Thanks, Tammy! dsd, love your patio pot garden! That's sort of what I was trying to do with mine, decorate the edges of the patio, but yours is much prettier! I think my oldest potted one is Folklore at 7 years. You do have to occasionally root prune them and repot them. For me I can go a round 4 or 5 years before I have to do that but for you, with your much longer growing season, that may be only 2 or 3 years. It's usually pretty easy to tell when they need to be repotted. When you water them the water will immediately start running out the bottom of the pot because there's little soil left to hold it. I pull the root ball out of the pot, cut it back by about half and then repot with fresh soil...or find a bigger pot, lol! I'm always hunting for pots and pick them up when ever I come across a good deal and just stash them until needed. End of season sales at places like Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes or Big Lots are good places to get them cheap. Also check your local hardware stores. I've gotten some good deals at Costco too. I start out the spring with a slow release granular fertilizer scratched in. Then at least once a month with some liquid spray or drench fertilizer and organics, like fish emulsion. Watering depends a lot on the weather but I have a moisture meter and I use it! It help save me a ton of money on my watering bill because before I just watered about every third day because I didn't know if they really needed it or not. A 3 gallon pot is pretty small and a full size rose will out grow it in a season. A mini might last a few of years. A lot depends on the rose itself and how vigorous it is. Most of my pots are at least 15 gallons and I have a collection of 20/25 gallon ones for those permanently potted HTs.. For years I used Lowes Stay Green potting soil because it was the cheapest. I recently switched over to the Miracle Grow Moisture Control because we found it at a great price at Costco. As long as it's a good quality potting soil it doesn't matter which brand but I do try to stay away from the ones with fertilizer in them. I want to have control of when and what they get. I hope I got all your questions, lol! Yes, displaced, one of my beds is along the street and people regularly help them selves to blooms. I don't mind usually but when they do it the day before my rose shows I freak out! I've put signs up telling people to ask and I'd be happy to cut some for them but it did no good so now I pot the show roses. Frenchcuffs, yes and no. Usually it's whatever ones give me a decent bloom to cut show week, lol! I'm still working on my HT collection and haven't done very well with those. But I have won mini queen a couple of times, once with Robin Alonso and once with Snow Ruby so I'd say those were my favorites! My show Is Saturday and SR has a very promising bud coming!

Michelle, I'm far from expert in pot culture, but here are some thoughts. 1. Potting soil is usually pH adjusted with lime to pH 6.5 or 7. After a year or two in the same soil, it would be good to check the pH. You could try using Miracid (whatever it's currently named) part of the time. It doesn't affect pH significantly, but it has extra chelated trace elements. 2. IMO, seaweed products should be applied as a foliar spray where a small amount might serve as a growth stimulant. The fertilizer value of seaweed is so low, it seems wasteful to apply it to the soil; also it adds harmful sodium, which tends to build up in pots. 3. A lot of people grow great roses with only soluble fertilizers, so my guess is, it's basically an aesthetic choice. 4. The disbudded plant has to realize it's disbudded and make the decision to mobilize latent buds, so you may not see new shoot growth for two weeks, but without disbudding it might be four weeks. Without disbudding, the shoot is usually not going to make any additional leaves; it's just going to develop the flower. With disbudding, the shoot will elongate just as it would otherwise, plus it will break a couple of growth buds sooner.

Drippy, I'm betting you will be fine with the pots above ground because of this. Last fall I had about 10 WS containers that never got planted out before winter. Unusual for me, but being only a few months post op from spinal surgery, it was just impossible to get any more plants in the ground. I just could't bring myself to ask everyone that had helped me with my gardens all spring and summer to do any more than help clean up. Anyway, they where all perennials, columbines, foxglove, some coreopsis, and a few others. They where still in their WS containers too, cream cheese tubs, sour cream tubs and a container that cut up fruit had come in. I just put them on the inside of my chain link fenced yard area and left them. It was OK, hardy little things, WS, we'll see how really hardy you are, won't we. Gave them NO protection of any kind. OK, we had a warm fall, warm winter too. Even in the 70's in January, but just as one would expect things to warm up, I was burried in snow, 2 feet of the stuff and we had snow late into spring too. Low and behold, when it finally warmed up, the columbine where fine in their WS containers, and before I knew it they where full of buds and flowering in those containers. The coreopsis did the same thing. The foxglove where fine, gave most of the seedlings away at a spring swap and they bloomed this year for everyone. Low and behold, I just found a couple of those plants still sitting in those WS containers and I can't get them in the ground now either. More back problems. So there they sit along the edge of that fence and I will hope for the best. Bet they are fine and you will find yours fine too. Fran

Tip=Use new sharp drill bits- minimal investment- maximum JOY! Hey- my husband came up with a great idea to keep containers tidy- and not readily viewable from most neighbors- I think he thought I might stop saying a want a green house- But that has not happened- yet. Although, my back hurts much less from lifting from the ground because of his thoughtful gesture- He put up 2 sets of rubber coated steel wire shelves (from Home Depot) along the whole length of the west side of the garage, and made a plastic drape that can be rolled down from the roof to protect the wee little seedlings from rain and hail and help to insulate them a bit as well. I don't have a great shot of it but this might give you and idea... The wood 2x2s support the plastic roll down curtain when it is down- The angled support 2x2s also have holes drilled through them so I can move the pegs that keep the bottom weighted rolled to a cople of different positions. It really is a great system- and is really quite strong- I did test it's limits this year though- I had gallon pots sitting in trays of water after a heavy storm and huge buss tubs of soaking dirt all along both shelves- and finally- the shelves did collapse with hundreds of pounds of weight... But a few new clips on the wall of the garage- and putting the gallon pots on the ground- and draining the water from the soil took care of it- and now it is back to almost new!