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Rose Fortuniana growth rate

14 years ago

I have Fortuniana on order. I'm wondering if I should pot it or plant it when it arrives (hopefully this week). Winter is not a problem regarding frost etc. Things grow here like Jack's Beanstalk but sometimes climbers take their time. Thanks for your help.

Nancy

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Comments (7)

sherryocala
14 years ago
Nancy, I would stick it in the ground. Mine has been slower than I expected considering all the talk of how vigorous fort is. Climbers really do take their time so you might as well get started. Our winter (23 degrees) didn't phase it a bit. Maybe yours will go faster than mine though.

Sherry
ingrid_vc so. CA zone 9
14 years ago
I had one years ago that I bought in a 5-gallon pot at a local nursery (it was misnamed as a white Lady Banks). That rose took off very quickly and in a year or two was above my head. The bees liked it so well that I woke up one morning to a basket-ball sized swarm of bees attached to it!

Ingrid
Related Discussions
Do roses on fortuniana need to go dormant?
Q
Comments (6)
I don't think roses on Fortuniana can go dormant. I've growns (and continue to grow) both R. x fortuniana and four or five roses on fortuniana. From it's parent R. laevigata, fortuniana gets genes that make it grow through winter and to set bloom very early in spring. Remember that where it comes from, winter is not what we know as winter...it's just shorter daylight. Fortuniana roots keep pushing nutrients and wanting to grow into the above ground parts, whether they are fortuniana or something else put on by grafting or budding. Jimmy Moser out in warm, warm Memphis years ago wrote about overwintering his roses on fort...in plywood boxes that fit over his roses. That said, you need to grow a rose on fort in conditions where it never slows down. It's both eyeopening and a bit depressing because never will you and I get growth like that, short of moving way far south with the flying cockroaches and fire ants and buckmoth caterpillers and chilli thrips and need to air conditions six to eight months of the year. WIth two decades in Houston and NOLA, I say that without wistfullness.
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Pat Austin/Graham Thomas/WS2000 growth rate?
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Comments (11)
The very first question is: are the roses on rootstock that thrive in your soil? If your soil is shallow, or if the roots only thrive in a shallow cone of 'good' soil, then you're not going to get height, regardless of your zone. When the original poster buys a rose, he's buying a rose that has already been pampered beyond belief, in a green house or poly house, planted in soils that are totally unlike the real world, and fed the rosey equivalent of fois gras, lobster, and eclairs to make it grow. Nothing any of us can do inthe real world will equal that kind of pampering for twelve months of the year. Well, maybe some folks in California's cooler summer/warmer winters areas can approach it, but weather survival wasn't designed into the genetics of modern roses. Not all rootstocks are alike, some force roses to grow 12 months of the year, others may help dormancy happen. Some soils are better for Dr. Huey; other soils will make roses on R. multiflora wonderful plants; still other areas demand R. x fortuniana to overcome soil problems. About public gardens....go there earliest spring. Be sure you're comparing roses there with your own roses by starting to see if their roses made it through winter. We've been to some northern public gardens in early spring and I've been shocked at the number of roses that are replaced in a given year. It's not fair of you to evaluate your home roses by comparing them to roses that last year were in California, and only recently exposed to the last gasps of an Ohio winter. FWIW, I had a hedge of 24 Graham Thomases in east Tennessee. Their main problem was a tendency to put out spring growth early in spring, and that growth would get killed, dependably, by later spring freezes. That frozen growth would then be the locus of a nasty canker that would gird and kill the cane by mid June. The most cankers I have ever counted on a single cane was thirteen on one single cane of Graham Thomas. So, I'd guess Dave protects his GT.
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R. x fortuniana does get Rose Rosette
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Comments (15)
