Redsox, lol! You and I are the same height, but LOL! just like I have a very tallll boyfriend 6'4" I still like my roses tall! so long as they have beautiful fragrance and big flowers. Why else would I be having tree roses and climbers, hee-hee. I guess I hate being short, short, short and go to the opposite extreme.

Well, I hate to say this, since I am a newbie, but I think this is an impossible war you are waging. Lincoln can't be tamed or corrected. Pruning him and trying to feed him alfalfa and sea tea will keep him bushy but it won't stop him from growing tall and he willllll strike back with a vengeance. It's sorta coincidental that I posted a major complaint about him. Lincoln is a very slowwwww bloomer, what one did to me was send up a monster cane that suddenly split into 5 branches and before I could hack it down, it sent tiny baby blossom buds on each end and very few buds anywhere else, so I didn't have the heart to hack it. Over a month later those buds still! haven't bloomed and now that stray cane towers over me and the rest of the lower bushy plant so it looks RIDICULOUS!!!! I should say it's revenge of the Lincoln. He is very recalcitrant and hates being pruned; I do it all the time and he has struck back. Maybe Memorial Day will behave, but not Mr. Lincoln. Would I SP him? never. I love his fragrance the most, it is for me the Chanel No.5 out of all the fragrances I've got in my roses and out of the roses I've smelled at my nursery. I still love the nuances of his fragrance the best.

After each bloom fades, I cut that cane down to about 2 feet or so. It will put out long canes, but at least it doesn't get over my head too much.

Deb, my established HTs get pruned down to 18" - 24" in the spring. And what buford says, cut them back lower when you deadhead. That will help keep them shorter overall. But, cutting the canes shorter will lead to the plant wanting to make longer stems. You could also do snapping to deadhead, which will keep the new canes shorter, but the blooms will be smaller.

'MISTER Lincoln' is true to his namesake -- very tall and very lanky. It's the nature of this rose to tower upward. Folks who can't accommodate height should simply opt for another red rose. And yes, 'Mister Lincoln' does sometimes produce stems with lots of side buds. Those of us who adore those big fragrant blossoms & have grown 'Mister Lincoln' all of our rose-gardening lives understand this, and routinely pinch-off all those extraneous buds. If you can't reach them, be assured that the canes of 'Mister Lincoln' will not snap if pulled gently down to eye level.

6 ft tall...LOL
I thought they only reached around 4-5 ft tall.

JIM

redsox, first of all I have to say that in my opinion Mr. Lincoln and Memorial Day are both awesome roses and as others have mentioned already the fragrance of Mr. Lincoln is outstanding and very special. So for me these roses are keepers no matter how awkward they like to grow.

I am wondering, if winter-pruning an HT not that low (let's say only down to three feet) would help to discourage it to grow that tall (it works sometimes with floribunda), but as others said it might be just in the genes of these two varieties to simply get large...

Have you thought about planting them in the back of a border so that you can see and enjoy the gorgeous blooms of both roses better, because you see them from a little bit more far away and for enjoying the fragrance cut a flower or two for indoors?

I am also wondering, if it would make a difference to grow these roses own roots?! Maybe they won't get as tall as if they are grafted? I ordered both roses this winter from Heirloom as bands, but it is way to early to say if they would stay smaller size-wise when they are mature. Mine are still babies in pots and Mr. Lincoln actually doesn't do too well, but Memorial Day is taking off and has given me some awesome large flowers already!

Organic, I don't really have a back of the border spot, but that would have been a better place. These were my first roses at this house, before I found GW. Now I would ask before designing a bed.

Diane, can you explain the snapping the bloom off versus I imagine the other option is cutting to the first large leaflet? Why does the rose interpret this differently?

Redsox I would really caution you about trying to snap off the blooms. As Diane says it will make the blooms smaller which you don't want in a Lincoln. Believe me, Lincoln will give you these horrrrendously pathetic itsy bitsy blooms! It's given me itsy bitsy blooms if I keep messing with it instead of letting it be because what it stubbornly does is send monster crazy growth elsewhere in rebellion and sacrifices the blooms in the process. And Lincoln is a very slow bloomer and what you end up with a very limited amount of blooms.

