Hot-cold cycles and winter dieback

14 years ago

While I was nervous about the severe cold and winds this winter, many of you have explained that is not what kills roses, it is more a question of the spikes of warmer weather during the winter and spring. So I imagine these warm spikes cause the rose to start growing and then the freeze comes and whatever has grown dies back.

The question is....last year I overwintered several containers in the garage. These garage roses develop this anemic, sickly looking growth whenever the temperatures warm up. This must happen to just about anybody who grows in a similar region...maybe not in zone 4, but surely 5 and 6. So these garage roses go through many more cycles of warm and cold than the outdoor roses do, simply because it is a whole lot warmer inside the garage.

Yet I only had one failure in all of those containers and it was a tiny little thing that someone had given me in very late Fall. So, why do those garage roses make it and the outdoor roses not?

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Comments (4)

karl_bapst_rosenut
14 years ago
If you check the temperature inside the garage, you'll find it doesn't vary as much as it does outdoors. That, plus the fact there is relative low light unless you keep the door open a lot, keeps the bushes from the freeze thaw cycle that kills outdoor bushes. The soil in the pots should freeze and stay that way, at least mine do.
I bring mine in after the pots freeze.
A day or two above freezing doesn't start the growing process. If the temps stay relatively cold outdoors, the position of the sun and length of the day has more to do with exiting from dormancy than the outdoor tempeature.
Re: the anemic sickly looking growth in the garage is probably due to some sunlight coming through a window or other source. There's a lot of heat in sunlight even in freezing temps. When coming through a window it seems to intensify.
The freeze thaw cycle breaks up the roots and causes loss of feeder roots. If an outdoor bush wants to grow and the roots have been damaged too much, your bush will die.
That's why it's important to let the soil freeze and apply mulch or leaves leaves to keep it that way.
Outdoors there is more loss of moisture even if it's freezing. Drying out can cause more winter dieback than cold.
There are a lot more variables than what you mentioned that keep things dormant or brings them out of it. It's a combination of many things.
york_rose
14 years ago
If the anemic, sickly looking growth is long, and ghostly pale white/yellow/very light green, and looks to be plant tissue full of water but brittle, with very small leaves, that's a plant growth phenomenon called "etiolation". Etiolation occurs when a plant is stimulated into producing new growth in an environment with little or no light.

Any garden plant will do that under the right circumstances.
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jont1
14 years ago
I have about 35 roses in containers overwintering in my garage this winter which is about my norm. You would be surprised at how much difference the temps are between the garage and the outside temps. I make sure my container roses have frozen soil before putting them in the garage and then when it snows I put many shovels of snow on top of them in the garage to provide moisture and a blanket of insulation that keeps the temps even more level. I have never lost any roses overwintering in my unheated garage this way. I checked on them today and find I still have many of them that the leaves are still soft and healthy green despite the bitterly cold below zero temps which we have had many of this year.
Come early Spring I bring them all out and strip off the foliage and prune any dead, weak, or sickly looking canes--which ususally isn't very much, and then they are pretty much ready to go for the next growing season.
I always have roses in my garden on the shovel prune list and it is at this time I dig them up and transplant roses from the freshly prepared Pot Ghetto plants into the vacated garden spots. The roses are usually still quite dormant, but will readily wake back up as the days lengthen and warm.
The main key to successfully overwintering roses anywhere is to have healthy roses going into the cold weather and then providing needed moisture during the winter to prevent them from completely drying up.
Good Luck with your roses,
John
veilchen
14 years ago
My potted roses get that spindly growth when I have waited too long to bring them back outside. It does help a lot to have them in complete darkness, even if you have to put a loose tarp or something over them, being careful to make sure there is good air circulation in how you arrange it.

The roses do better in the garage not only because there are less temperature extremes, but because it doesn't get as downright cold as it does outside. My garage at its lowest in the coldest part of winter is just above freezing.

Hot-cold cycles and winter dieback

Comments (4)

karl_bapst_rosenut

york_rose

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