Category: About Roses

Should You Spray Your Rose Garden?

Should You Spray Your Rose Garden?

“Spray” is not a four-letter-word. It’s just a method of application, equally useful for liquid kelp extract as for certain biological controls like nematodes or beneficial bacteria – but that’s not the kind of spraying we’re really talking about here, is it? The kind of sprays that quickly divide the opinions of neighbors and gardeners are the synthetic pesticides.

As a very quick aside, it’s often said that one should avoid the topics of politics, religion and money if you want to keep conversation polite in general company. When it comes to gardeners, avoid talk of invasive species, peat moss and pesticides. And while I agree that it’s a shame we can’t have reasonable conversations on topics that could really benefit from some reason, you’ll inevitably tweak someone’s strong feelings along some pretty predictable ideological fault lines and that’s no fun.

I’m going to carry through with this topic anyway, but in order to avoid (or at least delay) any hard feelings, I’m going to approach this from a place of common ground: no one, and I mean no one, wants to climb into a spray suit on a hot day, strap on tightly-fitted respirator, and walk around the garden with a backpack sprayer filled with pesticides.

It’s unpleasant, dangerous, expensive and usually only solves a pest problem for a short period of time, while also posing risks to the non-target organisms who might actually be the “good guys” and part of the solution. I never assume that gardeners are out there spraying just for fun but rather because they feel they’re out of better options. So it only makes sense for me to focus the first part of this article on those: the better options!

Resistant Varieties

I’d love to grow the thornless and beautifully fragrant Bourbon rose Zéphirine Drouhin. I’ve tried. Three times, in fact.

Zephirine Drouhin photo by T. Kiya CC BY-SA 2.0

It’s just too susceptible to foliar disease in my climate that it proved difficult to grow well, regularly dropping most of its foliage to black spot, powder mildew or both.

Once you know the challenges of you climate (and this is something experienced rose growers in your area are not reluctant to share) it can be helpful to guide your buying choices towards roses that are best suited – or at least not poorly suited – to resist those problems. I sometimes take for granted that rose gardeners are familiar with Helpmefind, a sort of “Wikipedia” or rose varieties. If I’d been paying attention to the write-up there, I might have skipped my efforts to grow Zephirine (at least the second or third time!)

There it is on that final line, in plain black and white. They usually post a rating for at least blackspot and mildew, but also include Member Rating for overall tolerance of disease, heat, cold, rain and shade. It bears saying here that you’ll have a lot fewer problems with pests and diseases if you’re rose is well suited to your climate and its location in the garden.

The Basics of Rose Care

It seems to follow from what I just wrote above that an rose coping poorly with extreme heat & humidity or too much shade is going to be more susceptible to pest problems. This is undoubtedly true. That old expression that says “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is exactly the wrong approach when it comes to plant health. It should be reformulated as “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker and more susceptible to secondary infection” – not as uplifting, I admit. In fact, the reason yellow sticky cards (for pest monitoring) are yellow is that the pests are especially attracted to the sickly yellow leaves of stressed plants.

Photo by Maja Dumat CC BY 2.0

Look after the basics: a reasonable soil with decent drainage and not too high a pH. A sunny spot – at least 6 hours for most roses, with some exceptions. Appropriate watering. A mulch to maintain consistent moisture and temperature. Fertilizer as needed – but not so much (especially nitrogen) as to spur on an excess of lush green growth, because the pests love that too!

Plant for Diversity

One reason traditional field agriculture is so reliant on spraying pesticide is because they plant in monocultures. A whole field of corn planted in close proximity can be quickly decimated when a fast-reproducing pest moves in. In mixed landscapes, there’s more balance between various predators, parasites and pests. I strongly encourage rose growers to plan and plant for diversity in the garden, which also creates a perfect excuse to source all the interesting shrubs, perennials and annuals you’ve ever fancied, even in passing.

For more on the biological approach to pest management, and some of my plant recommendations, here’s a video on the topic:

Sanitation and Pruning

One cultural control to pests, especially foliar disease like blackspot and powder mildew, is to prune out any damaged, diseased and congested stems from low down and in the centers of the shrubs. Combine this with a stripping of the lower infected foliage as warranted by the severity of the outbreak. This kind of cleanup can reduce the chances of the disease spores reinfecting your plants, and also allows for proper air circulation within the shrub.

