My life is crazier than usual, lately, Been out of touch from my rose friends.
I bought the Bolero floribunda this year. I was also confused by the names as seen by my posts in the plant files. I like it! Lots of flowers, fragrant beautiful. The light color glows in the garden! I like it whatever you call it! It is a compact, healthy shrub grown on its own roots!!! My kind of rose!
I bought another "romantic floribunda" according to the label that was a floribunda rose by Radler of the knockout fame (name is Orchid Masterpiece if I remember correctly). It is also a healthy little own root shrub, but I like the flowers on bolero much better. This is their first year. I will see how both survive the winter and look next spring!
I overwintered roses in pots against a wall by necessity. I moved all my roses - twice in a year- and didn't get them all in the ground. I put all of the pots together against the south wall of the garage. I threw some mothballs by each to keep hungry critters away (definitely not an organic gardening product, but I use them outside to keep critters from nesting in my covered roses.), blew heaps of leaves on top of them and hoped for the best. By the end of the winter the snow reached the roof of the garage along that wall. I had mixed results. Established roses covered in place in my garden overwinter MUCH better than potted roses for me! I had roses in pots by necessity not by choice
I wouldn't dig your roses up now! Listen to RoseBlush and take care of their roots - dont' bereak and stress them by yanking them out of the ground! I am already starting to cover the bases of my grafted roses - i.e the divas. I throw a couple of moth balls in the peat moss - you can skip that. I add a bit of peat moss at a time. (Experts who wrote cold weather rose gardening books said to wait until the ground freezes solid before covering the roses. However, I can get November snow that stays until May like last year. The heavy snowfall covered the roses that I didn't get a chance to cover (Ie, the Canadians and other non divas. They did fine) . I add more peat moss until I have a mound about a foot tall over each rose. You have to coordinate the winterizing with the leaf removal. Neighbors "helped" blow my leaves for me last fall and blew away my peat moss....plant labels....pots....Good Thing Winston the pug hurried inside or he would have flown to Kansas to visit Toto!
I think I solved that problem. I h\gave my most helpful neighbor a rose for his birthday! he bought a few more on his own. I am helping him winterize his roses as I winterize mine. The leaf blower will be aimed with care now! I am painting the names of my plants on rocks so that they don't' blow away. I am still playing who is who with my fancy hostas and a couple of roses - I'll figure it out eventually. I have rocks to paint this weekend as well.
My neighbor has a mulching mower - I have all garden in progress, no grass but a strip along the road! My goal is to have the peat moss in place this weekend and them cover the peat moss with mulched leaves as they are ready. You can buy mulch. I have more leaves than I know what to do with for free, guess what I use?I have a couple of pine trees that I want to cut the bottom branches. I waited until this time of year to cut them. I am going to lay the pine branches on top of the mulched leaves. I'll take pictures for posts or an article.
I have a note on tree leaves. I don't have any eastern black walnut trees growing in this neighborhood. Black Walnut trees release a chemical called juglone that inhibits and prevents growth of many kinds of plants. I used to live in area with many black walnut trees. I didn't use the leaves as mulch when I lived there.
Don't worry about deep snow cover if your winters have been as cold as mine have the past two years. Some meteorologist say that the El Nino Effect (probably misspelled, I am in denial that it is almost winter already) will bring another extra cold and snowy winter this year. The only bright point - when the snow is around 3-4' high the deer stay away from my yard.
Typically, my rose canes stay green as high as they are covered with peat moss or leaves or mulch.
If you have as bad a deer problem as I do, you will need to spray or treat the canes so that the deer don't eat them (Spray the exposed canes with whatever you use to keep the deer away during the summer. Since it will be snowing instead of raining, you won't have to respray often. )
In my old garden, I have wrapped my roses inverted tomato cages covered in muslin. It was necessary to both protect my roses and keep the area neat from windblown mulch.
All of my roses in the ground last fall survived the winter!
FIn my experience, hardy own root roses are more likely to survive the winter than grafted roses - in my zone 6a climate.
Grafted roses need extra care in winter protection to protect the graft! A rose garden of own root Austin, Kordes and other beautiful English, shrub, climbing or floribunda roses hardy to your zone (or preferably a zone below your zone) will be easier to maintain than a formal rose garden of grafted hybrid teas. The plants look more beautiful and healthy as well.
As yourself if you really want to invest the time , money and effort required to protect grafted roses before bringing the beauties home next spring!
I have a limited gardening budget. I try to invest in plants that will survive for years. I get really depressed when I see a rose that didn't survive the winter. I get very attached to my plants. Other people treat grafted roses like annuals and don't mind if they don't survive the winter.
I haven't bought any of the roses from the Canadian nurseries on multiflora stock. I have a wishlist, but haven't taken the plunge. Yet. All the grafted roses I have grown to date were grafted on standard Dr. Huey root stock. I bought my current grafted roses on sale at Home Depot and Lowes. I saved the pots and receipts to return the rose the following year if it didn't survive the winter. Frugal gardeners like me are more likely to take a chance on a diva plant if it has a 1-2 year return policy!
I have also had great success overwintering grocery store mini roses covered in peat moss and mulch in the ground! You can't beat 3-5 little roosted mini roses for $1.99 in a grocery store pot. I put them here and there in the front of my rose beds. I am still setting up gardens, but the mini roses earned their keep this summer!
I can chat/type roses with you all night, but I have things to do before sleep.....and Winston the pug wants a walk.
