Well M Magpie it's sure fun to receive news from your neck of the woods, and to see the Spring growth you've cultivated. Golden Pearl is such a beautiful name . I really like the minnows !

It's time for inner growth too , the light and warmth is energizing to help overcome life's challenges. God is faithful.

Aside from a few red and yellow tulips in the neighbor's yard, no one on our block has flowers yet. It will still be freezing at night for a couple of days . Meanwhile I've been ramping up sewing something decent to wear for when I don't live in my Winter coat any longer.

The American Bully definitely has Spring fever . Amara has fun hopping a few feet like a rabbit toward the birds to startle them.

I have to spoil her, and myself a little too; I'm not brave enough to get a tattoo but I can give this old fence a new coat of paint .

Berry,

No time to sew…. I am digging all the time, now! 🤪😊😇 Choc pudding sounds soooo yummy! I love cooked choc pudding-a favorite! Naybe yours would work as a glue wiidwork ? Hee hee! Love seeing your sewing-nicer to enjoy vicariously

Kristine,,Olivia is a dream! My aolivia was cut to 6 inch canes afyer that freeze week- hope she is ok?!

Deborah, How are your dahlias growing?

I see some sprout right away & some take 3-5 weeks to sprout.

And the garden beat goes on!!!!!!

Carol, Logee's says Phenomenal lavender is hardy to zone 4, and I trust them. But I understand about lack of space, and I have to grow all my lavenders near the slope where space is available. So then I have to go back there to see my precious lavender. If I took my glasses off in the garden, I'd roll down the slope for sure. You should try multifocal lenses, if you can, because they allow you to see up close fairly well without removing your glasses, Plus, high index plastic lenses with non reflective coating protect your eyes as well as sunglasses against UV. Good luck with the roses and may the sun shine long and bright on them. They want to bloom, for sure. Diane

I just got 4 from them and they all pretty much look like that one. I didn’t know enough to be disappointed? I thought they looked pretty good.

I also think it looks pretty good, very well branched and balanced

That looks like a perfectly good plant to me.

I really lie the color of Poet’s Wife. How does she hold up in heat, and do the blooms last long? At my local nursery, you can buy any Austin variety you’d like, so long as it’s Darcy Bussell.

Ang,

If you're going to be fighting black spot to the degree you have stated, I ask, "What price beauty?". I bit the bullet and got rid of all my black spotters. Some were real beauties, but in spite of that, I'm glad I made the switch.

Now, I research any new rose as thoroughly as I can before I get it. If its black spot susceptibility is known, it's a no go. If it's not, I'll give it a trial, 3 years usually, and it 's a keeper if every year it passes mustard....that is, it's allowed to show a little black in September at the earliest and only a very little on its oldest leaves down low on the bush. They should only get black spots, not turn yellow and defoliate, no, no, no, then if so, I think long and hard about keeping the bush.

Just thought I would share my approach to black spot to give my perspective.

Moses

Moses, that is similar to my approach of what stays and what goes as well. I have become zone confused from years and years of moving around the country (I went from Houston to Buffalo to southern California to central NC in a 10 year timespan), so I have to go through a lot of trial and error until I learn what my climate likes. PW gets to stay where she’s at only because she is one of only two roses that my husband loves, the other being Twilight Zone. He just loves sticking his nose in those blooms.

I too liked your voice as it was, Ben.

Wow, your garden looks amazing, and this is just the rose tour in the front yard. Looking forward to your next video.

Wow wow Ben spectacular! I watched your garden video and what a treat it was. I LOVE them all. I particularly enjoyed your moonlight in Paris and that giant sugar moon. I may not be able to grow them as well as you do but I am planning on trying. Your voice is perfect and soothing. Thank you for sharing your space with us.

Ann - can you weigh in on whether this is RRD? Artist is really struggling to identify whether or not her roses have RRD. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6440795/here-we-go-again-is-this-rrd#n=27

Well, this has been an interesting ordeal for me for sure, this ordering with K and M Roses… so I tried on Friday to call Megan, who handles the orders, and wasn’t able to reach her. Tried again on Monday. Ditto. I thought, ok, I’m just about done trying. An hour later, Megan calls me back. I’ll spare you the details, but I’ll say this, in the end, she has bent over backward to help me. I can tell she felt bad for all the difficulty I’ve had trying to order with them. Pretty Jessica was my biggest reason for ordering from them and I really needed two. She could only find one, but she was determined and eventually found a very small second one that she is going to pamper and baby for me a few weeks before she sends them along with my Prospero and Tamora. Obviously, I don’t have my plants yet, so I can’t give a review on them, but I do feel very happy so far, even though it took three and a half weeks to get here!