For a quick discussion on stripping leaves, here’s another of my video topics:

The classic time for a thinning pruning is just as your roses are waking up from winter (in temperate climates anyway). However, I tend to thin a bit throughout the season as I deadhead my roses. The earlier you catch signs of foliar disease the better I’ve found, but I really do focus my efforts on the most susceptible varieties in my garden.

Tolerance

It’s a dirty trick of rose culture that tells gardeners they should be looking for perfect blooms and spotless foliage. The same way that farmers have tried to educate produce customers that a crooked carrot tastes fine compared to a straight one, rose growers should let themselves off the hook for a bit of chewing damage on their leaves. One of the cornerstone principles of modern pest management is just keen observation and setting a “tolerance” level for pests and disease. This will come with time, as you see which warning signs of pests require intervention, and which require a shrug.

Biological Controls

My favorite biological controls are the ones that come for free! Birds and beetles eat slugs. Hoverflies eat aphids. Pirate bugs do a pretty good job on thrips. Predatory mites hunt down the spider mites. There isn’t an insect pest I can think of that doesn’t have its natural predators, and also, as noted above, plants that you can put in your garden to encourage them.

However, it may happen that an outbreak of pests overwhelms your plants faster than natural predators can deal with them. This is actually almost inevitable at certain points in the year. Pests reproduce very quickly when their food is plentiful(the roses, in this case are putting on fresh growth). The predators are naturally one step behind, as they need their food source (the pests) to build up before they can start their own population boom.

It’s nice to know that one of your options is to supplement with biological controls. Ladybugs are a well-known choice, but in my conversations with professional growers I’ve heard strong recommendations for generalist beneficials too. Your eventual choice will depend on the pest you’re dealing with and what’s available from local suppliers – who are generally pretty helpful with recommendations.

Pirate Bug photo by gbohne CC BY-SA 2.0

I should also mention that some biological controls are offered in ready-to-use products sold at garden and hardware stores. BTk is a bacteria used to control caterpillars, and it’s cousin BTi is pretty effective against fungus gnats in propagation (the product these come in is dunks or bits for mosquito control). There’s also Milky Spore to apply to lawns with Japanese Beetle larvae. So not everything needs to come from a specialty biological control company.

Natural or Organic Pesticides

Insecticidal soap is just true liquid soap (potassium salts of fatty acids) applied as a spray. It’s a contact pesticide, meaning it has to be sprayed directly onto the pest population to be effective. It’ll wipe out aphids with no problem, but has a little trouble with spider mites and thrips because they’ll shelter in their webbing or in the folds of flowers and distorted leaves. It will also kill non-target insects if they’re hit by the spray. There’s no residual action, so once the soap dries, the plant is safe again for pests and beneficials.

Sulfur is the purified straight-up element, applied either as a finely ground powder (usually suspended in water as a spray) or vaporized in a sulfur burner. It’s pretty effective against powdery mildew and spider mites. It shouldn’t be applied within 7 days of soap or oils

Horticultural oil is a refined paraffin or vegetable oil formulated to be less damaging to plant tissues while still offering some control of insects and fungal disease. See above that it shouldn’t be applied in close timing with sulfur. Like soap, it’s a contact pesticide for insects with no residual effects. It’s the product most recommended for scale insects.

Potassium bicarbonate is sort like baking soda (and sometimes used as a substitute) – but safer to use on plants. Sprayed in a solution (3% by weight) with water it’s broadly pretty effective for prevention (but not cure) of foliar disease. It’s even more effective when combined with chitosan (0.75% by weight) as described in this video:

I think it’s important to say that these more “natural” or organic type sprays aren’t guaranteed to be without harms. I like the above options because they have a long record of relatively safe use, because they’re targeted, don’t have residual effects, and because they’re shown not to result in pesticide resistance very readily. Those aren’t things you can say for the “hard” synthetic pesticides, but you should still treat any and all of these with due care. Understand the products, the risks and all safety precautions before applying.

