Where are you located?

How old is the plant?

Is it budded? Own-Root?

Who was the grower?

Jeri Jennings

Also . . .

Is the plant container grown?

If not in a container, are other roses growing in the same vicinity? If so, are they thriving?

Under what conditions is the rose being grown? How much sunlight does it receive each day? What are your watering practices? DOES THE ROSE HAVE GOOD DRAINAGE?

If you fertilize, what are you using and at what strength?

Hi and thank you for answering. I am located in the San Gabriel Valley... hot and dry as you may know.
All my roses are in 20 gallon nursery pots with potting soil (don't know the brand), all were fertilized with rose food (don't know the brand) but was organic 10-10-10 granulated about 8 weeks ago and 7 weeks before that.
Watered every other day until water runs out of the bottom unless I feel it is still damp, which rarely happens. Drainage seems good.
Full sun location, from about 11am to sundown.
It is budded, weeks. I don't know the age, I have had it one year, but it is difficult to tell with grafted plants, looks mature. Repotted from a 5 gallon container to 20 gal.
TIA

Wow, that's a surprise. Mine had strong, straight stems. I liked it a lot and still miss it. It got crown gall so I had to remove it. Sounds like you are taking reasonable care of it. Maybe give it a couple more years. Roses don't always show their stuff the first year.

My guess is its probably spending its energy now filling up that big pot with roots. Once it does, STAND BACK. Good rose.

Of course, with all roses, sometimes you just get a bad plant. Sometimes the graft is bad and other times there's no explaining the failure to thrive. Hope your plant is okay. But I wouldn't give up on it until it's been in that pot at least a season or two.

Kathy

The San Gabriel Valley should be perfect for St. Paddy -- but It's a Weeks plant?
Are you SURE it's budded? Last time I talked to Tom about this, he said they were moving almost everything to own-root.

S.P. on its own roots might well take a bit longer.

I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, in El Monte and Temple City, and I remember with wonder that I never saw powdery mildew in those golden days. :-)

Jeri

I've found St Pat to be a very easy rose to grow well. The symptoms you describe indicate that the plant is under heavy stress -- probably originating at the roots. I would dig deeply into the pot (near the rim) to assure myself that the soil is not waterlogged. Large, heavy pots placed on a solid surface sometimes drain very slowly, & glazed or plastic pots can exacerbate the problem. If there is a drainage issue, don't wait for the soil to dry. Remove the rose, take steps to correct the problem & replant in fresh soil.

My suggestion is merely a 'shot in the dark', but given your description of the rose you purchased and it's present condition, I feel there's more going on with it than the growing pains of an immature rose bush.

Thank you so much for understanding... most people that know me think I'm rose-obsessed nut... maybe because I am a rose-obsessed nut? I will take your advice, plus I'm planning to hard prune all the roses around january, I'll see what St. Pat does after that.

I'm rose-obsessed nut... maybe because I am a rose-obsessed nut?

And there's something wrong with that? ;^)

* * * *
If the plant is young and small, hard-pruning isn't necessarily a good idea--roses store their carbohydrates mostly in their canes, not in their pitiful root systems. So when you are cutting off canes, you are cutting off stored energy.

Letting a rose get well-established first is a good idea.

I often hard-prune mine now, but they're all mostly in the ground for 10 years. They are big, strong plants that can take and benefit from a hard prune. A small young plant is a different story.

I suppose the definition of 'hard prune' varies from one gardener to the next, but a Weeks rose purchased in a 5 gallon put over a year ago, then transplanted, should certainly be able to withstand a healthy pruning if the plant is healthy to begin with. Cut it back by about half & you'll be fine. Keep in mind that even stressed plants can often benefit from pruning.

I have a St Patrick, and while it does well and doesn't have droopy canes, I have found that the blooms do not open as fully as other roses. And the blooms tend to stay on the cane and turn a very ugly brown. This year, for some reason, I've had many blooms that were almost all green. Maybe the large amount of rain?

Hmmm . . . Very interesting that Buford's 'St Patrick' blooms don't open fully. My only objection to this rose is that the blooms open TOO fully. 'St Patrick' is in my direct line of vision as I stand at my kitchen sink. From early spring to late fall, I'm put-off by those flat, fully-open blooms that look for all the world like a cluster of flying saucers docked on green tethers. I've been intending to move it for several years . . . Maybe at pruning time this year I'll remember.

Maybe you guys could trade plants...

LOL, no, I love mine. It's just an observation. St Patrick is the only plant that I've been able to get a dozen cut roses off at one time and still had some left on the plant.

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