A pox on you, you taunter, you! Have mercy on we Northernites!

Perhaps in another 6 weeks. No need to protect roses here in the tropics until it gets cold. Only have scattered snow showers predicted today. LOL, we hope you don't freeze....

digger

This is a good point....when do you mound soil/peat moss on roses in Z6? How high do you pile it on? I planted some roses for my mom there.

Rainbow, it depends on where she is in zone 6 and how wet her winters are. If she's in the east with winters that alternate wet and warm with cool and dry, mounded peat moss will lead to cane cankers that will be more damaging than winter itself (most winters).

Rainbow, if the graft is buried and then mulched 2", there is probably no need to mound. If she wants to do it, apply before temperatures fall below 10 degrees, but not much before that. Bases of old canes may be injured at 0 to -10, so mounding serves only to save a few more inches of sound cane for spring.

She's in northern CT, I think the graft is 1" below soil line with some mulch. So...she just needs to add some more mulch. Thanks guys.

Rainbow,

Are you asking Pete how high he can pile it? Obviously, you have not been paying attention. Its not soil or peat moss and there is no limit.

Harry - you always crack me up!

Hee hee hee ...no I didn't expect HIM to answer ... but I thought someone would...just too lazy to start my own thread:)

So, what kind of protection do they need here in the moderate South? Some of mine are babies which I planted- do I need to put some extra mulch around them? Speak up someone, my rugosas did not need any extra anything and I probably did not need to panic and cover them up when we had that late freeze. Brandy

I winterize my roses by putting Christmas lights on them.

Winterizing your roses too early can cause lots of problems in the spring.
Winter protection should be applied only after the ground freezes.
The idea is to keep the soil frozen, not prevent it from freezing.
Wet mulch/protection laying against the canes can promote canker. This leads to the loss of any affected cane.
My daughter-in-law in Palmetto says our 40s and 50s are cold. Actually it's just a brisk day that gets the juices flowing.
The roses are still going dormant. Winterizing them before they go completely dormant can result in dead or damaged roses.

This leads to a mulch question I have been wanting to ask. We have had pine bark (larger bark) on the roses for a few months now. Do we need to remove that mulch for the winter and apply new mulch? Or add pine bark? Or do you wait until spring and remove the old mulch and put down new?

This is perplexing to me.

We are advised to move the old mulch to non-rose beds in spring because fallen leaves are a source of blackspot reinfection. However, I don't do that, and I doubt many people do. I cover it with fresh mulch in spring. If there is any cane survival at all, that will serve to reinfect the roses next year.

On a serious note, I no longer winter protect at all. I found so much canker damage, that I decided to let nature be in control. The roses seem to become more winter damage resistant as they age. Also, I see little increase in production when an extra foot of green cane survives.

To further what Harryshoe says, it's really sad to see one and two year old canes that are alive after winter, and then see where some mulch has rested against those canes close to where they come from the bud union, and to see active canker immediately beneath where the mulch was and find that the canker will often kill the infected cane by mid summer.

What Harry and Ann said. I know that it simply stays too warm and wet in my winters to have any hope of being able to successfully mulch/cover without some subsequent damage. I think last winter we only had one (maybe two) snowfalls that required the use of a shovel. Therefore, I let them fend for themselves. Tender little potted folk go into the garage, the rest have to be brave ones and fend off the elements for themselves.

What karen said.

Pure dirt IMHO with no additives is the only thing even if you bury the canes.

I do use some fleece and burlap over that but no mulch or compost next to the canes.

Folks around here do it all different.

Our first hard freeze is supposed to be saturday. Time to get the tomatoes in, and planters cleaned up and stored away.

I think this year I will dig my trenches before it freezes solid. Last year I waited too late and lost a few fillings trying to break ground.

Fishing sounds real good about now.

F.L.

Foghorn, never try to break up frozen soil with your beak.

Wow Michael G.-lol,lol,lol,lol,lol.
Keep it up,buddy.
I thought everyone knew me well enough to know this was my yearly gloat.

redsox, I too thought you had to replace mulch, but afer year one I saw that was never going to happen. You can either put down lots of fresh mulch or I use a dormant spray on the canes and mulch to hopefully kill any remaining bs spores on the ground. then cover with fresh mulch.

One of my plans this fall/winter is to up the mulch on all my beds due to the drought. Also I can cover my soaker hoses in case I get desperate enough to run them :)

Thought it was gout

This thing, how do you say in your language... "winter."

What is it meaning?