Dormant Spray

Maybe my favorite kind of pesticide application is in the dormant season because it combines sanitation with prevention. Pest populations (both insect and microbial) are at their lowest and most inactive during the dormant season. Somewhat stronger solutions of lime-sulfur, dormant oil or copper-based sprays can be used to great effect in reducing their overwintering populations or spores before they can reestablish in the spring. I give details and answer questions about these sprays in the following vid:

The Hard Stuff…

In the same way as I acknowledge not all “natural” pesticides are intrinsically harmless, I have to say that not all synthetic chemicals are crated equally harmful. I personally have been able to draw the line (on my farm) at solutions offered above. Mainly I’ve focused on companion planting (to attract and support beneficials) and proper plant care, pruning and sanitation. I use the bicarbonate, soap, oil or sulfur in a very targeted way as needed during the active season, and only use dormant spray on susceptible varieties (if at all).

When I worked in a commercial wholesale nursery, they whole arsenal was available to us, and some of it was pretty scary. Organophosphates like diazinon and malathion gave me real concerns from a human health point of view – I wouldn’t use them then, and if you’re considering it, I’d just advise you to really understand all the risks.

Pyrethroids are related to natural compounds found in the Robinson’s Daisy (Tanacetum coccineum) – synthesized and reformulated to make them quite an effective insecticide with a short residual – usually a couple of days. I guess you could call that “natural-ish”. I mention it here because it’s been found fairly effective against rose midge, which as a pest doesn’t give you a lot of other options. Toxic to a wide range of insects, fish, reptiles, humans (at higher exposure levels) and especially to cats.

Spinosad might even be better included in the above (natural) category, as a chemical extract of a natural compound in a particular bacteria. Some certifying agencies permit its use in organic agriculture. It’s affective against a wide range of insects and hasn’t been found to be very dangerous to mammals. I mention it here because it’s often recommended against chili thrips, which are hard to tackle otherwise.

The Difference Between Climbing and Rambling Roses

The Difference Between Climbing and Rambling Roses

Do you want a 3m/10ft rose you can tie onto a small arbor or trellis where it will bloom in bright colors all season long? Climber.

Do you want to unleash a rose to scramble up and down the side of a barn and delight visitors with its clusters of soft-hued flowers in the late spring? Rambler.

There are other distinctions between climbers and ramblers that I’ll discuss in this article, but I begin with the thing that matters most to hobbyists: the way they’re typically used in the garden.

‘Handel’ a modern climber Photo by Ryan Somma CC BY-SA 2.0

See the climber ‘Handel’ in the above picture. It exemplifies some of the characteristics of a modern climber. They’re generally (but not always):

  • Repeat blooming
  • Come in a full range of colors, including pure red, bright orange, and vibrant blends like modern hybrid teas and floribundas
  • Solitary or cluster flowering
  • Around 3m (10ft) tall on average for a small to medium climber
  • Variable hardiness
  • Complex hybrids
Adelaide d’Orleans by Leonora (Ellie) Enking CC BY-SA 2.0

Now have a look at ‘Adélaïde d’Orléans’ as an example of a rambler, with impressive clusters of flowers in a delicate muted color. What a show! Ramblers generally are:

  • Once-blooming
  • Limited in their range of colors. More subtle tones of white, pink, yellow
  • Cluster flowering
  • Quite large. 5m (16ft) + would not be uncommon
  • Somewhat hardier than modern climbers on average
  • Closer relate to wild species roses

These generalizations are for convenience more than precision – and I fully expect that there are readers ready to volunteer exceptions on almost any one of these characteristics. What about ‘Ghislaine de Feligonde’ a repeat-blooming rambler? Or ‘Bleu Magenta’ or ‘Chevy Chase’ to challenge the matter of subtle pastel tones? Rule-breakers aren’t hard to find in these groups.

Rambler ‘Bleu Magenta’ Photo by T. Kiya CC BY-SA 2.0

Breeding

If you want to get technical, ramblers are defined by their close genetic relationship to wild roses that have that same “expansive” growth habit. The major groups of ramblers are the near-direct offspring of the four rose species listed in the picture below:

These nearly wild genes account for their predominantly once-blooming (late spring/early summer) annual flowering cycle, and also for their more natural range of colors, with individually smaller, simple blooms in clusters.

