Sorry, kassia, I like your red knockout.
Some of you may remember that I pruned back my own root Austin Wildeve rose quite heavily last spring. It was monstrously tall - blocking my front window - with canes thicker than my finger. I am relatively new to roses and intimidated by pruning. I tried to follow the instructions on the Austin site. The plant looked very nice last summer. However, as I mentioned, this spring I had dead canes and die back due to winter. Wildeve also had many fewer new canes this year. It could be due to the weather, the pruning, or some other factor. Since roses store energy in their canes, my heavily pruned rose may have had less energy to send up new canes. I crawled under the rose to completely remove the older/damaged canes. There were quite a few, so I removed them a few at a time. I didn't want to send the stressed plant into shock. I always seal the ends of canes with wood glue to prevent stem borers.
I have top dressed my roses monthly with manure and/or compost in addition to using spray fertilizer. It may take another year or more for Wildeve to recover. I am looking forward to seeing her roses blocking my window again. In the future, I will deadhead and remove crossed and damaged canes. Period.
My roses seem happy with light shaping and deadheading. Some people in this area cut their roses to less than a foot tall every fall. I ignore their advice because I am not impressed by their roses - mainly struggling vintage hybrid teas such as Tropicana. A neighbor's mother tells me several times each fall to cut all of my roses back. I prefer to wait until the forsythia to bloom in spring before pruning. She claims that "tea" roses make better blooms if cut back. I smile, nod and ignore her advice. True tea roses are too tender to grow here. I don't show roses and don't care what people do to make their HYBRID tea roses produce "perfect" blooms. Besides, If I cut back my few own root HYBRID tea roses (Tiffany, Grenada, Lagerfeld) each fall I would be lucky to see blooms by July. (People who insist on calling HYBRID tea roses TEA roses are a pet peeve of mine. One neighbor adamantly states that her roses are not "hybrids", they are "real" roses. Fine. Her REAL roses are shorter than her zinnias and rarely bloom. I'll get my rose advice elsewhere. Some misguided zone 6 soul may follow her advise and buy true tea roses online then give up on roses after they die.)
California Sue (or maybe zuzu) posted some great information on pruning in another thread. There are also some good videos on Paul Zimmerman's blog "Roses are Plants Too" on the finegardening website.
I grow a red ground cover rose - Fire Meidiland. It is very disease resistant - no blackspot, ignored by aphids. It had no die back this winter, possibly because it is close to the ground. It would be beautiful growing on a slope. Mine is growing bigger than expected - sending 6-8' canes as thick as my finger. I always associated Meidiland with fussy hybrid tea roses such as Yves St Laurent. I was pleasantly surprised to read that some of their beautiful roses are also very hardy.
I used to travel to Minneapolis and northern Wisconsin for work. You have much colder winters, more snow cover and shorter growing seasons than I do. Roses that do well for me may still be too tender for you.
I am surprised with skiekitty's success overwintering big box grafted roses in her garden. I have given up on grafted big box roses until I become proficient at rose propagation. We both live in cold climates, but Colorado is much drier than PA. I think the late winter/early spring freeze-thaw cycles in PA damage the grafts. (I had dug out several dead rose sticks in springs with split grafts before I gave up on grafted roses, especially those grafted on Dr. Huey which is borderline hardy here.). I had planted the grafted roses as deeply as I could get holes dug for them - about 2-4" below ground. I had to have friends help me to remove the rocks and dig the holes that deep. Some sources recommend planting the grafts 6-8" below ground level. I would need earthmoving equipment and possibly dynamite to dig holes that deep in my garden. Someone had recommended trying to plant the graft just above the ground surface to protect it from winter wet. Surface planting with peat moss winter protection may work, but I haven't tried it yet. (Planting the graft at or above ground level may protect the graft from standing water but would also make the graft more vulnerable to freezing temperatures. This would be a bold experiment - not a recommendation).
I visited rosesarered's nearby garden. She grows her roses in raised beds. She has some grafted roses from Pickering and/or Palentine's that are doing very well for her. That is another strategy that may work for you. There is a thread here that zuzu comments on grafted roses and root stocks. The most common root stock, Dr. Huey, may not be the best choice for cold climates.
I look up roses on helpmefind, cubits and other places to see if any given rose grows well for others in cold climates before trying it in my garden. A rose that grows in the northern Midwest, Canada, Scandinavia or northern Russia may also grow well in the Poconos. Of course, that means that I don't even think of buying the hot new rose on the cover of the catalogs until a few years after it is introduced. I don't mind waiting. I have more roses on my wish list than I have room to plant them. Roses are too expensive for me to treat them as annuals. This has been the toughest winter in years, but all of my roses survived. Considering the number of roses that died previous winters I am happy with my rose choices.
We are suffering record high temperatures and 100% humidity. Time to pile on the sunblock and water my garden. This weather is only good for tomatoes and solar tea. Winston the pug is laying in front of the a/c "holding it" so he doesn't have to go outside. Yesterday I filled a rubbermaid dish pan with water to make a doggie pool for him. He wasn't impressed, but the neighbors thought it was hysterical.
