The new J&P catalog arrived in the mail yesterday. Not only are they trying to pass off a slew of minis as hybrid teas (all of the ones with registration names beginning with BEN), but they've also renamed at least two of their earlier roses.

The ones featured prominently as "2013 New Introductions" (and being offered at the "bargain price" of $39.95 each!) are almost certainly older. 'Clouds of Glory' appears to be the one they called 'Cinderella' when they still had their contract with Disney and then renamed 'J&P Chardonnay' when they lost that contract.

'Soft Whisper' is clearly a new name for 'Crescendo,' which they described as "soft as a whisper" and "whisper-soft" in two earlier catalogues.

Problem is that well over 99% of the populace wouldn't know one rose from another. All they know is a pretty pink one, or a pretty yellow one. Most people believe that the only mini roses are the teeny ones you find in grocery stores. A rose that gets to be 2' x 2' does not sound too miniature to most people. Unfortunately, also, most people don't care, either.

I bet they would care if they were to find out that they're paying hybrid tea prices for minis, or that they're paying $39.95 for a "2013 new introduction" they might already have had in their gardens for the last two or three years.

And who wouldn't know something's fishy if a hybrid tea grows to only 2 feet tall (unless, of course, it's one of those own-root hybrid teas from Vintage Gardens or Rogue Valley that were never meant to grow on their own roots)?

Funny, I had pretty much that problem with HTs when I grew them on Dr Huey rootstock but did not spray for blackspot. What would have given away the game for me would have been if those same six inch tall plants were immune to BS. Still, I'm staying well clear of J&P until they get their act together.

I'm almost constantly surprised by how roses that have been in my own garden for a while look under slightly different conditions. Abe Darby's and Baronne Prevost's roses look markedly different season to season and through the season. They can also look quite different place to place. I planted Gemini this spring. When it was blooming I had no idea which rose it was. I had to check my planting records. Gemini looked so very different in my NJ garden that I did not recognize it here - and it wasn't entirely due to the lack of black spot. The flowers were a warmer pink, less mottled, and had more reflexed petals. Finally, I expected that sometimes Double Delight would resemble Cherry Parfait when I planted them near each other, but on a rare occasion, I have do a double-take before I figure out which is which.

zuzu said:I bet they would care if they were to find out that they're paying hybrid tea prices for minis, or that they're paying $39.95 for a "2013 new introduction" they might already have had in their gardens for the last two or three years.

And who wouldn't know something's fishy if a hybrid tea grows to only 2 feet tall (unless, of course, it's one of those own-root hybrid teas from Vintage Gardens or Rogue Valley that were never meant to grow on their own roots)?

I've found in my Hunts here that people who buy roses buy them basically as a "pretty flower" and view them almost as an annual. I have yet to find a serious rosarian in my shopping escapades. Most people here can't tell the difference between a floribunda, a hybrid tea, a grandiflora, and a climber. But then again, most nurseries don't have serious rosarians selling their roses, either. Only Tagawa's Nursery, that I know of, actually has a rosarian working and she's always so busy doing this, that, & the other that getting a few minutes to talk to her is pretty hard. If I happen to be looking at roses & I see someone with a befuddled look on their face, I usually ask them if there's something I can do to help them decide (I usually suggest one of each - that's the easiest way to decide! Especially for both roses & chocolate.). They then usually turn to me gratefully & start asking questions about color & smell. I have yet to have someone ask about size and when I warn someone that X rose can & will get 4-5' tall & about 4' around, they always look at me like I'm talking about a tree. Roses just don't get that big, do they? Yes, they do. I then use my phone, connect to this website here, & show them pictures of my roses. I rarely show them pictures of roses from other people - mainly because in some parts of the US (Zuzu & Sue, I'm talking about you) you can plant Cheerios & grow a donut tree. Here in CO, things are a lot harder to grow due to short season, bad soil, altitude, & drought. So when I show them what *I* grow, then they can see what *they* can grow (most people in the metro don't have the wind problem I do.. I'm on the eastern plains so I get the wind much worse than, say, Tabby does.).

Well they had to rename Crescendo, if it really was soft as a whisper.

You're right, Cindi. That's a good name for something loud, such as Ketchup & Mustard.

Steve, I don't think I understand your comment about hybrid teas grafted onto Dr. Huey being "six inch tall plants." Do you mean they shrank after you planted them? Even bare-root grafted plants are much taller than 6 inches when they arrive. And what does black spot have to do with it? I can understand it affecting the foliage, but not the height.

In the first year the big fat canes that they shipped with would die, being replaced by canes the sizes of, say linguini, rarely more than a foot high. And by the time the linguini got hit with black spot in the second year, the living part of the cane was often not six inches tall, if it existed at all. This was, of course, not the case for all HT's; but it was the case for about ninety percent of them. I lost some minis to BS, too; but they generally put up a serious fight.

How awful! I admire your perseverance.

I avoid Hybrid teas for the same reason: over the years some of them shrink instead of growing.