Climbers are not defined by genetics, but is rather just a description of usage or growing habit, so they tend to be far more diverse in flower form, color and overall growing habit. I made a video a while back where I looked at the lineage of roses in a “family tree” of sorts. Here’s a clipping from that video:

What you’ll find is that climbing roses are identified from every corner of this chart, and from all different classes. Hybrid tea? ‘Climbing Peace’. Floribunda? ‘Iceberg’. Miniature? ‘Warm Welcome’. Hybrid Perpetual? ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain’. Shrub? ‘Constance Spry’.

That makes it difficult to say anything particular about the climbers, because some are more like their Bourbon parents, and others are very much a Hybrid Musk. They tend to have repeat blooming in common between them, but even that’s not a firm rule.

Pruning and Training

Ramblers prefer a light touch when it comes to pruning. They bloom on mature stems (at least one season old) so a severe cut back will definitely impact flowering the following year. The safest time to prune them is directly after their annual flush of flowers.

Climbers, as repeat bloomers, can accept a little more assertive pruning for shape, size and rejuvenation – and most gardeners will do this structural pruning in late winter or early spring, while the framework is still laid bare to the eye. They still perform better if you leave a significant portion of their main stems in place, but targeting damaged, diseased & crossing stems is a must. Trim the laterals (the smaller flowering branches coming from the main stems) down to a node or two.

I want to share a couple of videos with you that will help to highlight some of these varieties. First my video on “The Difference Between Climbing and Rambling Roses” with some examples of notable roses from each class:

And while I’m sharing my picks of roses, here’s another video I made with picks for great garden climbers:

4 Easy Steps to Breed Your Own Rose

4 Easy Steps to Breed Your Own Rose

What does it take to be a rose hybridizer? As it turns out, mainly patience. Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure the top-tier rose breeders also bring a wealth of knowledge and a keen eye for quality to the endeavor, but the basic techniques themselves aren’t complicated to understand. Once you know the steps, it’s just a matter repeating the process until you produce the rose you always imagined (or one you never knew you wanted!), but each attempt can take years to evaluate. So yeah, patience!

Anatomy of a flower

You aren’t going get far into the hobby of hybridizing roses without knowing just the basics of flower anatomy. The birds and bees, so to speak – although with roses it usually has a lot more to do with bees than birds. In the above diagram, the male parts (bearing the pollen) are called the stamen, and in the center of the flower are the female part that will develop the seeds.

Your goal is to collect the pollen from one selected parent, and transfer that pollen (when ready) to the seed parent without giving the bees a chance to interfere with their own pollination efforts.

By the time your rose is at the stage you see in this picture, you’re too late! You can see the outer ring of stamens (labeled #1) and the central pistil (labeled #2) and how perilously close they are to each other. If you look really closely at the other flower, you’ll also see the yellow flecks of pollen that have dropped onto the petals. Imagine how easily a visiting insect could fertilize the flower with its own pollen! For you to avoid this risk, you’ll have to get there before the flower even opens.

Step 1: Collect the flowers of your chosen pollen parent

Timing: Morning of Day 1

Collect flowers that are nearly open. The petals will still be “closed” around the pistil and stamen, but loosely enough that you can force them open. Because you’ll be using these flowers for their pollen, you can cut them right off the plant. Trim the petals away at this point.

Trimming the petals from my pollen parent, ‘Graham Thomas’

Some people will just cut off the top “sacks” from the stamens (called anthers) at this point, but I was taught to just leave them on the flower so as to use the whole things as a “brush” when applying the pollen. The pollen may not be ready right away, but if you collect these flowers into a small container, you should begin see the release of pollen within a few hours.

Step 2: Prepare your chosen mother rose

Timing: Morning of Day 1

The flowers of the seed parent (mother) need to remain on the plant because after pollination it will take around 3 months to develop ripe seeds. Again, select flowers that are still closed, but that the petals are loose enough to work open. For this flower, remove both the petals and the stamens.