My thinking is that they have literally run out of cash. In a business that money from purchases goes back in to the business. They had no idea that there would he a ”run on the bank ” so to speak and ran out of refund money pretty quickly. I still do not believe that this was an intentional scam or there would be no refunds . I think that they have no idea what they are doing and are now floundering in the mess. But, like I said, I have only 1 rose ordered but it would ge a different story if I was out 100’s like a lot of you.

I hear what you’re saying, Carla. It could hardly be called a business because it wasn’t grounded on reality and common sense business practices. But it does appear to me that their intention was to start a business, though they seemed to have little to no idea how to do so. It also appears there has been fraudulent activity and dishonesty on various fronts. There’s no excuse for that. However, I still do not believe the original intent was to set up a scam, even though it has degenerated into what is essentially a scam.

Fighting Temeraire..7 inch fun flirty single to semi-double blossoms! They glow. Reminds me of a Mutabilis on steroids but prettier! Mine is still a baby but she will be stunning next year! I just know it lol.

Abe Darby

More Summer Romance

Bathsheba

Snoozing on the deck in the morning light lol

The best looking bit of the garden at present - Harlow Carr, Flamenco Rosita and Nepeta:

I’m really looking forward to these beauties opening, the bourbon Mme de Sévigné:

MdS bloom from last year, larger and more exquisite than Mme Isaac Pereire imo..

Well, I'm 78 and I don't worry about planting holes, which I still dig. I'll be planting a second 5 gallon Angel Face in a couple of weeks. I have an own root Abe which is my only pathetic Austin. Back to Grace orders, I'm still waiting for my Tantau Ashley, and I expect I'll be gone from this earth before it arrives. More about that later. Diane

I got the email too - I have Pink O’Hare coming in a 2 gallon pot, and then Brut and Amnesia coming in the 1 year old own root. I guess all 3 are delayed? I ordered Evelyn grafted for 2025 as well. I tried to change to own root, but customer service said no. The batch of 5 non exclusive roses gets here tomorrow, so I will post photos on how they look.

I just received 5 happy roses. They were moist and only one branch was broken.

I have not had issues with balling, I think my climate (hot summer mediterranean) is not so different from yours, but of course weather on specific days can be quite variable. In general I would not say this is a rose that tends to ball, petals are stiff and center is not super tight. I hope your future blooms clear up once your weather warms up (but then you will wish for rain!)

I passed on that variety because some of the mature plant height photos on HMF are.. uh... more than tall. I went for Huddersfield Society Choir or w/e its called. I hate both names. HCS is less double but hasnt balled on me.

Kitty - GASP!!!! I loooove your pics of TM....especially the first one.

Moved my Earth Angel into a little more sun and it's starting to bloom, along with Koko Loko and a 12 foot tall Firefighter

Carla in Sac

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Late to the wake, and first how to tell a rose from a bramble: look at the base of the compound leaf. Roses have stipules which are two skinny little leave-like growths on opposite sides of the base of the compound leaf. Brambles don't have stipules.

Multiflora flowers are always surrounded by other multiflora flowers on the same stem; the petals are only white for a day before they start to die and turn brownish.

Now about your sick drift roses. If those were mine, I'd isolate them from my other roses immediately . When I look at roses, I want (ok, really I don't want) to see three symptoms. when I compare the leaf margins, when I look at the spacing of leaves on a cane (so dense that that's why the name rosette got applied) the slowness of the green pigment emerging.

That's three and that's just a start, One of the pix shows an almost circular distortion and that happens with RRD when one side of a stem is sickER and grows even faster than the other side.

But there's yet another thing: powdery mildew. Multiflora is famous and beloved for not getting powdery mildew. Even Epstein and Hill mention in their main RRD paper that multiflora with RRD also gets powdery mildew. Why? Don't know. But I do know my garden's susceptibility to PM (which is low except for years when we get a late freeze and the roses that survive that often have PM when they have never had it before). So when I see PM on a rose I look really hard to makes sure there are no other symptoms that I associate with RRd.

IS there a proven preventive solution? I don't know for sure.

I know air flow always drops mites in certain places- so don't replant where you've consistently lost roses to RRd.

Nature gives us thrips to destroy the beauty of rose petals. If we get lucky, the other kinds of thrips that are predaceous thrips will have populations that grow as their food source grows, and predaceous thrips will eat mites (size matters when you are searching for something slightly smaller than you are for food).

Try to figure out air flow. Look up wind for multiflora growing in untended fields or along highways that haven't been cut back and are about twenty years older (on at least one side).

Do you have other questions?

Have you read my ebook It's old-ish but it's based on years of my observations.

Ann

Thanks for letting me know motbto prune Ellen . I would have made her very angry with me .

And As to mean people Grrrrr!!’ As my mother used to say, ” if you dont have anything nice to say , dont say anything at all ” Good advice !

