Hi Phyl; Last year was the first summer for TofD, but she still put out a couple of blooms...and that was in the midst of an awful drought, so she's had a good start. I didn't get around to mounding my roses last fall either and I was worried she'd die, but she's doing very well so far. I'm quite pleased. You mentioned Don Juan, though. I have two, one planted east-facing up against the house which seems to be doing well. The other planted in full sun on the side of an arbour, and it has been a going concern from the start. Lots and lots of die-back this year, when none of the other roses did. Someone on another forum says they burlap their climbers to reduce die-back so I think I'll try it. If DJ doesn't come back next year really well, I'm going to turf him out of the garden. The flowers, when they come, are absolutely gorgeous, though. I've also been learning about "replant sickness" though, so if you do plant another rose where "Othello" was, just make sure to replace all the soil. I'm wondering, actually, if that's what the problem with my DJ is! Well, I've gone on long enough! Hope you have fun planting the WS200s...they'll be spectacular, I'm sure!

The very first question is: are the roses on rootstock that thrive in your soil? If your soil is shallow, or if the roots only thrive in a shallow cone of 'good' soil, then you're not going to get height, regardless of your zone. When the original poster buys a rose, he's buying a rose that has already been pampered beyond belief, in a green house or poly house, planted in soils that are totally unlike the real world, and fed the rosey equivalent of fois gras, lobster, and eclairs to make it grow. Nothing any of us can do inthe real world will equal that kind of pampering for twelve months of the year. Well, maybe some folks in California's cooler summer/warmer winters areas can approach it, but weather survival wasn't designed into the genetics of modern roses. Not all rootstocks are alike, some force roses to grow 12 months of the year, others may help dormancy happen. Some soils are better for Dr. Huey; other soils will make roses on R. multiflora wonderful plants; still other areas demand R. x fortuniana to overcome soil problems. About public gardens....go there earliest spring. Be sure you're comparing roses there with your own roses by starting to see if their roses made it through winter. We've been to some northern public gardens in early spring and I've been shocked at the number of roses that are replaced in a given year. It's not fair of you to evaluate your home roses by comparing them to roses that last year were in California, and only recently exposed to the last gasps of an Ohio winter. FWIW, I had a hedge of 24 Graham Thomases in east Tennessee. Their main problem was a tendency to put out spring growth early in spring, and that growth would get killed, dependably, by later spring freezes. That frozen growth would then be the locus of a nasty canker that would gird and kill the cane by mid June. The most cankers I have ever counted on a single cane was thirteen on one single cane of Graham Thomas. So, I'd guess Dave protects his GT.

I had a look at your photo. It looks like a small young rose plant that has been fertilized fairly heavily. Lots of fertilizer produces lots of soft growth that can't stand up by itself. There's nothing wrong with the plant. It needs time to develop. Use a tomato cage if you want to keep the growth up away from the soil. Be patient. Patience is a virtue, not a sin.

Sheri, It seems like every year I plant at least some of my fall tomatoes earlier and earlier. This year I got the earliest ones in the ground in mid-June, and they had green tomatoes on them by August. Now, in a normal year, the July-August weather might have been too hot for blossoms to set fruit, but this wasn't a normal year. Other ways you can protect fall tomatoes from the first freeze or two: 1) Set up 3-gallon or larger buckets, pots, wastepaper baskets, etc. alongside the tomato plants you want to save. Fill them with water. The water will act as a 'heat sink', soaking up heat from the sun all day, and then releasing the heat at night as the water cools off. The heat released by the water helps keep the plants a little warmer. 2) Run a string or two of Christmas lights down the row of tomato cages or trellis. Leave them on at night. The heat from the lights warms up the air around the plants a little. This works best if you use the larger Christmas lights, and not the really small ones. It also works better if the plants are covered since the cover helps hold in the heat. 3) If you have a handful of plants you really, really want to protect, keep a few bags of dry autumn leaves or a couple of hay bales handy. When the first freeze is expected, grab handfuls of the hay or leaves and shake them gently over the tomatoes. The idea is that the leaves or hay fall gently onto the plants, creating warm pockets of air and covering the leaves/fruit as much as possible to keep frost/cold air away. You don't want to pack down the hay or leaves tightly because that will crush the plants. The hay and leaves insultate the plants a little. When I do this, I usually just put the hay and leaves inside the tomato cages. Anything that sticks out of the hay will probably freeze. 4) Cover the plants as we previously discussed. If you do this in combination with the lights, be sure the fabric doesn't make contact with the lights or the fabric may scorch or ignite. If you don't cover the plants, you can position a fan to blow air towards the plants. This light 'breeze' can help keep frost from settling on the plants. 5) If you want to try saving only a couple of choice plants, place a large plastic or rubber trash can over the plant. You may not be able to save all of the plant, but you can probably save some of the it. Last spring, I used a combination of buckets of water (the large jugs and buckets that cat litter comes in are great for this), hay, straw, and covering the plants with cloth OR plastic ('cause the plants were small and the plastic didn't touch them) to protect the tomato plants (the early ones I put into the ground in mid-March) from a late, two-week spell of freezing weather, cold rain, hard frost, etc. All the effort was worth it to me to save those spring tomatoes but I doubt I'd go to that much trouble for fall tomatoes. One of the hardest things in the world, though, is standing in your garden and looking at green, healthy tomato plants full of blooms and fruit, knowing the first frost is headed your way. I hate knowing that the veggie gardening season is 'over'! Dawn