Zuzu - also, probably what was happening is that Steve suffered from what I suffer from: winterkill on the canes. My poor roses usually almost die 100% to the ground, or about 6" off the ground (or wherever the mulch is protecting them). That's why I have to do major major major pruning in the spring: to cut away the winterkill. The new canes that grow up are usually so much smaller than the original canes that were on the plant that I planted the year previously. That's why I'm shocked when some of my roses get bigger than 2-3'. That seems to be almost the max that most of them get for me.

I was just reading something on the Web about that. This guy plants his bud union 6 inches under the ground and cuts all the canes down to ground level before winter.

http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com...

I was aware of most of those techniques when I gardened in NJ. For a while I sprayed, but I found that most of my favorite roses didn't require attention most of the time. Many did well without any spraying, ever. So it seemed like a monumental waste of time to spray every week... until BS hit most of the HTs second week of June or so. Then, as the article points out, it was too late. The roses dropped their leaves until late August. Then they would green up again, but would only get six weeks of good weather on the new leaves. So the roses would look good for six weeks in May and the first two weeks in June. And they'd look good for four weeks in September. The rest of the year they would be barren of leaves for one reason or another. And barren roses just don't look that good in the garden.

All shrub roses thrived and most floribundas and minis did well without spraying. Most old roses were fine. The DA roses that weren't yellow did well, too. The occasional HT did well. So going without spraying only seemed like a silly thing to do in the years I planted a lot of HTs. And that happened once or twice.

While it's true that I didn't mulch very aggressively, it was also true that there was an almost perfect correlation between roses that got black spot and roses that perished in the garden. There are two exceptions that come to mind where Roundup overspray was responsible for the loss of a good rose: Sombreuil and Mme Plantier. Oh, yes, I do remember losing Memorial Day over the winter. It was the best-branched and among the most vigorous of the HTs I planted and it was immune to BS. So I was surprised when it failed. It failed for me here, too - again, not from BS but from freezing. Here in AZ where it's one full USDA zone warmer, ironically, I lose a lot more roses to freeze-thaw cycling than I did in NJ. None to BS, gratefully. Anyway, I consider Memorial Day to be the only rose I lost to winter freezing of all the roses I planted in NJ Z6b.

I got a real chuckle out of your comment, Toni, about Cheerios and donut trees; because that's the way CA rose gardening has always appeared to me, too.

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I'm pleased that this year: it seems that with the right amount of water and fertilizer nearly all of my roses appear to be growing happily. (Don Juan excepted). There are even some blooms going into summer. Rainbow Sorbet and Cherry Parfait - roses that have been in the garden for three years - have been pretty much in constant bloom since early June. So too, Ascot, Paradise, and Shocking Blue all in their first year from Palatine. Moonstone is developing into a stout and productive plant that bears flowers almost continuously. So, too Waterlily and Toscana Vigorosa. I've been pleasantly surprised by the Marchioness of Londonderry whose pale pink flowers have a delicious, soft lemon merengue scent. Parade and Grande Dame are preparing for a second flush of bloom. Paradise Found, Leann Rimes, and Firefighter - since the six inches of rain from summer monsoons - have started building up nicely. Even Falstaff which I had threatened verbally with removal this spring has perked up and is cranking out lovely blossoms. And, of course, South Africa glows in the garden. The big surprise this year has been the floribundas and old roses from VG that hit the ground running in mid May and are growing like topsy.

In the interest of staying on topic, I don't think there is a rose in the garden right now that has J&P in its provenance. Who could have said that two decades ago?

that's an interesting article, Zuzu.
What IF I added soil and compost around existing, mature plants to make the bud unions 6" underground? I am rebuilding the one bed that has my only hybrid teas. I think I'm down to only 6 hybrid teas out of nearly 400 roses. They died exactly the way Steve described it. The canes got smaller and smaller until they are down to a 6" plant with pencil-thick canes.
I could add one more layer to the stone wall I'm building around the bed, and just backfill. Would it hurt the shrub roses to have the dirt added? I add compost this way each year, but mysteriously it levels out and I have to add another 2" again the next season.

Cindi - lol, that's what I've done to all my roses that have survived. The bud union is a minimum of 2" below "ground level" and then there's another 2-10" of mulch on top of that, plus when I backfill, I mound the dirt up around so there's only a little bit of cane sticking up out of the ground. Seems to help them survive my winters.

Cindi's post brings up an interesting question and I'd like to hear a scientific answer. I add soil to my flower beds every year. I buy hundreds of bags of potting soil each year and pour it into the flower beds. Why don't the beds start overflowing after a few years? They just seem to get lower and lower. I can tell because my flower beds have rocks around them. I know the rocks aren't rising, so the soil must be sinking. And it's not a compaction process, because the soil stays friable several feet down.

Subsidence?

Your soil is being washed away. Do you have some kind of non-porous barrier between you & a neighbor? I can always tell where my soil & mulch go based 100% on what part of my concrete edgers are buried deeper than others. Plus, most bagged "soil" isn't actually "soil" (dirt) at all but rather finely ground up wood products, which decays quickly.

Potting soil is mostly organic material. It's doing the dead musician thing: decomposing.

Steve812 said:Potting soil is mostly organic material. It's doing the dead musician thing: decomposing.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ut3B...