Recent changes in planting advice recommends planting the graft below the soil surface. In your area a couple of inches will do but you can plant as deep as four to six inches. Just dig the hole deeper and place the pot into it using a yard stick or other straight item laid across the top of the hole and even with the ground. Then when the hole is deep enough remove the bush from the pot. Your rose may pout a little until feeder roots form or grow into the area within 6 inches of the surface. Many of these new roots will come from canes above the graft and below the soil surface. Eventually the bush will form it's own rooots and the root stock will no longer serve any purpose. All my grafted roses are now own root due to this.
If you wish to bury the grafts of bushes already in the ground, simply place a cardboard or plastic collar around it and fill it with soil to the depth you wish. Just leave it there. Eventually decomposing mulch will work up to the tops of the collars or you can add soil to raise the beds to that level. Cardboard will have to be replaced every year. You can cut the top few inches off a black nursery pot to make ring and use that as a plastic collar

The subject sounds like a euphemism for, uh, something. Is that what the kids call it these days?

Thanks for your help Karl. I was planning on planting it today so I will def plant it below the surface and wait for the pretty blooms to grace my gardens. Its a pink Traviata and I am so anxious to see it bloom. Thanks again, Judy

Not all roses will go own root. Some prefer the rootstock they are grafted onto. But predicting this sort of thing is not a "one size fits all" answer.

I personally hate long shank grafts. Part of the reason is that my yard has dense red clay below the top soil and that dense clay can be as shallow as six inches. Putting the roots into that clay isn't a good thing when roses are on Dr. Huey (who doesn't like the acidic red clays). Also, digging that deep with a long shank is physically hard on us. Emending an entire bed to that depth is almost impossible. And then there's the matter of temperature. Roses don't like cold temperatures; they tend to sleep though them. Likewise their roots.
This is why the late Roy Hennessey recommended planting long shanked grafted roses on an angle so that the roots would be shallow where water and fertilizer could reach them. From what I've learned in my garden, he was right.

That's interesting Ann. I have several HTs with very long shanks. Like prettypetals, when I first started with roses, I went by the zone I'm in (7) and didn't bury the graft. I've since dug up a few roses and replanted them. But like you, I have mostly clay and it's hard to get deeper than 12 inches. I have been working on the beds and will mound up roses.

I like the slanted idea. In fact, one of my HTs, Double Delight, somehow became slanted and puts up a lot of canes from the side, which is the graft. I used to think they were suckers and were cutting them off! But now I've figured it out and have a bunch of new canes.

I have quite a few hybrid teas in my yard buried rather deep. It will be interesting to see how they do this year. I normally don't grow them because they don't do well and rarely live but I am giving this a shot because they were very inexpensive so I had to try. We just moved here last June and it's a bit colder extremes than I moved from so I am anxious to see how everything does or doesn't do.

That is interesting. I already planted the rose before I got back to the forum but I will plant some of my other ones coming on a slant and see how they do. I have pretty decent dirt except for some spots here and there with clay when you start to dig deep as buford says. Thanks for the info. You guys have a great spring and summer. Judy

I'm in the Illinois River valley Zone 5a and my soil is very deep clay; you could make pottery from it. When wet, it's like glue and sticks to your shoes. Doesn't come off shovels easily either!

I bury all grafted roses (or should I say my hubby does) 6 inches deep due to our harsh winters; I don't winter protect so planting deep provides ideal protection for the bud union.

Even when I've planted those massive Palatine bareroots 6" deep, it didn't slow them down one bit in blooming and growing their first season. The holes to fit those ginormous roots in were monumental, though. Almost like planting a tree :)

The subject sounds like a euphemism for, uh, something. Is that what the kids call it these days?

I don't want to know, that's for sure!

Count me as another who hates long shanks on grafted roses. Harder to dig those holes deep enough.

I agree about the long shanks making it a pain to plant grafted roses deeply in heavy clay (my situation). Can anyone tell me why they graft to produce such long shanks? Is it easier for them to do it that way?

Maryl
Yes!
Commercial grafting is done in the field. The person grafting is usually laying on their stomach on a rolling cart. They get paid piecework so the more they graft, the more they make.

Mary,
The odd thing is that there used to be multiple graft lengths. Some of the books from the early 1900s specified which roses preferred to be dwarfs (grafted low) or standards (grafted much higher). The standards we know now used to be far more commong in gardens, but that was when to make a rose garden, you'd go out and get rose stocks from the hedgerows, plant several thousand of them and then bud graft onto them the following spring.

Sometimes progress isn't.