My neighbor has been practicing tough love on her shrub rose for over 25 years. LOL
It gets pruned and that's it. They do not even dead-head and it still blooms all season. LOL
For the past Appx. 27 years, it has never been fertilized or water by them, only rain waters it.
And the kicker, no blackspot at all. LOL

And no, my neighbors shrub rose is not a rugosa or anything like that. Blooms are 3" or so wide/double non-stop blooms.
I'll have to take a pic sometime to see if anyone can identify it.
My mom has a similar really old shrub rose that I would like identified also. It's also bullet-proof and needs only pruning.
Only thing is my wife and I hate the blooms on both roses. lol. So, taking a cutting is out of the question. But, I'd still like to know what they are.

That's pretty much my theory. I apply some Rose Tone and alfalfa each spring. They might get a second feeding in summer. Might not. Lots of mulch. No winter protection. No insecticide. No watering.

The roses definitely get tougher with age. They come up pretty thick.

{{gwi:212550}}

Harryshoe, don't yours get extra vitamin B? I usually see some of it on your patio table in the pics of your gorgeous garden.

No Water?!

malibu_rose,

Here in Central PA we usually get enough rain to susstain well established roses for most of the season also.

Thanks Henry. It was a fun article to write.

Paul,

I have not read your article yet, i'll have to try and find
that issue.

I rosetone my roses in a pretty extreme manner. Miracle Gro as the shot in the arm in between Rosetone feedings. I like the Rosetone for the variety of organic ingredients for the roots, but also for the microbial agents in the mixture as well. The worms and bugs seems to like the rosetone too, which is fine by me as they churn up the soil. All the bacterial and microbial agents are just as important as the fertilization considering they help convert the fertilizer ingredients into biochemically stable molecules for the roots to utilize in the soil. They are in some ways, another rate limiting body for the rose.

I am a beginning rose gardener, so what I know is mostly from reading, not experience. This board has been a tremendous help; I have not sprayed HTs for insects, knowing that I may harm the beneficials.
I bought this issue of Fine Gardening to read this article and it was very good. So far, I have used Rose Tone. I am really keeping my fingers crossed about the blackspot issue because here in 6b, we are vulnerable to fungus, mildew. etc. How interesting that the author (PZimmerman) reads at GardenWeb!

Rooty girl..nice to meet you! This forum has helped me so much! I just sprayed some non toxic spray for bugs. I had something eating a hole into my rose bud. I did not spray at all last summer. It is very rewarding to hear and see the life in your garden..bees buzzing and birds chirping..instead of the yard deadly quiet with the smell of chemicals..EWW. This year I am going to treat a wee bit for fungus..using sulfur and some other non toxic sprays. I am quite pleased to see the majority of my roses have no blackspot and were not sprayed last year at all! I have even embraced the mole in my yard..he seems to be gone for the time being

Hi Harry, Beautiful roses! Is that picture from this year? Do you spray for blackspot? Beautiful roses!

Thank you zyper! I am pretty new to gardenweb.
You mentioned a non toxic bug spray--would neem oil be one of those? I was afraid that neem oil would kill the good guys, too. The only thing I was thinking of using was Dawn soap plus water for aphids. So far, I have not used anything and I hope my luck continues. Like I said, blackspot would be my biggest concern around here.
I just planted my first Austin rose, Windermere. I found it at a local garden center, so I am excited to see how that works out.

My roses require that I be very nice to them. It is in the contract.
However--a co-worker who used to bring in buckets of bouquets claimed she never fertilized her roses.

Rootygirl, there are no bug sprays that won't kill beneficials. Neem is quite damaging. I used to use it but got explosions of mites every time I did - it killed off the beneficials that were keeping the mites in check. Unfortunately soap sprays do the same. Your major aphid predators are soft-bodied larval forms of things like ladybugs and lacewings. The so-called nontoxic sprays target soft-bodied insects. Can't distinguish between soft-bodied aphids and soft-bodied ladybug larvae.

You don't need to spray for aphids, they don't do any real harm.

It is my understanding that if your spray a rose plant with an antitranspirant then an aphid/mite will "probably" ignor it as it "should" think that the rose is made of plastic. This could be useful if the aphid could spread a rose virus or the mite could spread Rose Rosette Disease (i.e. if you have cause to worry due to finding an infected nearby plant).

>if your spray a rose plant with an antitranspirant then an aphid/mite will "probably" ignor it

Hi Henry,

I have some Wilt Pruf that I'd intended trying out for winter protection from drying winds here... but I never got around to using it. (Luckily we had no winter problems for any of the roses here, even though it was an unusually cold winter.)

Is Wilt Pruf the stuff you are talking about in referencing an antitranspirant? Is it safe to use in warm and hot weather when the rose is growing? I don't know anything about how the rose goes about its photosynthesis jobs, but had just supposed that it needed to be able to exchange oxygen and other gases on its leaf surfaces when growing. Wrong?

There's a big problem with RRD here this spring, and I'm hoping not to lose the roses in our whole front yard to that disease.

Thanks for any help!

Mary

There are are a number of comments concerning the use of an anti-transpirant such as Wilt-Pruf to control the spread of RRD, see:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2IRFC_en&q=rrd+antitranspirant&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Here is a link that might be useful: link for above