I've seen plenty of BB'd trees dug in mid-summer of up to 6" caliber not skip a beat- this is the kind of work landscape contractors routinely do that have very high-end clientele. Also well funded arboretums. No misting no wilting of leaves as trees look untouched. Trees needn't suffer any stress at all- but boy, the poor people who have to move all that soil do. Misting is for the nursery trade where trees must be moved long distances, I think, and taking enough soil to prevent stress would be prohibitively expensive. For the poster it would seem to be very good advice, however, given his unusual situation. I've moved plenty of dormant 3" caliber apples bare root and they generally recover after a single season (if you remove all flowers and cut back spurs when necessary)- you get much more root going bare root. I've never liked what tree spades do to a root system and you can never take much root even when hand digging and bb-ing

I have grown DD in my dry and hot zone 10 climate for more than 15 years now and both my plants do great. They don't like my alkaline soil that much and can get chlorosis but this can be corrected with some citric acid and iron chelate. It's flower production is not as massive as say Firefighter or Perfume Delight or Happy Child or Sonia Rykeil but I've always got at least 1 or 2 every week in between the bigger flushes. it is consistently very fragrant in both cold and hot weather. It is one of the first to start flowering and one of the last to finish. It lasts well as a cut rose, opens slowly and looks good for a long time. It is one of my favourites of all time.

Hello All, I have a standard tree form of Double Delight, hybrid tea rose. All pruned for the winter. I'm in Aliso Viejo. You dig, you take. If you have anything to exchange, I would be appreciative, but it's not absolutely necessary. Please contact me if interested. Regards, Mike

Cori-Ann, The Canadian nursery, Pickering Nursery (out of business for a little while now), which so many Americans, especially Northerners, loved, grafted all their roses on multiflora rootstock. Before they closed they started to sell some roses as own root. I miss Pickering Nursery, as so many others do, too. Pickering was so meticulous about their propagation methods that during grafting season they brought in expert Belgian grafters from Europe to do their grafting. These Belgian craftsmen made their grafts extremely close to where the roots came out of the rootstock (which is very hard to do...great skill is needed by the grafter to make a successful take so low down on the rootstock). When such roses were market ready they looked like own root roses. It looked like the basal/bud union area where the canes emerged, had husky anchor roots emerging from it. I marveled at their roses, looking hard to find the rootstock. With such a short rootstock, about an inch long or less, suckering is reduced. The root zone of the rose upon planting is higher up in the soil, the most aerobic, organically productive soil zone. I have gotten grafted roses where the graft was six inches up the stalk. Plant such a rose with its bud union 4" below the soil as many folks do here in the North, the rose's feeder roots emerge a foot or more below the soil surface. That's not a very productive place for new roots to grow, even in good soil. Keep well all you grafted rose devotees, and you own root aficionados, too. Moses