CindiKS said:One can never have too many roses. Ever. Or shoes.
That's the law.
I agree whole heartedly with the never having too many roses part. I only have a couple pairs of shoes, but I think it's a guy thing.
CindiKS said:Porkpal, friends convinced me to buy multiples of Sea Foam and plant a whole hillside in them, and I am sorely disappointed, I've seen it growing well for others, but it doesn't do squat here. The K-State extension experimental station here tests for Earthkind, and they have a dozen of them that grow beautifully. Mine spread, but they don't bloom. What good is that? I didn't feed mine, but they didn't feed theirs either.
My own experience with Sea Foam in NJ was that it did well by the end of its third year; but a lot of things affect rose performance. I've been reading a lot about roses online recently. I've learned that it's just not unprecedented for roses to take five or six years to really settle in. It depends on the rose, of course. Sunset Celebration is evidently one that can wait for five or more years before it starts showing what it can do. And I've heard the same about Teasing Georgia.
One of the things I realized while doing that same work is that some of the wichurana and kordesii hybrids (Sea Foam, Heidelberg, Handel, Grand Hotel ... for example) may do a little better when they are not brutalized by high temperatures, drought, and hot sun - a combination that many tea roses seem to endure happily enough. It's not something I found written down anywhere. It's something I observed from looking at the origin of photos of roses at HMF. Lots of photos. (And assuming that people tend to post photos of roses that do well for them.) It changed the way I think of roses just a bit.
I realized that there are roses that are ideally suited for the cool summer/cool winter marine climates i.e. Northern Europe (many wichurana and rugosa hybrids among them). There are roses that are ideal for cool continental climates i.e. US Northeast (many multiflora hybrids among them). There is much overlap between these groups, but the cool continental roses need more sun and must possess more resistance to blackspot. There are roses that are ideal for mediterranean climates i.e. California and parts of AZ and TX (many of the popular hybrid tea roses among them). There are roses ideally suited to warm continental climates - i.e. Gulf States (tea and china roses among them).
Pretty much all roses will grow in the mediterranean climate, but it seems that there are a number of roses that do not get as large or are less vigorous there. My understanding is that Generous Gardener is a good plant for a wall or an arch in England. Here in zone 7 of Arizona it certainly reaches head height. In California it is said to stop at about three feet, if I remember correctly. Something like this is true of Toscana Vigorosa, though not on quite the same scale. I knew that weather affected the rate of growth of a rose, with the optimum temperature being attained during spring and fall through much of the continental US.
But I only recently realized that it's only roses with a strong affiliation to the tea and china roses that actually do their best in hot weather. Suddenly Kansas and Colorado both seem like more difficult places to grow roses because of the monumental temperature swings, the low rainfall, and the occasional high humidity.
I wonder whether a little PM shade might help Sea Foam until it's been there for a while? Maybe deeper piles of mulch? Or aluminized blankets pinned to the soil with landscape staples to keep the soil cool in summer? Maybe that's a bit over the top? Which direction does the hill face?
