First I'd take them out of bags and start soaking them. They've probably been in those bags for weeks if not longer. I've soaked up to 2-3 weeks, as long as they are in shade and you change the water every few days.

After a few days you can either plant or pot up the ones you want to keep. Perhaps you can try the tender ones in pots.

I have a QE climber from a body bag and it's a monster. It's zoned to 6, so maybe it will survive with a lot of protection.

THANK YOU buford! I bought five big plastic pots from Wal-Mart, and decided, after reading more about body bag roses, that I would narrow down my list to just five to go in the pots. Maybe. Then if they turn out to be virused it won;t be as big a deal to get rid of them.

Question:

If I have a virused rose in a pot, and get rid of the rose, can I sterilize the soil and reuse it? Or will the soil be infected forever?

Question again:

Can I still soak them for weeks of they have broken dormancy?

Soak all your roses including the Ebb Tides for at least 24 hours. Put some starter solution in the water. After soaking, you can plant right in the ground but cover the canes with a mound of soil so just the tips are exposed. After growth begins gently wash the soil away or let it be for Mom Nature to do it for you with rain. The extra soil won't hurt the roses. Add a healthy handfull of 0-46-0 in the planting hole to help the roots. I often mix compost, horse manure, dead fish, or my organic fertilizer with the soil in the bottom of the hole before I plant. A dead rabbit rests under one of my roses as do various dead birds I've found in the yard. I didn't kill any of the aforementioned animals. They were already dead by cars, etc. Plant so the bud unions are at least 4-6 inches below the soil surface, not counting the extra mounded soil.
You have a good chance of keeping your tender roses by burying the bud union.
Planted this way, they'll need no other protection on cold nights.
You might but the roses will be fine.
Prune off any obvious dead cane portions after you soak
and before you plant.
You're not in that tight of a spot and you're not an idiot. That's how you learn. We've all been there.

If by virused, you mean rose mosaic virus, the chance of this spreading through the soil is perhaps not zero but close enough that you would be wasting your time worrying about it.

My opinion is that 99% of all known Hybrid Teas, Floribundas and Grandifloras can be grown in most zone 5 gardens without winter protection, year after year. You need to concentrate on 3 things: Bury the bud union as Karl suggests; plant in a well-drained site - this almost always means a sloping site; and prune each cane back to perfectly healthy wood (white centers in the cut section of the cane) in the spring. This last requirement usually means your plants will start the year about 1 inch tall. No problem. (well, I think the people at Helpmefind think it's a problem and that's why they rate all Hybrid Teas to zone 7 or higher. Nobody said all rosers have to agree on everything)

Your climbers are another matter (again, just my opinion). Climbers have to be almost entirely cane-hardy if they are to be worth their keep and New Dawn and Blaze are not, at least in my part of zone 5.

Thanks for that reminder, Mike. I am SO excited, I hope I have a reason to be!

The roses had pretty good root systems for bodybags, it seems, and they were packed really well, AND the packing material was still moist! On top of that, the first two I opened had new root growth already, woo hoo!

I plunked those in water just until morning. I am going to wait to open the rest until then, too, so I can pot them up right away with some phosphorus. (Thanks, karl!) I hope that is the right thing to do considering the new root growth and broken dormancy. Before I pot them I will wet them for awhile.

I know it's early to tell, yet, but I am hopeful. I guess that is just the kind of gal I am.

Can someone tell me how to mix a starter solution? I have a couple bags of seed starting potting mix, and I thought about dumping that into the bucket with the plants...

For starter solution I bought some Bio Tone which is a liquid. I made it up, soaked the roses and then poured the liquid on them when I planted. So far the roses I planted last August have made it through the winter and are breaking dormancy. It's supposed to be good stuff and not expensive at about $5-6 for a bag/bottle of it.

I don't bother to put anything in the water that I soak the roses in or the planting holes. My roses do fine so don't worry too much about it.

The only rose I have on your list is Intrigue. It survived the winter and I think it is growing right now. I'm not certain - too many roses out there and I can't keep them straight. But I do know it survived because all the roses had at least some green cane when I pruned last week.

Don't expect too much from the Menards body bag roses. I bought Paradise from them last year so I could try it out. It didn't grow much last year because the roots were so short. I'm hoping it will do better this year but it didn't have much left after pruning and is slow getting started. I'm planning to order a Paradise from Palatine next year as a replacement if the Menards one doesn't do better this year.

Thanks, jane and athena! I am taking that advice and not standing too much on ceremony. I do hope to make this a learning experience...hopefully for the good.

I decided to pot all of them and see which ones survive the summer. Some were tiny but ehalthy loking, some were downright questionable. Some looked really, really good.

I labelled them all to a) see how accurate the packaging was and b) help me identify successes and failures.