Only the central pistil remains

At this stage, the pistil may not be quite ready to accept pollen. That may happen as early as the same day or up to a couple of days after petal removal.

Step 3: Transfer the pollen

Timing: Afternoon of day 1, repeat for the next 2 or 3 days to be sure

This really is as simple as using the flower of the pollen parent (you collected this in step 1) to brush the pollen onto the pistil of the mother plant. I usually do my first transfer on the afternoon of the first day, and then try again a few times over the following days just in case the mother plant wasn’t ready yet. You can also brush the loose pollen on with your finger if a lot has released from the pollen sacks.

Now’s the time to label your cross. I use a plastic loop tag with the name of the pollen parent and seed parent. Yes, you can probably figure out the seed parent anyway (because the flower is still attached) but I note it down anyway because I figure I could get lazy about it at the time of seed collection.

Step 4: Collect and plant the seeds

Timing: Around 3 months later

The fruit of a rose (called a hip) will develop and ripen over the course of the season. Most varieties have hips that turn orange or red when the seed inside is ready to be harvested.

Photo by Henryk Kotowski CC BY-SA 3.0

Some roses make good mothers and develop lots of seeds. Others are less prolific. Some roses are more or less compatible with each other than others at pollen or seed parents. This is my gentle way of tamping down the expectations that you’ll get a lot of viable seeds from each crossing. It could be zero, it could be just a few, and it could be upwards of 30.

Roses program their seeds to require a period of cold & moisture (called stratification) before they’ll germinate. In nature, this would be a winter after the hips have dropped and broken down in the soil. Don’t just leave the hips on the rose for the winter and then try to germinate them the next spring. Seeds in the hips are inhibited from this stratification even if they withstand a long cold winter on the shrub.

Sow them in a seedling tray with potting soil and leave them in a sheltered place outdoors over the winter. Alternately, place the seed tray (or just the seeds in a ziploc of perlite, sand or vermiculite) into the fridge for up to 3 months. You should check occasionally to make sure they haven’t started to germinate in the fridge (sometimes they do!)

Here’s a video I made about growing roses from seed:

What should you expect from the seedlings?

Okay, so the steps weren’t too complex (I hope – if they seem that way, it must be my explanation!). They do take some time, though. You may have already counted a minimum of 3 months for seed ripening, and 3 months for stratification/seed germination. What’s more, you may not see significant flowering on the new seedling in the first year of growth. It may throw a few small flowers, but they’re generally not the best examples of what the baby rose will produce when it’s mature.

Will it flower like the chosen plants? Not necessarily. This is where the complex genetics of roses comes into play. Even a self-fertilized rose can look and grow quite differently than the mother. If you imagined rearing a seedling that reproduces the perfect form of Parent A and the outstanding fragrance of Parent B, that’s a wonderful goal – but it’s likely to take more than a few tries to get close to the ideal! Some larger breeding program germinate thousands of seedlings every year in the hopes of introducing 2 or 3 roses after years of evaluation.

So expect something unexpected. I say none of this to discourage you. Far from it! Some great roses have been bred in small batches by amateur breeders. Also, it’s reassuring to know that all the biggest names in the history of rose breeding started out with a single act of cross-pollination.

If you’re looking for some guidance about which roses make good seed parents, pollen parents or what classes of roses are most compatible genetically, there’s thankfully an excellent forum of rose hybridizers to support the hobby.

Just to finish off this article, I’ll mention that I’ve put basically the same steps and information into the following video:

When my Bare Root Roses Arrive in Fall

It is truly one of my favorite things to add roses to my collection. If this were a big commercial nursery, it would be a different story. I’d want to focus on a few of the best sellers – propagate them in large, uniform crops – sell out early in the season, and spend the rest of the summer kayaking! Instead, I bog myself down with the slow process of establishing hundreds of “mother” plants – learning their individual eccentricities, and then bringing them to market a few at a time, because seriously, there’s a limited demand for specialty roses.

But I love it. This is not a business with a rose inventory attached, but rather a rose collection with a little backyard nursery to grow along with it.

