Lynn....... I think you are making the overwintering of these roses too hard. I know you are a planner, but sometimes you just have to wing it. I started my rose life in San Diego and was given the same advice as above. San Diego is also considered to be Rose Heaven. Note the ARS giving that advice in San Diego gave that timing so that the first flush of perfect roses would be ready for the rose shows in early April. It takes about six to seven weeks for a rose once it has set bud to bloom, so if your timing is early April you work back from there. You do not have to follow that timing if you are not worried about having roses ready for a show, but are just growing roses for your garden and don't need perfect roses, but need healthy roses. Cooperative Extensions and Master Gardeners have been parroting the advice given by the local rose societies for more than 60 years. That's because they do not specialize in roses and figure the ARS must know what should be done for their care. In San Diego, we stopped dead heading our roses in October and then began our pruning in December to be completed by Valentine's Day, so that they would be ready to show. My experience and personal opinion is that you stop deadheading in October, allow the rose to set seed and then the rose will go as dormant as nature will allow that rose to go dormant. When we dead head, we are interrupting the plant's natural cycle of getting pollenated and then setting seed, which stimulates the rose to re-bloom. If you don't dead head, the plant will complete it's natural cycle and rest. There is no need for dormant sprays unless you have a serious disease problem or unless you want perfect foliage for a rose show. I believe in leaving the leaves because the rose will abandon them when they no longer perform the function needed for the rose. Studies show that the photosynthesis process stops when temps reach around the 70 degree level. So you can take them off or not. I think they provide a larger mass for the top growth and leaving them on helps protect the canes from the colder temps. Cluster your pots on your patio and surround them with bags of leaves or mulch and stuff the same material in the gaps between the pots to make a bigger mass and to protect the outside pots from the colder temps and to keep the temps within the mass as constant as possible. If you feel you need to protect the top growth from freezing temps, you can cover them just as farmers do with their crops. These are small roses, they don't need to be pruned for the first year except to clean out the rose and shape it. (Note: I don't even shape the rose until it's been in the ground for at least two seasons, but I live where temps get colder.) You want it to grow out of those gallon cans, so you might as well just let it grow. Cutting them back/pruning them when they are small just slows down that process because the roses are storing nutrients in their canes. I now live in a climate with temps lower than you have reported. I over-wintered roses outside for six years in containers before I got them all planted. None of them died. I should have replaced the soil in those pots, but I was too busy digging rose holes in rock. I had to over winter the pots in a totally unprotected yard and I did not go out in the rain or snow to cover them. I also had to maintain those roses in direct sunlight in high temps that lasted for months. The key to my success was the larger mass. Not taking off leaves, spraying or taking off leaves. It kept the temperatures and moisture more consistent. In my best year, I could only get about twenty out of over one hundred roses planted. The only thing you need to do differently than I have done, is to make sure the pots don't dry out while they are resting on the patio. I've been told watering once a month is sufficient, but it doesn't hurt to check and see if you need to do it more often in your climate. Once I got them in the ground, they my roses took off even better than I expected because they finally had a chance to spread their roots. So your choice is to go by the book or wing it. Smiles, Lyn PS ... this rose, 'Kim Rupert', looked horrid in the pot, this is how it looked the first year I got it in the ground.

I just happened to find this forum and thought I would tell you my story. Mother used to shake the dirt off, drop them, leaves and all, into a open large plastic pail, leaving them in the garage all winter. In the spring, the stocks would start to change into a sort of translucent green or you would see little red nodules on the older stocks, signaling the time to replant. She would clean up all the dead leaves and cut off the dead portions of the stocks, put them into soil and start to lightly water. Outside they would go when it warmed up enough. She gave me some a number of years ago and while I have good success using her method, I've managed to keep some very old pelargoniums year after year but in a different way. I have three that I leave in pots. Stopping all watering as the outside temp gets colder, I bring them into the house when it starts dropping to about 40 - 45 degrees F. The coolest room in the house is best but I have kept them in rooms with the daytime temp as high a 65 F. Of course you want to keep them away from any heat source. I water, but very little and only when I see the plant asking for a sip. Trust me, you'll know. A fair number of the leaves will yellow through the winter season and I just pick them off when they appear. I pick off any flower buds and even do some pinching. As long as you keep them clean of dead leaves, they don't look too bad! I get them outside as soon as possible, when the days get longer and hotter. I won't put them out too early because the cold will slow the growth. I continue to pinch off the flower buds as this seems to trick the plants into growing more leaves...so they can form more flowers...that I continue to pick off. I'm watering more often now and fertilizing. When I think the plants are "green" enough, I let them flower. And boy...do they flower. My pride is a pelargonium "bush" that I estimate to be about 9 years old. It's almost 5 feet tall with a main stock that's two inches in diameter. Happy gardening everybody!

I don't grow mums much, because they either spread more than I want them to, or don't live long. I have some in the bed I tend at church that a woman insisted on giving me. I cut them back a few times in the summer so they will bloom in the fall, and not earlier. These are the spreaders, so I pull them out when they overstep where I want them to go. (They are yellow, btw.) A few years ago, I bought one of the newer kinds that looked like a daisy. It did not overwinter for me. A few days ago, I was looking for other things, but ended up seeing a pink garden mum called, "Debonair" that I decided to try. I chose the one that had the most unopened flowers buds. They said I can plant it, and it will keep the blooms. I did not know spring is better for planting mums. The tag gave instructions on overwintering. It said there is no need to prune before winter, and to mulch after the ground freezes. In spring, it says to pinch off new growth when 3 inches long, and pinch as needed until mid-July. It also says to fertilize often during growing season, but I don't fertilize often, so we'll see what happens. When I looked it up online, one of the sites I read said the lowest temperature these kind can take is 20 degrees. It gets colder than that here. I hope you find some you like and they grow for you. Sue

Do you have a cold frame? A greenhouse is a brilliant asset but since not many of us can spare the space for one, a cold frame is a good winter protection for tender cuttings. Yep, the top growth may die back but it is the roots where the action is so as long as the pots do not freeze for weeks at a time, they should be OK. If your winters are too cold, then simply keep them in a dormant state in a garage or basement - they are not dead, just resting. I sow a lot of my seeds all year round and frequently have cuttings to overwinter from summer...and I just assume that the plants 'know' what they are doing, will go into dormancy and when the conditions are right, will start to grow top growth again the following spring. There are always losses, especially with tender pelargoniums, which are susceptible to over watering (I keep mine practically dessicated now) but if the cuttings have developed enough roots, they will be perfectly OK coming through the winter.