Reines has bloomed! :) It smells so wonderful! Ingrid, I have 2 antiques and then an Easy Does It, Strike it Rich, 2 knock outs and a tea rose. First year they're all in the ground so it's taking longer for them to bloom but so much fun coming home each day and seeing what treat my garden has in store. :)

Welcome, and congratulations! Listen, not EVERY rose requires dis budding to mature. Some are perfectly vigorous enough to flower and still grow. However, some definitely are NOT. Many own root Teas, Climbing Teas and particularly yellow Tea-Noisettes and some Chinas can take forever to develop and mature into the plants you expect them to be. Permitting them to flower only slows their development. Weak, stingy growers such as Austin's Dove; many of the earlier gray, brown and green roses; many of the Tea-like earlier HTs can also drag their feet, producing begrudging inches of growth. Permitting them to flower will slow them down greatly, too. Then, you have some more modern climbers, such as Kordes' Rosarium Uetersen, Renae and my Annie Laurie McDowell which will sit and flower like a blooming weed while refusing to climb. If you want to push these to climb, you pinch off the buds, forcing that energy into pushing elongated canes from the plants in their efforts to bloom again. Budding these particular types will speed up their development quite a bit, but they still benefit from dis budding to push growth. Own root versions of them are significantly slower to develop. It's with these that dis budding provides the greatest benefit. It is quite possible your roses won't require dis budding to develop into the plants you desire, in the time frame you have in mind. Whether they will or not, they very likely will mature into what you hope for faster if you don't let them flower. Whether you permit flowering as they desire; permit only some of the flowers to mature and open or simply continue dis budding them until they are the size you want them to be is up to you. Enjoy whatever flowers you want to, but keep in mind that if they are taking longer than you hoped to develop into the plants you expected or desired, removing the flowers to force growth should help you get what you want, closer to when you want it. Kim

The first has bloomed now, and I've posted pictures. I'm doing a time lapse video of these growing, so I think I have the light too far away to accommodate the cameras. They are under a 7" humidity dome, and the light is on top. If I didn't have to accommodate the cameras, I'd put the light about an inch or two away from the top of the plant.

Chuck I'm very proud of you on the photo thing:) Now you know how simple it was once you learn the technique. Rose de Rescht is just beautiful. That's on my list for maybe next year. Thanks for sharing that with us. Kate