturday night, visibility was 10
feet
and we were stopped on the free way when the 10 ft wall of water washed over
the road
1/4 mile in front of us. It was about about 2 ft deep where I was. You
should have seen the panic, first time I drove 50 MPH wrong way on
the freeway. Found out next morning that this poor guy in front lost his
4 kids & wife.


--
Theo in Zone 5
Kansas City

Theo Asir wrote:

I can explain this one. Some times the roots die but there is so much
moisture that the canes seem to be able to directly absorb it and
use there stored nutrients to keep growing.

Then it gets dry and death occurs quickly usually over night.


I have seen this very thing with three established HT in the same spring
of a year with huge rain falls (for this area) that caused untold misery
otherwise. Never could explain what happened, and this sounds like a
very plausible description of how things happened. When established
roses die in very different spots in a garden in some overnight disaster
and when you have no trouble growing another rose in the very same spot
later on, you are left totally mystified.

Theo, whether or not this was exactly what happened with my three roses,
I like this explanation as it fits all the facts of the case and with no
added complications.

Talking about rain we had an incredible 16 inches fall in my backyard
over this soggy labor day in a 36 hour period.

Heard about this. It sounds terrible.

I was driving back from Wichita in I-35 Saturday night, visibility
was 10 feet and we were stopped on the free way when the 10 ft wall
of water washed over the road 1/4 mile in front of us. It was about
about 2 ft deep where I was. You should have seen the panic, first
time I drove 50 MPH wrong way on the freeway.

YIKES. Glad to know that you and yours are safe.

Found out next morning that this poor guy in front lost his 4 kids &
wife.

Oh Lord. Saw that on the news, it was heart-rending to watch the young
fellow describe what had happened. They seemed like very decent and kind
folks, to have gone and adopted a baby from China while having three of
their own to care for, and it is really tragic that this catastrophe
happened to such generous people.

Shiva wrote:

Now that it has stopped raining every other day, it is so hot there's
no way I'm going to work in the gardens especially since we now have
skeeter-born illness here! (I'm a wimp, it's true.)

West Nile doesn't scare me but the heat combined with humidity is doing
a great job of keeping me in the house.

I'm still chewing over what went wrong that resulted in the death of
so many grafted roses, mostly the new ones I planted bare root.

What has been different this year is:

1. LOTS of rain.
2. No anti-fungal or insecticide sprays at all since mid-May.

I planted six grafted hybrid teas this year. Two J&P (one bare root,
one potted), one Weeks (potted), and three Wal-mart rescues (all bare
root) and all of them are doing okay. Four in one location and the
other two each in a separate location. Of the six, the potted Weeks
Granada and the bare root J&P Double Delight are doing the best. So
far, though, none are dying.

Like you, I have not been able to spray this year. I've sprayed once.
I have kept up with the fertilizing - once every three months sprinkle
of Osmocote and once every two months application of rose fertilizer
stakes. This is normal procedure for me and I actually prefer to drive
in the stakes when the ground is wet.

The only difference I can think of is that I don't mulch and use
companion plantings for the most part. However, the "for the most part"
refers to most of my new roses as they do not have companion plants.

Don't know what to tell you...

Susan
shsimko at duke dot edu

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.

Shiva wrote:

...I did pull them out, and they look pretty much the same as
when I put them in. No vole chew marks, no evidence of any rot.
But it has been a while, and any little hairy roots may have just
disintegrated....

. 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."

Once I got some bagged "soil conditioner compost" that had some residual weed
killer. Not enough to kill things but enough tokeep them from growing. Have
you tested the soil PH?

I was of the habit of mounding some roses for winter with peat moss and in the
spring just raking the peat moss and spreading it around the bed. Eventually I
began to have trouble with replacement roses getting established. They seemed
to take a lot of extra water to prevent wilting in the summer and in a year or
two winter kill got them. One spring a new planted rose just leafed out and did
nothing. I dug it up and found no feeder roots had grown at all. Apparently
the plant was drawing up enough water without roots to green up , but not enough
to grow. Established plants in the same bed seemed to be OK.

A long odessey later, I found out that the soil had become so acid from years of
peat moss additions that new plants would not even grow roots in it.

You probably had a water problem, but I would not rule out a soil PH test.

Regards,

Charles
--
Charles Perry
Reply to:

** A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand **

"Shiva" wrote in message
news:aHlwYXRpYQ==.57fffbe3a032c4d0d42f7e128d5815c4 @1062727339.cotse.net...
Theo Asir wrote:

But Shiva said the bed drains, so I was taking her word for it. And..
I'm still surprised that she didn't see signs of stress in the
established plants in the ground.

I can explain this one. Some times the roots die but there
is so much moisture that the canes seem to be able to directly
absorb it and use there stored nutrients to keep growing.

Then it gets dry and death occurs quickly usually over night.

Theo please clarify, you are saying you think this is what happened
to my baby bare roots, right?

Well!! I'm not gonna swear thats what happened
but just thought I should note what I've seen in my garden
when excessive rain is mixed with roses. Cass couldn't
understand why the canes showed no distress.

Now that you mention it they were indeed mostly young roses.

Talking about rain we had an incredible 16 inches fall in my backyard
over this soggy labor day in a 36 hour period.

I was driving back from Wichita in I-35 Saturday night

Glad you came out okay. Scary stuff.

Thanx. I'm still quivering.
Never been so scared in my life.

--
Theo in Zone 5
Kansas City