Organic you will have to update us next year about your Lincolns on whether it too has reached its 6' height. It would be interesting to compare.

Weird how different roses react to deadheading. Our Precious Platinum Hybrid Tea has been deadheaded in all different ways to see what would happen.
Snap off at flower, 3 leaf, 5 leaf, all re-blooms were basically the same size (Large), now the rate of time it took to re-bloom changed. Certain ways were faster.
5 leaf had a better stronger stem.

JIM

Sitting here checking my notes. The bloom size did change somewhat in the different deadheading methods on our Precious platinum.
Snapping off at rose the rebloom was Appx. 4 inches.
3 leaf the reblooms were Appx. 4 1/2 "
5 leaf the reblooms were Appx. 4 3/4"
Snapping off at rose it re-bloomed faster.
Not enough size difference on Platinum to worry about...LOL

How small do the blooms get on Mr Lincoln when you snap off the bloom???
Just curious. Thanks!

You could use a small ladder to prune your lincoln???

JIM

oops forgot to clarify. Standard deadheading to the 5 leaf is fine for Mr. Lincoln and encourages it to have full bushy growth. Cutting severely (which I constantly do) does not stop Lincoln from sending super long stalks but instead, ends up limiting the amount and size of blooms in the long run.

Jim, the growth pattern of Lincoln is completely different than Platinum. Its canes grow as fast as fast as Jack & the Beanstalk but its blooms bloom extra slow like a tortoise (2-3 weeks behind my other roses). The reason I believe is because Lincoln functions as long-stemmed roses; a lot of its energy is stored in the stalk so if you were to just snap off the blooms it would just sit there as a horrendous ugly stalk. If you take the other route and severely hack it, maybe the first 2 flushes everything seems normal but then! on the 3rd flush it sends up teensy frail stems and itsy bitsy flowers. Like barely 3"!!!! which is very abnormal for me. My previous Lincoln blooms I was getting over 6" cabbage flower blooms (Kansas blazing sun makes most of my roses ultra big and pouffy).

Some roses when you snap the bloom off it causes blind growth, so, Lincolns may be like that. That stinks!

Anybody, how do your Lincolns bloom during the season???
Older Lincolns 3 years or older?

JIM

This discussion on Mr. Licoln is causing me to rethink adding one to my garden. (I bought one 10 days ago, and it remains in its nursery pot on the patio.) Do the smaller blooms that result from cutting a lot of cane last for just one growing season? Or will the blooms be permanently smaller?

I'm trying to know if bloom size will return to normal the following year. Thanks in advance!

If you want Mr Lincoln in your garden, go ahead and plant it and see how it grows for you. Providing it's not to late in the season.

If it is a younger Lincoln, the blooms will be smaller, but, will get larger as the rose matures.
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Dead heading- (taking the spent blooms off.) The more stem you cut off below the rose, the BIGGER the blooms will be when it reblooms.
Pruning to the 1st or second 5 leaf cluster.
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If just snapping the spent rose bloom off itself, you will get SMALLER flowers when it reblooms.
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What some people are saying here is that if you just snap the spent flower off, the rebloom is very tiny or it doesn't rebloom at all.
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I would NOT WORRY at all about this and just enjoy your Lincoln as yours is probably younger and it needs to mature before worrying about this stuff.
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Happy Planting!

JIM

Thanks very much for clarifying this Jim. I misundertood the bloom size issue. I should have mentioned that the rose bush I purchased is probably 2 yrs old.

I originally selected ML because some have described it as shade tolerant. The spot I have available will get sun from roughly 8:30 to 1:30/2PM. This may affect ML's height too.
Thanks again!

I would think a rose like Mr. Lincoln would do better in more full sun areas.

5 to 5 1/2 hours may not be enough for Mr. Lincoln.
It already grows tall and lanky.
Less sun it may grow even more lanky.???

JIM

Yes, that's my concern too. More sun would be ideal, but I'm limited in the area I have for planting--too many rose bushes already, in all the sunnier places. As it is, I'm going to shovel prune one rose bush and put ML in its place. I don't know the identity of the rose bush I'm getting rid of, but it wants to climb and I think it's Dr. Huey.

How many roses do you have jmac_2008?