MichaelAT ~)

So no need to winterize unless your soil freezes? Guess that means I do not have to worry about it. :)
I did have one rose that was a pain in the you know what, and I am going to remove the mulch from around him and put it in my veggie garden.
If I leave the ground uncovered until my replacement rose arrives, then put down fresh mulch, will that be okay? Or do I need to do something to kill bs spores? Brandy

I have to ageed with harryshoe as well. I do little to winterize my roses. I'll trim off the longest of the canes to keep the plant from whipping in the wind. This is the worst of the winters here. There are a lot of winters where the ground doesn't even freeze, so to build up around the bottom of the canes only adds to the problems in the spring. As long as the graft is covered from the freezing wind, that is all that's necessary in these parts.

As far as removing mulch, I don't do that either. By spring, the mulch is so disintigrated, there's usually none left. A quick hoe late winter to break up the winter crust and the rest is gone in a week. A shot of organic fertilizer and fresh mulch before or as the roses break dormancy and I don't have a lot of problem with black spot either.

Do note that right now I use a blended bark mulch, finely chopped and shredded. I prefer a leaf mold but until the trees are large enough to give me the leaves I need for this task, I need to rely on the more expensive option. IMHO, leaf mold does a better job at insulation in this zone as well. It's lighter to start with, disintrigates faster and supplies the raw nutrients, conditioning the soil better.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gardening and Other Stuff

Redsox, there is mulch mulch and there is winter protection mulch. The mulch mulch is the mulch that's always there that you apply to cover the soil so it stays moist and gradually improves the soil. Winter protection mulch is a separate mulch that gets applied on/around the roses--could be same bark mulch or some other material. I use pine needles when I use anything. Winter protection mulch goes on about 12" high over roses; the goal is to keep the canes insulated and protected from cold winter winds. This is only applied after the ground freezes--for me not until early Dec. or even later.

Removing old mulch that's been down all year probably helps with disease prevention but is way too anal for me. I'd rather just pile more mulch on top of the old.

Some years I protect others I take my chances. My bud unions are buried 4-6" deep and the only time I lost a rose (unprotected) was several years ago when we had an extreme zone 3 winter. It is because of that winter that I even entertain the idea of winter protection. I have found in my average zone 5-6 winters that a protecting mulch results in the rose budding out, growing cane, and blooming sooner than unprotected roses. Sort of a head start. But unprotected roses, although they may need to be pruned close to the ground, end up growing to their normal height within a few weeks. As far as canker, I actually had canker for the first time in a year that I didn't use any winter protection.

Pete it is nice of you to have such an interest to start a winter protection thread. How's the real estate in your area? I would rather deal with sand than snow.

If you are thinking of moving to Florida at least buy now.Our housing market really hit so you can get something fairly reasonably.In a year or so it will be booming again.Northeast Florida best bet-not too settled.
Daytona-Palm Coast,St.Aug.

Sorry, Pete, absolutely cannot cope w/ anyplace further south. I decided that years ago after I spent some time in SC (near Charleston). PALMETTO BUGS!!! Huge, flying cockroaches! Almost no trees that change color in the fall. Nope, can't deal w/ it. NC is it for me (and I have no desire to go back to Va. either- brrrr!). I admit it, I'm spoiled! Brandy

Okay, I read this twice but I am still finding it a little confusing. Ann said there can be canker where the mulch is laying so if I leave my existing pine bark there all winter and do not add or remove anything until Spring, will I get canker where the 2 inches (used to be 3 inches but it mats down over summer) of pine bark is?

An experienced gentleman in our Rose Society said I could wait until Spring to prune since my collection is small, but won't they whip around in the wind?

Also when we planted the HTs in April, we had no idea what we were doing so how do I know if I buried the bud union sufficiently? We are really in zone 6b, and I think most others bury it just at soil level?

I don't pull existing mulch away from roses, and I haven't noticed any tendency to canker at that point, although Ann has more experience (more plants if not more years). I have experienced canker from winter mounding.

I don't prune in fall because it can encourage canker. I top my tall plants if a heavy ice storm is predicted, or if a HT is well over 6' tall. Plants without leaves don't catch a lot of wind.

Advice for zone 6b used to be to plant the graft at soil level and mound over it. Now it is more commonly to bury the graft slightly. If it is buried slightly plus an inch or two of mulch, it should be OK at minus 5. You might occasionally lose an extra-tender variety in a hard winter.

Redsox 'topping' and pruning are two different things. Topping is just cuttingback very long or tall canes so they don't whip around in winter storms and maybe tear off and damage a bush. You would simply cut them down to about 2 feet. Pruning is getting it ready for the new growth, taking all the canes down, removing old and dead canes and shaping.

