Roses & pots

You can thank Cyd for this post. She was so taken with them that two days after her visit she called and said my next post should be on the potted roses. Being easily led and very open to good suggestions, I have done as I was told. There’s just one catch. I have no great how-to lesson to pass on. And I will tell you that I have read absolute statements that roses can not be grown organically in pots! What can I say? I guess the following photos are figments of our imaginations.

I have three thoughts that may explain my success…well, maybe four. First, the roses themselves. There have been rejects, but the ones you see here are great in my garden. Second, Milorganite. Someone needs to write a love song about sewage sludge so I can sing it. Third, composted horse manure. And fourth, using organics eliminates the salts of chemical fertilizers which over time accumulate and do damage to plant life.

Roses look best – in the ground and in pots – with leaves on them. Good foliage comes from good health. Good health is mostly genetic and depends on your location. When I selected the roses for my front circle, it was based solely on the recommendations of the owner (Linda at the time) of Rose Petals Nursery. She was mostly right. My failures were mini roses. The successes are polyanthas. Well, heck, one is a mini, but it must be an exceptional one, and one of the not-so-successful ones is a polyantha. So much for hard rules. Size does matter unless your pot is a hot tub. A rose that wants to be six feet tall and wide does not belong in a pot.

'Lauren' (on the left) and 'Sweet Chariot'

The reason “they” say you can’t grow roses organically in pots is that maintaining microbial life in artificial conditions is difficult and eventually probably impossible. In the ground nature is constantly moving and shaking, consuming and replenishing. In a pot the normal consuming works fine, but the replenishing doesn’t always. Periodically – three, four years? – they say the rose must be unpotted and repotted with new soil (I haven’t done that yet) unless (keeping my fingers crossed) you get really lucky with your organic amendments (still hoping) and are diligent about your replenishing duties. You see, you have taken on Mother Nature’s job in the little world of your potted rose. I use a complete organic rose food. I didn’t say completely – though it is – but rather complete in that it includes the whole spectrum of nutrients – major, minor, all of them that roses need and in the right proportions. (I use this because that’s what I was told to do.)  I also use Milorganite in goodly quantities which will not burn the plant and is basically timed-release. It feeds the organisms and gives a clarion call to all earthworms in the vicinity which, of course, aerate the soil and leave their poop (more organics) everywhere they go. I also use alfalfa which is really hormonally good stuff for roses and organic. And last but not least, composted horse manure which is naturally full of live organisms and periodically adding it to the pot provides the army of microbes that will consume the organic matter (that you will replace), converting it into a form of nutrition that roses can utilize. I don’t want this part to discourage you. CHM is what I use (mostly because it’s free for me), but it isn’t the only compost that can be used. The important thing is that the compost must have life and air in it - no air, no life. By the way, good compost does not stink. It smells like soil, good old fashioned, healthy (for plants) dirt. Or maybe it won’t smell at all. Or maybe like urine, but don’t tell that to the scaredy cats. I can hear them now, "Eeewww!"

'Sweet Chariot' is a magnificent rose. Not quite purple in color, it is fragrant (I know this for a fact after weeding next to her last weekend) and a prolific bloomer. Today she was a bit past her peak but still beautiful.

She is so healthy and green. Pretty much no black spot. Of course, she will cycle through a period of dropping old leaves that have yellowed but that's life, and we all have to get over it.

The poor thing is lopsided since mama hasn't been good about rotating her. Like a houseplant, garden plants grow toward the light. I'm not positive about the size of the pot. Maybe about 16" diameter, 10-gallons, but that's a guess. That's probably the minimum you'd want to use unless it's going to be a small rose when it grows up. This one is about 3-1/2 feet tall including the pot and about as wide.

'Lauren' grows a little taller. She's about 4-1/2 feet tall including the pot, and she is here way past peak and needs deadheading and feeding. For these polyanthas I remove the whole cluster back to the next budeye/leafset since I want to keep them fairly compact. I'm not looking to see how huge I can grow them in these little pots. I want them to be "in balance", copasetic, in tune with their true nature as potted roses. No, they don't do yoga. I'm just tryin' to be cool and not kill them.

'Anda' is the not-so-successful polyantha to which I referred earlier. Well, I see on HMF that she's half floribunda, so that may explain her weakness for black spot. It's not an awful weakness, but I have become so used to looking past her that I probably overlook her neediness, too. She may just be demanding more food, and I keep saying I'm going to give it to her, and then I forget. Mother Nature wouldn't do such a thing.