JIM

Nearly 50 in total. 10 of these are in a rose pot ghetto on the patio, awaiting their destiny. 'Too many' for my available planting space/time, but 50 may seem like a small number for other people!

I had a situation with this rose this year. It only had one main cane, which is typical for this rose. It got latent canker late in the season. It is a not a highly winter tolerant rose and I see that you live in 5/6. I live in more like 6+.

In any case, it finally produced ONE new basal break in its third year and then the existing cane got the canker so I cut it down. So we are back to one cane. But the roses produced on the new cane were so tiny that I thought it had reverted to rootstock. Now I see why the flowers were so tiny.

If I had it to do over again, I would not choose Mister Lincoln. The fragrance is great but not winter hardy and one-cane wonder.

JMac and Redsox, Gardenville Sea Tea! or if you have the ultra extra time and dedication you have to make those homemade alfalfa brews combined with fish emulsion!!!!! For everyone who is regretting Mr. Lincoln, if you just let him be and regularly deadhead to the 5 leaf you will eventually have success. Of course soil amendments do wonders too! But I have the crappiest soil and had it not been for my indiscriminate hacking and slashing of the bush, Lincoln would have kept on giving me large big blooms. For me Gardenville gives me such thick strong canes. I have no doubts that this rose will survive our sudden freezes in winter. It is one of the healthiest, as well as the tallest of my roses (hence for shade growth, it may be one of the fewest roses to be able to stand the shade). You may want to intermingle Lincoln with clematis to make sure you've got color going throughout as well. The only negative I have found with my Lincoln's is that it's 2 weeks behind all! of my roses in blooming. Lincoln's fragrance is the matchless. I'm a real weirdo and will go to the nursery just to sniff and compare fragrances and I still love its fragrance the most. However, this excludes the China Tea Roses- they are not available for me to sniff.

JeffAurora's magic touch and his Lincolns make me dream!

P.S. be very careful! whenever you grow roses in shade. You may actually have to grow them in pots first! to see how they do. If they are near tree roots, forget it! you will need pots, at least from my painful experience. Also you will need synthetic fungicides in most cases- blackspot loves the shade!

Gee, that's awful there Redsox! JMAC 2008 is going to plant a Lincoln, not sure what zone he/she is in?

50 roses, that's alot to me JMAC 2008!

JIM

Jim I have found that so long as stupid Monster Rabbit doesn't eat the young Lincolns (fence protection) and with regular/normal deadheading and not cutting more than 8" of cane and feeding it special yummies like the Gardenville, you can get good-sized blooms and a very! bushy fat Lincoln. One cane wonder is never a problem with me.

Glad to hear your having good luck with yours, serenasyh!

serenasyh, redsox, jim, and everyone else, thanks for the info and suggestion about Gardenville Sea Tea. Sarenasyh, the photos are gorgeous! I'm going to try Mr. Lincoln in the shady spot (I think it will get 4.5 to 5 hours direct sun) because I have no other place for him! Also, I'm very tired of the rose bush that is in this spot now. I will not loose a lot of dinero if ML doesn't make it. He's a rescued rose that was marked down to $4. (ML is healthy now.)

Those JeffAurora roses are indeed soooo amazing, JMac. They are absolutely breathtaking. Jeff grows his in pots.

If there are any trees or hedges near your Lincoln, you must grow yours in a pot. Tree and bush roots can really interfere with your shade-growing Lincoln. And be sure to use synthetic fungicide right away. BS can really devastate roses that grow in the shade and you don't ever! want to risk BS. It will cause serious problems for your Lincoln.

What's nice about the pot is that sometimes when a shaded rose is at key growth stages, baby leaves sprouting everywhere or during their flush development, you can even jumpstart them by placing them back on a sunny spot like one's front porch and then bringing them back to the shaded spot afterwards once the blooms start opening up. Roses are tough and don't seem to mind this back and forth approach. At least that's what it seems to me. With the sun on the buds, that energy is stored within the plant to keep those buds big too. But that's just a side option. The main thing is to give them really good fertilizers like sea tea/alfalfa mixes.

Also it doesn't hurt to keep your trees pruned to let in as much light as posaible.

Have a fun and successful year with your Lincoln!