So, in the video below, I take delivery of my fall order of bare root roses – 5 more that I’ve never grown before: Variegata di Bologna, Sempervirens spectabilis, Jacques Cartier, Alba suaveolens, and Kazanlik.

It caps off a year where I’ve added probably a dozen others, some from local nursery finds (‘Konigen von Danemark’ comes to mind), some ordered in spring from another bare root supplier… but my favorites of all came to me from other gardeners: ‘Souv. de la Malmaison’, ‘Narrow Water’ (thanks Elaine), ‘Etoile de Hollande’ (thanks Bob!) and ‘Maigold’ (thanks Sanjoy).

All this means that in the next few weeks, I’ll be updating my list on Helpmefind

I’ll also be posting here with a current inventory of winter carryover, ready to be claimed for spring sale (or sooner, if you’re a real die hard!).

 

Trading Roses & Cuttings

Recently, I’ve been talking to anyone who will listen about why we (rose gardeners) need to take control of our own hobby and safeguard the many garden-worthy, heirloom and unique roses that are no longer offered “in the trade”. Think about this for a minute: we have over 2000 years of rose cultivation under our belts, and thousands of exceptional cultivars selected. Yet, we’re going to leave it to some buyer at a national home improvement store, sales report in hand, to decide which ones will carry on and be offered to the next generation of gardeners. Can you say “Knock-Out”?

Madame Hardy, pictured above, will probably never make the cut at the big-box stores – but still deserves an honored place in the garden. Thus, we need a plan.

If you look back on my previous posts, or at my Youtube videos, you’ll see me giving instruction on how to take semi-hardwood cuttings. I’ll probably add another one shortly on how you can stick winter-season hardwood cuttings. I also talked to the Fraser Pacific and Vancouver Rose Societies about how we can work together to keep our best garden roses being propagated and distributed to budding gardeners.

If we’re not going to rely on the big nurseries, just how do we expect it to happen? 

And just how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do we save garden-worthy roses? One rose at a time.

This is my first offer: If you have a rare but worthwhile rose in your garden, and are willing to root some cuttings, I’ll be happy to trade you something interesting from my assortment. I’ll plant your rooted rose as a trial plant in my garden, and if I also find it worthwhile, I’ll continue to propagate it for sale. And that’s that… one more rose back “in the trade”, insofar as you can call our little farm part of the nursery trade.

And my other offer: Maybe you don’t have the time or wherewithal to root your roses, or maybe you’re too far away from the Fraser Valley to make sense of trading potted roses. Nonetheless, if you have a rare rose in your garden, and you’d like to see it back in distribution, you could send me some cuttings. I’ll happily pay the postage. On my end, I’ll stick the cuttings and see if I can get some roses rooted. In return for your efforts, upon successful rooting, I’ll send you your choice of some rooted rose liners.

So that’s my part in it… but I’m just one guy. The more gardeners we get involved in preserving roses, the better we can help each other to take control of our hobby. That’s why I’m asking you to arrange your trades of cuttings or roses on this Facebook group: Canada Rose Cuttings & Exchange.

We can share our lists: what we have, what we’re looking for. But we can also share techniques, arrange trades, discuss suppliers… anything related to the propagation and dissemination of hard-to-find roses. I hope to catch up with you there.

 

Showy Rose Hips

Showy Rose Hips

I’ve always said that roses are the hardest working shrubs in the garden. From the earliest in spring, they provide ornamental interest to the garden, plus food and habitat for insects, birds and other wildlife. In the fall and winter, they demonstrate this work ethic with their ripening fruit – the rose hip.

As I write this, it’s early October in my garden. While some of the less sensible hybrid roses are still sending up soft new shoots and flower buds, the species roses have been planning for winter all season: hardening off the wood from this year’s stems, and slowly ripening hips from the clusters of flowers they wore in May and June. If you’re not familiar with the species roses here’s the short explanation: these are the native wild roses from around the world. Unlike the hybrids often seen in gardens, they usually bloom all at once for a few weeks early in the season. Some of my favorites really put on a fall and winter show with their hips.

What’s a gardener to do with all these rose hips?