Her big clusters of single red blooms are my weakness, so I keep her. None of us is perfect, right?

'Softee' is the successful miniature to which I referred earlier. She's green, green, green, covers herself with pale yellow flowers, pretty much deadheads herself, and is thornless. She finished blooming not too long ago and has leafed out, raring to go again.

Apologies for the bright western sun. She is so bushy - take my word for it.

'White Pet' aka 'Little White Pet' is very healthy and becomes one big pompom - or almost - at peak bloom.

This year she has thrown two long canes, much longer than previous growth. She has a slight fragrance.

And she has prickles, sharp ones. Here you can see the two longer canes.

She, too, is lopsided, growing more toward the southwest.  She doesn't bat an eye at the heat. I have another 'White Pet' in the back garden planted in the ground.

Look at that...a red, white and blue bed.

'Marchesa Boccella' is a Damask Perpetual which I had always assumed was disease prone, so I've been amazed at how healthy it is in my garden. However, upon reading the HMF description (hadn't I read it before? or did I just not believe it?), I find that she's "very disease resistant". We can all vouch for that now, can't we? And it also says "shade tolerant". Voila! She's in a lot of shade!

She had a lovely flush recently, still has three open flowers & more buds. An excellent, fragrant rose!

Another 'Sweet Chariot' (center pot) and a 'Red Drift' are on the back patio. The Drift roses (I have four, two red and two peach) are completely healthy so far, growing well and blooming a lot.

Here's the other 'Red Drift' and behind it, my potted 'Pink Gruss an Aachen' which is not doing as well as the one in the ground to the right of 'Red Drift' in the photo above this one. I theorize that it needs more of something than I am giving it - whatever that is. She stays without question, however, because of her totally gorgeous and lusciously fragrant blooms...plus she usually looks better than this.

'Pat Austin' is new to the garden this spring. I was advised to put her in a pot because she's "iffy" and "weak". Maybe so, but her blooms are neither iffy nor weak. They are drop-dead gorgeous - and shades of orange. And I don't even like orange.

Do not be alarmed by the fact that the following photos are unrelated to the current topic. They’re here because they are beautiful – to me, anyway.

No, I didn't forget to rotate my tulips photo. For one thing they're not tulips. They're 'Princess Diana' clematis growing outward from the obelisk in the front garden. Pretty amazing.

The buds of 'Madame Abel Chatenay' and the blue of Salvia farinacea. 'Clotilde Soupert' is in the background.

Mr. Bumble Bee adores Salvia farinacea, too. Boy, he was big!

'Absolute Treasure' may be on her way to being my new favorite daylily. I had to step into the bed to take her photo because she was bending low and facing/almost touching the potted rose on the patio. But I got her!!

My new 'Gruss an Teplitz' is blooming! Thank you, Cyd! But oh, how I wish reds wouldn't explode in my camera.

Easy Roses

(Originally published on December 29, 2010 and accidentally republished today. So sorry.)
After a few attempts to grow roses, that is, hybrid tea roses, I finally decided to treat them like annuals, good for a season and that's it. My experience with azaleas and a few butterfly-attracting plants did not equip me to grow beautiful roses, and even if I had known about spraying for fungal diseases and cutting back to the 5th (or 3rd or whatever) five-leaf set I would certainly have merely failed more expensively. I knew nothing of rootstocks and whether they were good or bad in Florida sand. I only knew they needed sun, and that's why I decided to plant some at my new (present) home. I had lots and lots of sun. So if I remember right, I bought two from Lowe's in 2006, Golden Showers and Showbiz. They were lovely until black spot got them, especially Showbiz.

Trying to learn more about how to keep them lovely longer, I went online to the internet and found The Roses Forum, The Antique Roses Forum and The Organic Gardening Forum on GardenWeb.com. "In for a penny, in for a pound" is how it has turned out - head first into the deep end of the pool I dove, immersing myself in a realm of knowledge that was way over my head. After not much research I realized I didn't have a whole lot of chance of success with roses the way I was going at it, and the more I learned the more successful I wanted to be. So in February, 2007 I bought my first Old Garden Roses from a nearby nursery. Within a month or two I bought a handful of roses on Fortuniana rootstock, mostly NOT Old Garden Roses, and then four own-root roses from an online nursery in Texas. By that winter I had started excavating my front yard, replacing much of the grass with a rose garden I designed on graph paper, and the rest is history as they say.

