Cindi: Sorry I took so long to respond to your questions. It's been stifling hot and humid here and too hot to stay indoors at night and sit at the computer ! That's the big problem here: It gets into the 90's and hundreds with extremely high humidity (don't know what %) but it DOES NOT rain. IF it does, it's for about 3 minutes, ("spitting" rather than "rain") then it's horrible again. The air is so heavy it's like breathing peanut butter...and I'm a 4 minute walk to the ocean. During these periods it's still in the low 80's at night with zero air movement. August through mid Sept. are the worst.
My roses are all grafted, except one climber: Sunrise.
Any rose with more than 50 petals just shrivels here in the heat. FB's do best for me. Powdery mildew is a huge issue here and so is rust, but I try to buy roses that are supposed to be resistant to both. We don't have good rose nurseries here, except one about 80 miles away, but the ones I have came from Weeks and they all seem to do just fine.
I wish someone could explain to me why they can grow such incredible roses in ENGLAND where it's damp and rainy so much of the time. That type of weather, coupled with the fog we get, is the kiss of death for roses here in the winter and early spring.
