Everything's Coming Up Roses – 5


This year I received three field-trial roses: The previously-described Pink Home Run™, Dick Clark, and Candy Oh™. I'm guessing at the Weeks floribunda Dick Clark, since it arrived with only its trial number. The description of its cherry picotee blushing to burgundy didn't hold for my individual plant. It did start out as creamy white. It did form the cherry picotee, but as it opened out, became full-flushed with the cherry color. I'll reserve judgment for now, since it's only produced two flowers so far, with one new bud forming. It's been busy growing a full, bushy plant. Either way, it will blend well with the other nearby roses.

Candy Oh™
Vivid Red is a trial landscape rose, which arrived in-bud and has been blooming continuously every since – even though I still have it in a pot -- so it is a good choice for containers, as well. A polyantha hybrid, it is billed as needing no winter protection, disease-resistant, low maintenance, and hardy to -30ºF


Last but not least, my un-named miniature rose, another free sample from a trade show. In its original spot, it had been overshadowed by its much taller hybrid tea and floribunda siblings. In fact, it occupied the exact spot where Dick Clark needed to go, so I had Dan dig it up. I only turned my back for a moment, but…..instant root pruning. I took a deep breath, put it into its new planting hole and treated it as if nothing had happened. It just sat there for weeks and weeks, long past the time it normally blooms. All at once, it became covered with leaves, and then, more buds than it had ever had. The result was a spectacular shower of blossoms.

So while roses may seem as if they're fussy, what with blackspot, grey mold, aphids, Japanese Beetles, etc., they're actually pretty tough and will bounce back from most garden calamities. Give 'em a try.

If you enjoyed this series on roses, you may also enjoy fellow garden writer Doug Green's series on landscape design at http://www.landscaping-ideas-for-gardening.com/design-a-garden.html .

Search Amazon.com for roses
 

Popular posts from this blog

Detention Basins: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Image
In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which
Keep reading

Please Garden Responsibly. Because What You Spray in Your Garden Doesn’t Stay in Your Garden

Image
American Lady caterpillar on licorice plant. Photo: Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden Scores of their silky tents covered the licorice plant in the container on my porch. Inside the tents, something was gobbling up the leaves faster than I could pick them off. The plant must have been infested when I bought it. As I reached for my organic insecticide, I thought, “Wait, you don’t know what kind of caterpillars these are!” I recalled an article on pest management by a friend who cautioned: “Sometimes, the best treatment is no treatment at all.” It took the better part of the afternoon for me to identify the miniature mowing machines. In the meantime, half of them had started dropping from their perches and wriggling off into the underbrush. I hoped I had made the right decision. The licorice plant was devastated. But then I noticed that the caterpillars had not eaten the leaves all the way down to the stem. Possibly, secondary buds could sprout and still provide a silvery
Keep reading

Musings on the Relativity of Time and The Arithmetic of Overpopulation

Image
I celebrated my birthday recently. Beyond a certain age, birthdays become a double-edged sword. You’re glad you made it to the next one, but realize that there are far fewer years ahead of you than behind you. The list of absent friends grows ever longer. Colleagues grow grey; everyone else looks like they just graduated from middle school. I used to console myself by calculating that I still had at least 2 5 more years to go, which made the end point seem very far off. But, now that would mean I’d live to an unrealistically old age, a concept supported by neither family history nor actuarial tables. I’m reminded of Einstein’s summary of his Theory of Relativity: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour." I guess I’ve been having too much fun. But that can’t go on forever. My immortality would not be good for the planet. It’s not sustainable. At the same time that medical advances have
Keep reading