I now have 96 roses on a .17 acre lot, but that's probably less than half of the roses that I have bought. The rest are gone, mostly due to a very steep learning curve. You see, this is Florida, and things are different here. Who knew that so many plants don't like the state that I love? I didn't. And even trying my best to choose roses that were said to be healthy, many just were not healthy HERE. It did not feel like trial and error. I would never have admitted to that methodology! I was diligently educating myself and making "good" choices based on all the information I could lay my hands on, almost entirely the experience of others, most of whom did not grow roses in Florida. I didn't know then that much of Texas is hot and DRY, not like Florida. I did not know that when California nurseries say their roses are disease resistant, they are referring to powdery mildew and rust NOT black tspot. I didn't know that some roses do not like alkaline soil which is what I have. As hard as I tried to learn from what is written, it really didn't count as much as what I learned from what my garden was trying to teach me. So there were losses, and there were successes, and alas, there were successes that just didn't please me. Most were removed with sadness, and a few were given the bum's rush.

Four growing seasons later I've achieved some equilibrium and confidence in what I'm doing. And that is the reason for this blog. I think there are Floridians who want to grow roses as they did up north or want to grow roses for the first time - simply because they are beautiful, but personal experience or well-meant advice from others has dissuaded them from fulfilling their dreams of a rose garden in Florida. Such a sad and unnecessary defeat. The truth is that there are roses that thrive in our climate and even in our sandy soil, albeit amended sandy soil, but rarely are they found at the local big-box garden centers. These roses are resistant to fungal diseases and don't need spraying. They're the progenitors of the hybrid teas and floribundas of today. They love Florida because Florida resembles their original climate. They are excellent garden shrubs that laugh at our heat and humidity, blooming from spring through the hottest summer and beyond the first frosts. Basically, only hard freezes and lack of water will stop their bloom. These are the roses I want to introduce to those who have a heart for growing them. So here goes.

Just ordered more roses

What can I say? I am powerless and without self-control when I see the words "half off". I feel a little giddy, too, though some might say looney, but what the heck. The roses I ordered are all David Austin English Roses, and since mine is a no-spray garden, this will be quite a test. The scuttlebutt I have heard has not been great as to their disease resistance, but these four claim otherwise.

In case you're curious about who is having such a sale, I'll tell you. Heirloom Roses is who is having this 50% off sale through July 17th. (Just as a disclaimer I am only a customer of Heirloom Roses - not a shareholder.) The roses I ordered are 'Mary Rose', 'Graham Thomas', 'St Swithun' and 'Hyde Hall', none of which I can get from my nearby favorite rose nursery.

'Graham Thomas' (1983) - a tall shrub or 10' climber in warmer climates with a long growing season like mine. I have seen GH growing in Florida, and it stole my heart with it's beautiful yellow color which I don't remember being quite as gold as this photo. I'm hoping it will be healthy. If not, I may take up spraying it.

'Hyde Hall' (2004) - this will be a good-sized shrub, probably kept at 5-6' x 5'. The description says it's shade-tolerant, and that's why I chose it after determining as well as possible that it has good disease resistance by looking it up on Helpmefind/roses.

'Mary Rose' (1983) - supposed to be a 4'x4' shrub but I won't be surprised if it's bigger. I have read that this is a very good rose in Florida. I will keep you posted about it.

'St Swithun' (1993) - a small climber (8') or large shrub. This rose is also described as shade-tolerant and hopefully healthy.

In case some of you haven't ordered roses by mail you might be interested in exactly what I'm getting. They're called bands. A band pot is 6" tall by 3" wide/square. The plant itself is about 6-8" or 8-10" tall depending on the type of rose - Hybrid Teas and climbers are taller than Shrub roses, according to the website. So these are baby roses, and they're growing on their own roots not on another rootstock like Fortuniana. As I've mentioned before, my garden beds are greatly amended with organic matter which hopefully will greatly reduce/eliminate the need for the Fortuniana rootstock as a defense against nematodes. If you want to read all about own-root roses, HERE's a very good description.

Keeping my fingers crossed that in a few days I'll receive an email that they still have these roses in stock and will be shipping them out right away. And naturally, before I pulled the trigger I calculated where they would go in the garden. Sometimes digging holes is a happy event.