Jax, That fortuniana survived for a decade without catching a mite was the hope, that and its distance from R. multiflora on the part of both of its parents. I wasn't going for a genetic salvation, but I hoped that there might be a cultural barrier tied to the preferred growth times of banksia and laevigata. I had hoped that the 'off' growth cycle of fortuniana might be a saving grace, that it grows through winter when the mites aren't out. Mine was relatively dormant through summer, and post bloom spring pruning sufficed. An example is R. setigera which doesn't get RRD often, even though R. multifloras in the same fencerows (unsprayed with herbicides) get RRD rather easily. R. setigera just doesn't get 'that' large nor is it actively growing through summers here. Not exactly a cultural barrier , but a reduced propensity to contract the disease. There are so many instances where one rose appears to have avoided infection, and the more we know, we find that others of the same cultivar are infected. Wind tunnels with a speeded up wind speed are not practical at all (although they work). I have always expected RRD to infect all roses, but I had hoped that some barriers might exist in nature, a lesser propensity to infection for the ones that go to near dormancy in summer, ones who have a limited window of opportunity for the mites to feed on undifferentiated meristem tissue in axillary buds or at the ends of broken stems (the latter seems to be the problem here). Or maybe have really tight buds that the mite's feeder tube can't get through. As to a pest that will take out the eriophyid mite: it's out there and was described early on in the Allington, Staplin and Viehmeyer paper. The predators are conventional spider mites; in the isolation labs at the University of Nebraska they were trying to study the eriophyids, but spidermites kept getting in and destroying the eriophyid populations. Amrine and his students have also found some unnamed species of predaceous thrips will feed on erophyids AND thrips. I don't use insecticides or acaricids on my roses. I haven't in a long time.
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What happened to the Fortuniana roses in southwest Florida?
Q
Comments (6)
hey dave, I have the same complaints. merrygro has closed and that sale is just JP clearing out what they may have left but the florida location is being developed for houses, go figure. if H.T.s are what you like, then I would buy up what they have. they ship fedex which costs more, but in the end you will like what you get. have you checked out coolroses.com in west palm bch? they are great and will ship to you. there are other companies too, like becnel, S&W, Baygarden who all do fort rootstock. my issue is that I want old garden roses on fort but they only come own root. so, here is where my insanity has lead...I ordered a plant cloner and a fortuniana rose bush and intend to learn how to bud/graft the own-root roses that are easy to find and comparatively inexpensive and put them onto the fortuniana plants I will root from the parent rose. this is going to take some time but at least I wont feel like I have to keep the lowes/H.D. roses in a pot just to keep them alive. michelle
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anntn6b
14 years ago
I've only grown it up here, in the (relative to Florida) frigid north) in zone 6b/7a, and here it shows a lot of similarity to R. laevigata, which is half of its parentage.
Both roses grow through winter, laevigata seems to prefer winter growth.
I'm looking forward to growing Banksia (the other parent) now just to see how it does with its family members.
sherryocala
14 years ago
Nancy, here is a post with photos of mine planted in March, 2008. Canes are over 10' long but still floppy.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of my R Fortuniana
malcolm_manners
14 years ago
We've grown a lot of them from band-size plants over many years. I'd say we would expect 2 feet in 6 weeks. A 4x4' bush in 4 months. 6x8 feet in a year (if grown as a free-standing shrub, which is how we grow it). I can cut maybe 10 cuttings in 2-3 months. At least 100 per harvest after a year.

Malcolm
sherryocala
14 years ago
Malcolm, do you just take the hedge clippers to it? I'm trying to get mine to grow up an oak tree. Do you use the cuttings for budding? I read one how-to that said budding on Fortuniana works best when the Fort cutting is rooted simultaneous to the scion budding. Is that your experience? Also, how long is your bloom period on Fortuniana? Thanks.

Sherry
malcolm_manners
14 years ago
Sherry, No, we never prune it with hedge trimmers; we prune it in the "official" rose way, with Felcos. Yes, we use the cuttings for rootstocks. We often cleft-graft onto unrooted cuttings, and let the grafts heal in the mist, while roots form, and we also do a lot of chip budding, onto already rooted Fort plants. Both methods work well. I've never grown it up a tree, but have seen beautiful, huge specimens in live oaks in other people's gardens.
Malcolm

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