People are supposed to get their vitamins from their food; plants get theirs from the soil. Neither should depend on supplements. A plant should be able to live under local conditions. Fortunately, roses have lived all over the world all by themselves without soil ammendments, fertilzers, bone meal, phosphates, etc. Their mid-range Ph tells you they are more generalized than specialized. They won't survive in all environments, but in most, and some classes do better or worse here or there (see the discussion on killing Bourbons in Maryland in the Antique Roses forum). You should never add supplements until you have had your soil analized. 'Kill' is the important part of 'overkill.' If you have had your soil analized or the plant is showing specific symptoms of a nutrient failure, supplement that one thing. If the plant has been under stress or neglect, supplements are the equivalent of taking vitamins when you're ill. I Super-Thrive new plants and transplants and give them a good starter soil and I dig in an all-purpose organic fertilzer twice a year--plant feast days (feasting is an important part of balancing a diet; nature provides 'feasts' which we generally do not allow in our gardens). Otherwise, if a plant can't live off the local mother earth, s/he needs a new home.

If your leaves are green and disease free why would you need to defoliate the bush? I understand removing infected leaves and the need for cleaning up the blackspot leaves, removing canes that are covered in blackspot and such as that, but if your foliage is disease free I don't see the need for it. If the foliage is just "old" then the emerging new growth will push those old leaves off. If the foliage is clean/green, I leave it alone. I don't think it really matters to the health of the plant if you choose to remove all of the (still clean) foliage in the early spring or leave it. It's a personal preference and I have seen it done both ways with good results. I already have way too much to do in the spring :-) Bet, I tried the lime/sulfur at dormant strength a couple of years in a row and it didn't completely defoliate the roses and it looked really, really bad out there for a while. Carol

I don't know what your climate is like. Stripping leaves won't make your roses go dormant, but it will allow you to use dormant strength sprays that could damage leaves. Here in the bay area we rarely have enough cold to make my roses truly grow dormant. I have a lot of roses so it takes me a couple of months to get them all pruned and dormant sprayed. This year I have enough still blooming that I am waiting until after Christmas to do most of them. I prune first, then strip the leaves that remain, then spray with a dormant season spray. I prefer to use Bordeaux which is copper based, though if I had a problem with rust I will follow that a week later with a second spray of sulfur. At the time of pruning, I weed and clean up that area. When I'm all done with my roses, the garden is ready to be fertilized and mulched for spring.

If the canes are vigorous per the variety, I leave 'em, just thinning for air circulation and taking out anything over three years old. I don't exhibit so I go for more, if smaller, flowers. Once in a blue moon I'll disbud all but one to get a few bigger flowers, but in general more canes = more leaves = more flowers. Edit: I don't remember the exact number usually quoted, but it takes something like 35 leaves to produce one bloom. John