Hi Sherry,

I might not be remembering this correctly, Sherry, but I sort of think I recall that rosa wichurana hybrids tend to bloom on last year's wood. There's a lot of rosa wichurana in that rose's parentage. Meaning that your trimming last may have cut off the portions of the canes that would have contained the beginnings necessary for more of the blooms to appear. (That is, you might have been too impatient and the snippers guaranteed disappointment.) The only time to ordinarily trim a rose that blooms on last year's wood is immediately after it has totally finished blooming during the current year. If it hasn't bloomed and finished blooming, then don't trim at all. Anyway, just don't do any more cutting unless you have a good reason to need to? No cutting might not make it bloom, but it probably won't do any harm either.

Another idea: try going light on the nitrogen-heavy products and heavier on the bone meal, bananas, banana peels. Just a hunch...

In recent reading up on this rose (I am planning on getting Red Cascade too), it seems clear that the rose is ordinarily a relatively good rebloomer. So the lack of blooming along with the heavy growth on yours likely has something to do with its current situation that's different than the average normal situation. If it's anything more than a simple matter of timing whatever trimming you want to do, then perhaps holding off on all the nitrogen-heavy feedings there for awhile in the vicinity of the rose might help and probably can't hurt. (Maybe hold off on those except for bone meal and bananas for the rest of the year; organic products will keep on giving, and giving, and giving... so the rose will get by for many months.) Then go lighter, especially on the alfalfa, when you do start back with more balanced organic feedings. Maybe start back around February? If the plant is fed too many nitrogen-heavy products, then cutting it back probably couldn't force it to bloom, though it might encourage additional growth over what you might otherwise see.

Anyway, just keep watering and taking care of the plant in anticipation of a good blooming/reblooming year next year. It's coming. :)

Best wishes,
Mary

You do know the size of this?
I've seen it bought by folks who expected it to be a small mannerly rose. Perhaps the sweetest was two Red Cascades planted on either side of a Virgin Mary statue. Great look that spring. By fall, the statue was missing in action. By the next spring, the growth of RC was four feet high and as wide. But that was in the colder part of Tennessee. In Shreveport at the ARS garden, a linear planting of RCs masked a incline of about six feet high with a mass that was about eight feet wide and six to seven feet high.

Just askin'.

Yes, I know the size. HMF does show its Wichurana lineage and says it's a repeat bloomer which makes sense since Red Cascade is the result of the second cross of a once-bloomer with a repeater. At least I think that's how it works.

Planted in 9/08, here it is on 5/17/10 in its spring flush.
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The trimming I mentioned was basically just late deadheading. The growth that bloomed in May was quite short - maybe 6" or 8". That's what I nipped a little, thinking I had blown it when I failed to deadhead it right after the flush.

Here it is on 7/4/10, throwing long canes all over the place.
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On 7/23/10 there's just scattered blooms, all on the ends of those long new canes which by the way I cut off freely because they were everywhere. No blooms on canes that were there in May. I have no other photos from the rest of the year because it only bloomed onezy-twozies.
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I gave it a good pruning this winter because of its very large size. Here it is on 4/24/11 (early spring this year).
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The other one I have behaved the same way. If this is what it does, they're coming out. If I want an evergreen, I have unarmed choices.

Thanks again.

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

My goodness, Sherry, I'm having trouble understanding your dissatisfaction with the rose for that location, especially from a blooming perspective. You've had it in the ground for three years and had it so healthy and reblooming for all that time that you've had to cut back some of its long healthy canes? Antique Rose Emporium describes the length of their canes as winding around a 14' pole they pictured, so that part probably didn't come as a surprise.

The blooms look wonderful to me, and that's true also past the first ultra-full flush. No rose has two first flushes, unless maybe it's a hybrid musk with an ultra heavy fall flush. But the Red Cascade rose is almost as beautiful in July as it was in May, and few roses happen to be nearly so floriferous as this one when other roses aren't doing much in the heat. This rose looks about as good as it can get for a southern garden to me. In your April picture so full of the red rosy blooms of Red Cascade, notice that most of your other roses really aren't doing much, especially compared to Red Cascade. But in July of last year and this year too, it's holding its own in comparison with many of your other roses.

Some roses likely have the beginnings of all the blooms they are going to produce eventually during the season already incipiently present at the start of blooming each year, and their reblooming merely projects those blooms that take much longer to come on than when the first flush appears. I have a feeling from looking closely at your pictures (which show many darkened earlier blooms) that this rose might be of that type, especially considering its parentage. But it hardly matters, since apparently it does contain so very many blooms waiting around to get started at some point during the season.

I certainly wouldn't criticize a decision to switch to some other kind of finely feathered evergreen shrub, but all the little red dots of Red Cascade's striking color on beautiful feathery foliage look spectacular to me.

I take back all the previous suggestions I posted last night, as I don't see that you could likely improve things any by doing something different. Perhaps your mistake, if you made one, was in choosing a rose you really don't like as much as you thought you would when ordering it. Maybe really tiny flowers aren't noticeable enough to count for much blooming to you? If that's it, then just ignore all the oo-la-lah's I've been thinking in looking at your beautiful rose pictures, Sherry. Just replace those little miniature rose plants if you really prefer larger blooms!

Best wishes,
Mary

Thanks, Mary, for all your good points. There are no other roses blooming in the April photo because the thrips arrived right as the second bloom was starting, and my defense was to remove all the flowers and buds (they were in dark & light colored flowers but not Red Cascade, so awful this year) - very sad and dreary for a while, but it worked. I had very few thrips in the current bloom.

I love Red Cascade when it's blooming, and it's not terrible when it's not. It's VERY healthy now that you mention it. The small flowers don't bother me. I'm just used to my other roses (OGRs) blooming all summer and didn't know what, if anything, was wrong with this supposedly reblooming rose. My experience with moderns is almost zero.

Please don't get me wrong. I was just asking for reports from others who grow it. Maybe I won't take it out. Maybe that was just an idle threat. :)) Its bloom pattern may truly be a reflection of its Wichurana genes, and that's OK. At least it's an explanation. What is is. I can probably live with it since it's such a winner in the spring. Thanks again, Mary, for helping me get a handle on this rose in my head. I just needed to understand how he operates.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

I love it; grows around a fake mailbox in my front landscaping and sprawls everywhere. I'll post it soon on my blog; it just started blooming yesterday so I'll give it a week or so to get going. It repeat blooms very consistently for me and is completely healthy. As I recall, my specimen came directly from Moore's nursery back in the early 90's.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Musings blog

"It repeat blooms very consistently"

Professor, when you say this, do you mean like my first photo, last photo or somewhere in between? Did it take a few years to be consistent or from the beginning?

Thanks.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Repeat blooms for me are somewhere in between your first and last pictures. I'll see if I can find some late season pictures to help show it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Musings blogspot.