My thoughts: You have a nut grass problem right there and it will take over the rose bush before summer ends. While it is still cool enough to work outside, you need to remove the infected soil and work in compost or clean topsoil. You may find it easier to dig up the rose then take care of the nut grass. Few products are effective at the killing the stuff and what does work costs twice as much as you paid for the bush. The cracks in the soil suggest lack of moisture and/or settling. We've had lots of drying winds the past few weeks which really take their toll on new growth, soil moisture and blooms. Increasing the water and mulching with a forest product will help retain the moisture and keep the roots cooler. Gravel or rock isn't a good mulch in this area. It retains heat and reflects sunlight. Chelated iron helps if the rose is chlorotic but this bush doesn't actually look that way. If the rose fertilizer already had iron in it, you don't need to apply more until next fall when new growth starts. Plan to stop fertilizing the rose when we hit 100F for 3 days running to allow the rose to finish the bloom cycle and direct it's energy towards surviving the heat, spider mites and drying winds of summer. Is that a metal stake by the rose? If so, replace it, if needed, with wood or a plastic coated tree stake that doesn't burn the new foliage or reflect sunlight. Hope this helped! Jeannie Cochell, Consulting Rosarian

I'm so glad you put the pic up. I can't remember how. I had this plant 3 years ago and thought cool a wild flower a bird poop left me. Then the 2nd year I had 200 of them. killed most but still loved the anise like dried seed heads. Then this year around 500+ I had to mow them down and they only come up in my veggie garden about a space 10x20 every year. The flowers are pretty and I'd like to know more in case they are endangered wildflower. I just found 3 new babbies Friday. Help would be nice. I've never seen them in the wild and I'm always fishing in the country. But on another note I Have a new wild flower this year way prettier, let u know next summer how that turns out. Tree

Not really, Trace. One seedling was under the LED panel (which is only 45 watts), one was under the T5HOs and the mature grafted plant is still under the T5HO shelf. I've had to bring the seedlings upstairs because I do not water much in the basement and these will need regular watering as well as some feeding for the buds to fully develop. The grafted one also needs to be brought up, which I will do later. I had positioned it at the back because I was expecting it to slow down and go semi-dormant as it gets colder. I certainly was not expecting it to start blooming. Also, it isn't that cold there yet---my thermometer is still reporting something like 20 to 25C. I've had to snatch my winter-growing xerophytes and kick them back outdoors. Pagan

I've been going back and forth with my order of prime ark freedom. These berries sure sound good. But they're sold out now; next year. I did get vintage, natanala, Caroline, Anne, fall gold, and heritage. Even though I'm in zone 10, you'd think it was zone 7. Vintage just sprouted, Caroline, fall gold, and heritage came up too. Barely any growth on any of them, but fall gold is setting berries. Still waiting for natanala and anne to sprout. If these don't sprout I will buy some new ones next year, the roots were alive when I received them. My heritage were stolen from the community garden. I grew it last year and I really like it. If Caroline or vintage are as productive as heritage I may forego It. I only get the fall crop, but heritage just keeps pushing out berries for months. The taste is just ok for fresh eating from my container garden, Thats why I decided to try planting in the community garden. Still I prefer volume to flavor. Flavor changes every year, but my belly fills on volume. I'm not as good at berries as everyone else on here is. My boysenberry plant looks like a forest in the pot. Hope I get berries this year. Marion had one long cane from last year, it just put out a new cane. Last year I didn't know about pinching so no laterals. Think I will pinch the new cane when it gets a foot tall. They haven't fruited yet. The raspberries grow at a mannered pace that's easy to control. Blackberries on the otherhand seem to leap out of their pots searching for other pots to conquer. So for me blackberry must be grown in a pot near concrete so it can't excape to the wildlife. Fall gold bud in full shade Emerald blueberry shading peas, clover, and beans. Lettuce is going to seed. Boysenberry and beans, varigated solomens seal in the bottom of the pot. The fall gold is growing behind the chard leaf and gets very little sun. The beans have their own trellis in the pot next to the boysenberry but next thing I knew they decided that the preferred the trellis on the boysenberry pot. Now they're climbing in the hanging basket, and then to the moon. Marion berry is wrapped around the window first-time growing blackberry so I didn't pinch,it just has two canes. I just pinched them and got a small amount of branching. Would love to have a twenty foot long thorny branched cane. Well its not the prettiest but I'm eating good. Sunshine blue, and a volenteer tomato,please don't mind my spider webs, that's my only pest control besides ladybugs. I try to keep them in check, but on a rooftop berry garden is a fly eaters paradise, so they keep coming back. Spider mites are bad right now, but they're going for beans, sunflowers and weeds. Those plants all grown so fast who cares. The white flies came and bite the pineapple weed, it was instant death. They've learn to avoid the epazote but since pineapple weed is a native and looks just like pigs lettuce it was a killing field millions of dead white flies. FYI that tomato plant would be full of tomatoes if the local mammals weren't swiping them. I managed to get two amish paste because they filled up on every one of my super sweet pomegranates and sun ripened cherry tomatoes and then snubbed their noses at a bland paste tomato. These little blueberry seedlings are hidden somewhere in that food forest. Sharp, misty, and the ?. Only three inches tall, misty lost all her leaves but everyone else is growing well. Gotta get some peat and surround those tiny little roots. I think misty wants more sun, but at two inches in overcast may, it ain't going to happen. If she were a foot tall it would be better. June gloom is coming so I won't have sun until July. Hang in there Misty!