Redsox,
Canker is rot. I've even seen roses get it in summer, when a heavy tree leaf draped over a cane of R. x fortuniana and when I knocked the leaf off, the cane under it was black with a reddish-purple rim, and then part of the cane out past that splotch died as the splotch started interfereing with nutrient transport out to end of the cane.
In my garden, cankers are most common on HTs when we have wet and warm winters (early Dec., most of January, late Feb.) and mulch activly rots and the rot is in contact with dormant bud eyes or where the rose may have a nick in its outer layer of cells. A second locale is where new growth has started, been killed by freezes, and than that blackened new growth becomes a site for fungal problems.
Some roses can handle these problems themselves; but many modern roses (especially lavender and yellow HTs in my experience) seem most prone to cankers.

Since you live in Florida, I would wait a bit longer before winterizing, at least until the first frost. This is supposed to be a La Nina winter, which means it will be warmer and dryer then usual. Get ready, yes, but cool your jets about applying anything.

Michael G That was funny! I love the picture image.

Foghorn should have bought land in the 40's, but no allowance, no shoes, no money. Who would have thought people would actually WANT to live in Florida!! Bloody hot, bugs, etc.

That was prior to A/C being ubiquitous.

In the spring when we put down a nice 4" of leaf mulch, we try and keep the canes away from the mulch. The birds rooting for earthworms tend to keep us busy, but that is the goal.

The trenches have not yet been dug. I forget what we did this last weekend, but we were busy.

F.L.

So Pete, does that mean I'd best hurry and buy several of those rose cones to put over my roses? And what about my climbers? Should I be pulling the canes down off of their supports and burying them under a pile of something?

Honestly, this winterizing thing here in Florida is SO much work.
Sandy

Glad someone realized I was being a smart aleck.Or maybe they all did and were playing it straight faced?

You Pete? A smart aleck? No way. We all answered this perfectly seriously.

In fact, I was going to urge sandy to call Caballas and order arctic sleeping bags for each of her roses. This method works great because you get full coverage even if your roses are six feet tall.

Caballas is a great place. I used to order from them all the time when I lived in snow country.

L.L. Bean is a favorite too.

Sandy

I'm in z 5, a newbie at roses and still somewhat perplexed. I started a hedge with 3 bushes (no snickering, please) of J&P White Simplicity. They said they are hardy and no need to cover. I did mound soil up around the bases last winter. One plant wintered over well, a second did ok but few blooms and a third is still struggling at the end of the second season -- I had to prune it back in the spring and it stayed small and hasn't bloomed.

I added 3 Austins (Winchester Cathedral, below) which have done nicely but were planted late due to shipping problems. They took a long time to establish and have bloomed, and while not profusely, they are still blooming this week.

I red the rose FAQ here. Wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a roses-for-dummies type book? I'm not adding any more plants until I learn more about them, though I do admit I've learned more by planting and seeing what happens than by what I've read anywhere so far.

Planning to winterize by mounding with dirt, though the bud unions are quite deep.

They will need winter protection. Does anyone have pix of the burlap protection or a method for doing it? I'll likely wait until the end of November for that. We had a first frost this past week.

TIA
{{gwi:303684}}

Thanks for the reminder Pete. I'll go winterize now. OK, I'm back, all done (time lapse 7 seconds.) Don't we have it hard here? Ha ha
Nancy

Hi all 'warm' climate rose growers. I am in zone 3 and proper winterizing is essential. I use compost as winter mulch and straw over the mulch. From my experience it is important to keep the mulch dry. I lost roses whenever the mulch on a plant got wet from melting snow. It is the wetness and not the kind of mulch that is the problem.

Sengyan

Everyone does it different! I say what works for YOU is what matters. Buford is right about the pruning & topping part. For me I do my wintering early with pulling up the old mulch which is grass clippings for the growing season, putting down fresh straw which is supposed to be one of the better mulches. I quit fertilizing in Aug. & do not cut after Sept. unless I have to as to not encourage new growth. I usually do not have any problems come Spring. I have over 30 roses.

MichaelG - Ha! I laugh at your "minus 5" and raise you, oh, to minus 10-15. Last Feb. we (in southern WI) had that for a full month straight! Several years ago, I actually gave up on lots of protection, and "went Darwin" - planted roses that were inherently able to survive my climate (southern WI) from the getgo. Not only did I save myself the chores of laying down the protection, and then in spring removing the protection, but I avoided the canker that has been discussed above.

Last winter (2006) was harsh, and I did have several roses not survive. But my neighbors who mulched lost roses too. I think if you get one of those bad winters that come around every 10 years or so, well, you gonna lose some roses.