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is it silly?
torgo wrote in message . ..
I've had pretty good luck getting those bargain baggie roses up and running. And I don't get the first ones off the truck, either. I "rescue" the last refugees still on the rack just to see if I can keep them alive. I usually can, no matter how bad they are when I get them. The usual caveats apply though: you didn't really buy a pair of Double Delights and a QE climber. You only bought labels that say those things, and those labels are wrong something like 15% of the time. Maybe more often than that. You won't know until your "Double Delight" blooms yellow and the "Queen Elizabeth" makes a compact little shrub with red flowers. The best tip I'd give anyone trying their hand at the cheap bagged stuff is to cut off the first flush of blooms immediately. These poor roses had their roots hacked to virtually nothing when they were cut out of the ground. They're two year old plants with the root stock of a first season seedling. Until the roots have time to really get going again, the effort required to support the blooms might kill the entire plant. Cut those blooms off and let the plant put its energy into growing instead. I totally agree with the above advice if you must buy bagged roses, which are generally a bad lot, particularly if you get them at a mass merchandiser who neither knows nor cares about roses. I find in my harsh climate, that no bagged rose ever lives to its second year probably because the spindly roots can't support the plant, but if you want to look at a year's worth of blossoms for $5, it's cheaper than buying a dozen at the florists. Still, best to indulge your spring impulses buying packs of seed in January and wait until the potted roses come in in a few months. That said, however, I had two bagged Peace roses that were given to me given to me go wild, and whatever came up from the two root stocks are now about seven feet tall and covered with several hundred pink single blossoms from mid-June to freeze-up. It's one of the few times the rootstock turned out better than the graft (although not being a hybrid tea fan, the bar is set quite low.) I stuck an arbour around them, planted some clematis and it's a showpiece. So you never know. |
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