Quick answer, buy where you get value for your money. Know what value looks like. IF you decide to buy bare roots, there are three things I think you should look for. 1) are the canes green? It they are black or brown or green with black/brown splotches, KNOW that those canes are dead already and imagine the bush without them. If the canes are coated with a greenish wax, use your fingernail to flake off a bit of the wax and check the color of the canes. Greenish wax makes a lot of canes look ok. 2) have the canes already broken dormancy? Are there leaves at leaf nodes, even if they are dead? Can you see where the dead leaves from earlier this year are fingerpruned off? Are the canes starting to get wrinkled from lack of moisture IN the plant (that was lost when the earlier leaf break happened?) Each leaf axil on a healthy rose cane has three buds. Two are backups. But does the cane look as if either of the two backups will make it? 3) does the bagged up root mass that you can't see have enough roots to support the canes you can see? Two stories. I had Don Juans growing on my porch in Algiers Point, and I wanted to add a fourth one. I found one bagged with really good canes, and I got it home and found that there was a huge bright scar where half the roots had been pulled off in processing. I should have returned it. I didn't. With the same care that had supported the other three, #4 died. I remember that mistake. And how I confused densely packed sawdust for good roots. That lead to my not making a mistake several years later when I saw (insert music) from across a crowded room/nursery a mass of seven of the best looking canes I had ever seen on a body bag rose. Perfection. It was Purple something and it was a climber. And I grabbed the base of the bag, and there was close to nothing there. Not even much sawdust. Maybe one woody root. I knew that that root hadn't supported seven one inch canes in the growing fields. I put it back. And remember it to this day. Ann, putting off going out weeding.

I plant in EARLY spring. Thus the crazy lady with the shovel in her snowsuit with scarf and hat. If we have thawing in late March, I am out there. Sometimes I can only dig a shovel deep a day, and then have to wait a bit to let the dirt thaw. I then plant the biggest roses I can find which are Austen roses from DAR, either grafted or own root. The rose comes up like it was planted the year before, not knowing it was ever out of the dirt. For those who don't know, I plant my roses deep. Rebecca

What I do is soak overnight in plain water. Then as I am finishing digging the hole and preparing my amendmnts, I soak with SuperThrive for 15-20 minutes, at the rate of 1.5 teaspoon per 5 gallons of water, which is recommended specifically for this purpose. Both of these soaks are up to the top of roots or bottom of cane material. One year I soaked overnight, then planted. The next year I soaked roughly 48 hours in a dark garage because the day after delivery was hot and sunny, so I wanted to delay planting to the following day which was cool and cloudy. This year I soaked roughly 48 hours (again in dark garage) because I had appointments the day after delivery. If I remember correctly, the first time I ordered bare-root, I posted questions similar to yours, and someone posted that he or she had soaked in water for almost a week due to scheduling issues. Do you use a soil mound to "sweat" the canes for a week or so after planting? Mine are in their soil mounds and starting to put out little leaves right now. [I have never bought bare-root grafted, so can't directly answer your question as to how own-root versus grafted compare or contrast.]

I would soak it 24 hours or so and plant it as is. Depending on your climate, it could do well. If it is too hot already it will struggle. I would put a chair over it to shade the sprouts of new growth for a 2-4 week period until it gets going. You can trim off any edges later. Where are you State and zone?