If you’re like me, I just enjoy them as seasonal decor of the garden. The birds, rabbits and other small critters will snack on them as they soften. I only do minimal pruning and tidying in the rose field in the fall – small birds take refuge in the canes and brambles in large numbers. Sometimes, we’ll have a spell of hard winter weather and the snow and ice will cover the rose hips for a beautiful display.

If you’re a little more inclined to forage for yourself, you can collect the rose hips and use them for tea, syrup, jelly or even wine. They’re sweet and fragrant, with a flavor somewhat like an apple or quince – they’re also very high in vitamin C. Herbalist recommend them for heart health and arthritis – and they’re also supposed to be good for the common cold.

In my opinion, the best hips for harvest are the big, juicy hips of Rosa rugosa:

Some of the rose hips featured in the above video are definitely not for eating. The Scots rose, Rosa spinosissima and its relatives have attractive black or purple hips, but they’re rather dry and mealy inside:

One more rose I have to add a photo of is Rosa roxburghii, the chestnut rose. It’s a very large shrub (almost a tree), with finely divided leaves, and these large spiny hips that distinguish it from all other roses:

Overwintering perennials

Even if you only know me casually, you’ve probably caught on that I’m a bit of a plant geek… I mean, more than just the roses, tomatoes and squash. In fact, my real expertise (at my day job) is regarding perennials. I’ve learned a lot there about how to grow each crop to finish for sales in the spring, but the trickiest growing is on those crops I have to tend through the winter.

I made a quick video about it:

When it really comes down to it, the tricks to successfully overwintering any hardy plant in a container are pretty similar:

  • Start with clean plants – remove dead and diseased foliage early to avoid later problems
  • Protect them from cold winds that would dry their tissues
  • Shelter from the coldest temperatures. For some of the less hardy plants, this may mean heating – but for many perennials in the mild winter climate of the Fraser Valley, this just means a layer of protection (snow, crop cover, or an unheated greenhouse)
  • Try not to let your greenhouse heat up during sunny days
  • Provide decent air circulation
  • Don’t keep the plants wet all the time, but do water ahead of the coldest weather to prevent desiccation
  • Even if you start with clean plants, do inspect them frequently for any signs of disease or rot. As foliage dies down, in most cases, it’s advantageous to trim it away from the plant

And because this is a website about roses, I’ll add this: while I don’t recommend much winter pruning for roses in the landscape, I perform a moderate pruning on the container roses in my greenhouses. Where they have a little protection, they tolerate the winter pruning fairly well – I combine the pruning with stripping off the old foliage. This sanitation protects from winter rot, but also gives new foliage in the spring a fresh start, with no old leaves to carry over black spot or powdery mildew.

And here I am, enjoying a sunny January day in our garden! The days have been getting longer since December 21 – but I recently heard a climatologist quote a different measure: the dead of winter, which sounds more ominous than the way he explained it. The dead of winter, measured by local weather history, is the point in the year when your area has the very lowest average temperature. Every day after that is statistically more likely to be warm. I can buy into that! Here in the Fraser Valley, it’s around January 4th.

So we’re over the hump. As a rule of thumb for me, I begin seeing my greenhouse plants wake up around Valentine’s day. There’s still a lot of winter that can happen in a month, but it’s nice to have the finish line in sight.

 

Thornless roses

As I write this post on roses and thorns, I have a song stuck in my head.

I wish I were  classy enough to instead be reflecting on one of these famous quotes on the topic:

Anne Bronte wrote “But he who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose” and Alphonse Carr mused: “Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.”

But no, I have the power ballad by Poison in my head. You know the one. What can I say? I’m a product of the eighties.

It’s mostly true that every rose has its thorn. It’s basic to the nature of the shrub – this dichotomy of pleasure and pain that would make it an appropriate symbol for love, even if you ignored all of the cultural associations.

You might think that my own opinion on the thorniness of roses would be influenced by the amount of time I spend handling them, and the uncommon amount of cuts, scrapes and punctures I’ve taken on my hands, arms, and legs. Actually, no. I hardly think of the thorns unless they’re poking me at the moment. The presence of thorns is such a given that when I’m asked to recommend a thornless  rose, I have to stop and think about it for a minute.

