Cases in point: Casino is now close over two feet high with three or four healthy canes. It has maybe five or six huge, heavy flowers on it, and leaves the size of apricots. It is bigger than one of the orange HT roses obtained a year earlier from Palatine. Looping has not bloomed, but it has two healthy four-foot canes. America, a bit scrawny on delivery, has two canes at two feet in height. Psyche has grown three canes that are five ft in height! Most of the OGRs in the order have produced either one cane four feet in length or several that are nearly 3 ft in length. In fact, I would be hard pressed to distinguish just by looking at them which of the OGRs in that new bed came from VG and which came from Pickering. This is not something I'd have been able to say last year of VG roses. It really seems like VG must be doing something different in the cultivation of their bands since they acquired stock from Eurodesert.
By contrast, I think of Golden Buddha which I bought two, maybe three years ago from RVR. It is approaching 1.5 inches high and four inches across. Or of HT Amatsu-Otone which I got from VG two years ago. It is now 12 inches high with one skinny cane. It produced one flower last year and two this year. Or of Brass Band which I got from Garden Valley Roses spring 2011 and moved over the winter. It is seven inches tall, maybe, and 12 inches across. Or of the noisette I got from VG three years ago that has not started to grow from its size of six inches in each direction. Maybe I'm just taking better care of them; but that doesn't fully explain why these stunted roses remain stunted. Does it?
