Hey, y'all, did I hear my name???
You know, to be perfectly honest, I LOVE growing roses in WW and find growing most things up here pretty easy (once Toolman makes the hole with the jackhammer
) Would I grow lettuce or carrots straight in the soil, no, but I have to say roses really thrive up here, PLUS the mildew/rust pressure up here is almost non-existent considering SoCal is the mildew/rust bucket of the entire country. Of course this is due to our dry climate.
We are only in USDA zone 8a or so, so we never get cold enough to worry about winter protection per se, although last year I did (and will do better this year) tie up the little 'uns because when we get the 4' snows the branches break off as the block of ice the snow becomes shrinks as it melts. Also, I have a couple that don't like late hard frosts but bounce back nicely. Other than that, my roses seem to be happy as clams in sand.
They are on drip. Holes are amended some but not a lot so the roots are not in a water bucket. Fertilizer is (hopefully) a time release and alfalfa pellets twice a season and Miracle Gro Rose Food also once or twice as a quickie pick me up.
"Alfalfa pellets?" you ask. Well, if you go to the Rose Forums at iVillage Garden Web, you'll met a really nice group of folks who are also very smart. Alfalfa contains a fatty acid that promotes basal breaks in roses which is a good thing to keep plants renewing new canes as the years go by. I get mine from the Feed Barn up Phelan Rd a mile or so. Ask for 'Standard Bread' pellets. The bag is 50# and around $6 something, but it is a mild 'natural' fertilizer so you can put it on lots of other stuff if you can't keep a big bag around. You do NOT want to use rabbit pellets as those contain some salt. You can also use alfalfa meal, the problem I found is that it is so fine, even the slightest breeze blows it all over heck including up your nose (and most feed stores have to order it). The pellets 'melt' fine with a watering or two.
For myself, I inherited a half dozen or so Climbing Blaze that I also see sprinkled around town and were/are on sale at Mtn Hardware. I can say that they are extremely hardy up here as, from what I was told, the previous two years they were only watered and pruned by the family dogs.
Since then, I brought up most of my 'pot ghetto' from down the hill. Almost all of the ones racked with mildew do just fine and love being in the ground finally.
The last year and a half I've 'gotten into' (read 'obsessed') Old Garden Roses. For now, they are small but in a year or two will look pretty good. And a few years after that I hope to be 'that old lady on the corner with all the roses'.
Old Garden Roses, you ask? Mostly these are roses before the Hybrid Teas that you get in body bags or pots at HD. Some, called 'chinas', date back to roses originally brought here, there and everywhere from China. In fact, there are a couple of varieties that are common in the Sierra's, presumably brought over by the Chinese workers that built the railroads, etc.
My favorite variety are 'Found' roses. Found roses are roses found by the roadside or especially in cemeteries (it used to be the custom to plant a rose by a gravestone) that folks have found. Some have since been identified, some not. The beauty of these roses is that living all this time in unwatered, uncared for conditions makes many of them excellent drought tolerant roses for SoCal once they are established. They are great landscape plants, often with more fragrance than an HT, don't usually need spraying for fungus (who has the time let alone want to use chemicals?) and often don't like much pruning. They are a BUSH (small to huge), not a candelabra with some large blooms on top.
Back to the 'found' part. The cool thing, if you like 'stories' is that they are all named after things like the place they were found "Portland from Glendora" (yes, that is OUR Glendora) or "Natchitoches Noisette" or "Placerville White Noisette" found at the Placerville cemetary and just gorgeous and then there is the absolutely most fabulous ever "Grandmother's Hat", affectionately called "Gram Hat". Stunning pink, aromalicious, big blooms that grandma might have put on her hat in the day.
Most of these types of rose are only available from mom & pop nurseries, many large, that are really suffering in this economy. I've lost track of how many have closed in the last year or more. One, Sequoia Nursery, closed when Ralph Moore, who hybridized MANY hundreds of roses, especially miniatures, passed on at 90 or so. You won't be surprised, his offspring didn't care about the genetic heritage. The roses were entrusted to Texas A&M, however, through some happenstance, they lost every single label from every pot. What a shame. It would be like lost (forever) music works from Bach, Mr. Moore was that famous.
I need to post some pics to get folks excited but don't have time now.
If anyone is interested in learning more, just send me a pm.