‘How about Zephirine Drouhin?’, customers ask me, usually by email, because who wants to actually try to pronounce that? Well, yes, that’s the most famous, and sometimes available in stores. I love the flower form and scent. It was indeed thornless in my experience when I grew it. But even though I love old garden roses, I find the Bourbons (and Zephirine in particular) to be extremely susceptible to mildew. I don’t really spray, so a couple of times a year, this rose completely defoliated itself in the garden.

I may try it again, but I’d be hard pressed to recommend it to one of my customers. So what would I recommend?

There’s a beautiful deep pink climber called ‘Amadis’ that I like a lot. Also, I grow a gorgeous almost-blue rambler called ‘Veilchenblau’.  Both are thornless in my garden (or so nearly so that I haven’t noticed different), but they do lack scent, and their blooming season is limited.

After that, I have to think a bit. ‘Cardinal de Richelieu’, ‘Chloris’, ‘Complicata’, ‘Crepuscule’, ‘Geschwind’s Orden’, ‘Lady Hillingdon’,  ‘Paul Neyron’, ‘Sophie’s Perpetual’, ‘Therese Bugnet’. All wonderful roses, and there might be others, but they’re not jumping out at me right now. As a quick disclaimer, I’ll can’t say that these roses lack thorns entirely. ‘Therese Bugnet’ for example usually has thorns lower down on the shrub, but is quite smooth on the newer red canes high on the bush.

If you’re reading this article through, it’s probably because you have a good reason for wanting a rose with fewer thorns. When I ask my customers for the “why?”, they’re usually quite sensible in their plans. Who wants a heavily armed rose right next to front entrance or patio, where guests are liable to be snagged? And customers with younger children are rightly concerned about a tumble into the bramble.

I will ask, however, that you also consider the charms of a more heavily fortified rose. Take a look at ‘Prairie Peace’ – a Canadian treasure, and quite rare in gardens – and tell me that it isn’t gorgeous in its own right, with the reddishly bristled stems a part of its dangerous charm.

My suggestion would be to plant your smooth rose at the front of the border, and thornier specimens deeper in the garden bed. At a safe distance, you might even forget the thorns are there – until it’s pruning time, of course. There are so many nice roses with unique features, it would seem a shame to disqualify the majority of them for just because they have a tendency towards violence.

Spring tidy and fertilizing

In the succession of flowering times for garden shrubs, the Forsythia comes early, and perhaps because it’s such a bright (or even objectionable, depending on who you ask) shade of yellow, rose growers use it as a reminder to get out there and prune their roses. If you lack a Forsythia, you definitely use the more attractive red-flowering currant here in the Lower Mainland, and it wouldn’t much change your timing. I snapped a picture of my inherited Forsythia this week… and as you can see, I’ll never miss pruning time:

The red/pink flowers in the foreground are quince (Cydonia), another shrub you could use to get nearly the same timing – it’s probably a week behind in my garden.

The reason many rose gardeners wait until this part of spring is that it coincides with roses being ready to break dormancy. By this time, winter kill on the canes (evidenced by black tissue higher up the extremities of your roses) will be apparent, and you will probably be able to see some of the buds swelling.

How to prune them? It depends on the rose, and it depends on what you want. This is your first chance of the season to influence your rose. Cutting harder usually means that the rose will respond with a number of strong shoots from the base, and will result in more flowers this season. A lighter prune allows the rose to grow and harden more canes, and if done properly, will allow some varieties of roses to form into a better garden shrub over the long term.

You can try to use this spring pruning and fertilizing to keep your roses a preferred size in your garden, but your influence is limited. I’ll put it this way: you’ll never make a small rose grow like a large rose by fertilizing, and you’ll never make a large rose grow like a small rose with pruning.

No matter your goals, it’s good to cut out dead, diseased and congested growth. And because roses are heavy feeders, they’ll respond well to a top dress of fertilizer or compost. A moderate amount of pruning and fertilizing will always leave your roses better off, and so I don’t get too hung up on the details… not even which other plants are blooming at the time!