In my garden, bloom crispness and full bush are the big thing. Now I spray a fungicide every two weeks to keep the foliage on my bush's looking clean and healthy. Here are my top roses.

Munstead Wood---beautiful blooms, repeats quickly, smells great.

Molineux---Beautiful yellow blooms, tons of blooms, foliage from top to bottom.

Scepter d' Isle---Soft pink blooms in clusters, big healthy bush.

Hannah Gordan---Plenty of blooms in clusters and singles, foliage from the top to the bottom.

Lady of the Dawn---Huge bush, soft pink blooms, bee friendly.

Marchesa Boccella---beautiful pink blooms filled with petals, smells great, thick shrub like bush.

Louise Estes---Great pink blend blooms with a good scent, nice upright bush with beautiful foliage.

Ring of Fire---Lots of beautiful orange blooms with great foliage.

Hot princess---Fantastic deep pink blooms on an upright bush with shiny deep green foliage from top to bottom.

I got my Golden Zest from RU a couple of years ago now, since it’s now in year 3. It’s one of my favorites.

At sunset it photographs more pale than it is, early morning sun it looks as Golden as its name suggests it should.

I think the most import thing you can do is to keep the bud union and lower part of the canes covered with loose soil or mulch, that’s where the dessication is most likely. Make a collar (out of cardboard, or a small pot with bottom cut out) , put it around the bud union, put soil in it. I have bought many bare roots in late spring or early summer in hot climates and got them through this way.

I usually cut the canes short too. It seems barbaric, but it’s relatively less above ground growth for those dormant roots to support.

Yes, that’s the bud union that should be covered loosely with soil or mulch.

Apologies for bombarding you with questions:
Is it necessary for the soil mulch to remain dry? I mean I should still water a little away from the stems, right? Or do I need to make sure that this part also gets some water?

*soil / mulch

I lost many delphiniums until someone told me the key is to only allow one stalk to flower at a time their first year, then 2 their second year. They said they basically put too much energy into producing flowers instead of putting that energy into their roots, not enough energy to come back up the next year.

Thanks, guys. They are on a slope. I don't do a thing for them. I wish roses were so easy. Diane

More on the slope.

@Erika

love poppies too. Last fall finally I broadcasted a patch of California poppies. They showed up all right early spring. Then we had a few heavy storms in March\April and the patch was flooded a few times. Poppies really look sad since then and only produced 2 flowers in total.

However the Crimson Clover sowed at the same time is a big success. clovers enjoy the wet soil and give a great show

Crimson Clover had been my white whale for a decade. I bought the seeds before 2010 but always gave up growing because I heard deers love them. Until last year I thought what the heck!

I will expand the crimson clover patch this fall and find a new place to grow poppies again

I’ve always been curious about Augusta L because I love all orange roses but I’ve never seen it in person. Louise C is one of the first roses I picked out when we moved; everything was shutdown during early COVID so online was how I picked out the earliest roses. And she took 3 years but she’s now a rock star and now in her 4th year definitely ny best bloomer, even more than Julia Child, the runner up.

I tried Sunsprite as a cheap Home Depot experiment. It came in poor condition and I thought I could rescue it but it never took off. I should try it again.

Louise C showing off.

Ryan, another great pic of your Louise Clements! Me too on Augusta L, since we see so many pics of it here, but I've never seen it in person either. I have three established Sunsprites, and they do great. It seems a little harder to get nowadays, so I bought another at HD in January, and it's pretty pathetic. I cut it back to nubbins a few weeks ago. One more comment, since you're a big fan of oranges. I have an ultra-rare orange that is my favorite orange rose of all: Flora Danica. I've been sharing it with my trading partners for a few years, and just in case you'd like one, I have a rooted cutting of it. Here's my email: xxx

I'm going to bed soon, but if you're interested, copy my email, and let me know you got it, and I'll delete the email. We can chat in the future if you're interested. I'm trying to keep it in commerce. I'll send pics.

Lilyfinch / Rosecanadian / Echo -- I really appreciate the kind comments. I've been hesitant to post much on these forums until recently because I grow my roses in an unconventional setting: in large pots, indoors, on a sunny urban windowsill. I know it's most definitely not the right way to grow roses, and the results don't come anywhere close to roses grown outdoors, but the blooms I manage to get still bring me joy. I've mostly focused on floribundas but couldn't resist Loves Me, Loves Me Not. Can't wait to hear more about how yours does, Lilyfinch!

Windowsill - when we love roses, we grow roses. You found a way. :) :) I adjust my expectations growing roses in zone 3b/4a...I don't expect to have huge glorious roses. That's okay. They make me happy. Let's do an up high on that!! :) :)