Cindi ...
You know your climate and soil better than I do and you know what works for you in that climate.
I don't have any shade on the house pad level and prefer to do no container gardening up here. However, because I do not have loamy soil, I have to make sure anything I plant has been set up for success.
All of the roses I have planted up here were allowed to grow roots in the summer with temps in the triple digits for months at a time. You are right that in that kind of heat, the soil in the ground is cooler. However, I have never had a plant suffer from boiling in the container. I know it happens to a lot of people, but I think that has more to do with the type of container used than the heat.
There is another variable ... I live in a climate that has hot, dry heat with no summer rain. The amount of water that goes into the pot during the period a rose is in the container is determined by me and not by Nature.
You can't lump all of California gardening together. The climates simply vary too much all through the state. My climate is very different from Zuzu's and Suzanne's in that I don't get the ocean influence. My climate is more arid. I have a shorter growing season and more variables, but we are all growing roses in California.
>>>I know I have whined about our weather conditions here, but actually I think you have a much more difficult situation in California. I'm a lazy gardener, and things still grow. I hardly ever irrigate, I never spray, rarely feed, have no moles, voles, or nematodes, and the deer have plenty of other things to munch on. Some years I don't even mulch. I've never found a rock in the soil, and blackspot is a minor issue. There are insects on my roses, but they don't seem to cause them any harm that I can see.
I am a lazy gardener, too. That's why I make sure my plants are solid before I plant them in the ground.
I do have to water my roses weekly during the summer months, but many people up here feel like they have to water more often. I have perfect drainage and the clay in my soil holds moisture, but with the drought, my drainage has changed, so I had to change how I mulched and how I watered.
I do feed my roses because I am gardening in soil that was totally dead when I started. It's much better now, but it is still not sufficiently fertile to provide for the needs of the plants.
I do have moles, but they really don't impact the roses like gophers do as they don't eat the roots. I just stomp the feeding tunnels down and the roses keep on keeping on.
I have lots and lots of rocks in my garden and when I started, I couldn't dig a rose hole with a pick. Now, I can use a shovel and digging rose holes is no problem. I have a no-till garden and the soil improvement has happened over time with the various mulch materials I've used.
Black spot isn't a problem after temps hit 85F. A balanced, no spray garden will rarely have a serious insect infestation. My one exception is the rose curculios. With my shorter growing season, I don't want them breeding in my garden, so I am pretty aggressive about dis-budding the garden when they are above ground.
There are a lot of right ways to grow roses. If what you are doing works for you, then you've got it right for your climate and soil and other variables. If I tried to follow your gardening practices, I would end up with a lot of dead roses ...
We do what works.
Smiles,
Lyn
