Or you can leave the soil hilled up over the canes after planting and let Mom Nature wash it off. The new canes and leaveswill grow through the hill of soil. To protect the bud union during unexpected (in your area) bitter cold, plant the graft 2-4 inches below the soil surface then hill the soil over the canes above that. I'm one who advises planting as soon as you can work the soil. Your dormant rose will stay dormant in the cold ground until the sun warms the soil, promoting roots and leaf out. Better to store it there than potted in a garage. Even though it's cold, water it well. This settles the soil and prevents the canes from drying out. I soak mine in diluted fish emulsion, then pour it in the hole and on the bush when I plant. Although the wax is suppose to prevent the canes from losing moisture, it's often colored green to make the bush look fresh and blemish free. Either way it'll melt off in the sun as the weather warms. You'll probably have some dieback due to harvest damage. A grade 1 1/2 is suppose to have at least two canes 3/8 inch in diameter or larger. It can have more. Because you bought yours so early it sounds as if you may have gotten a pretty nice grade 1 1/2, depending on how the roots look. Most bagged roses I've ever got had roots no more than a couple of inches long. That's one reason it's a 1 1/2 grade and hidden in a bag.

thanks for all the support...I guess I'm not going to return the plants, my back is quickly improving...so a little at a time and I'll be ok... I do have a few additional questions though from the comments above "ghost" growth just want to make sure I"m not taking something off that would otherwise be ok...what I'm seeing is these little whitish colored shoots (for lack of a more technical name) now have leaves at the ends? is this a premature stem or just some weird mutant growth? Second question...do the roses need to be inside while soaking? I have several rain filled buckets out back (that I would not be able to move in) that I could put them in? But they'd be outside... I also do have several big tub with rope handles, they are very large, and could probably fit in a few of those...but do I just soak the roots or the whole plant? any pros or cons to this practice of soaking the whole thing?

Zack-- if you have fairly uniform, deep soil that is not sandy, water moves up from the deeper zones by capillary attraction to replace water being taken from the upper zone by the roots. In clay soil, this process could likely produce a better balance of air and water in the topsoil than too-frequent lighter watering. Roses use the same amount of water regardless of soil type. But in lighter soils or shallow soils it may be better to give this amount in more frequent, lighter doses. In clay or muck soils that drain slowly, heavier weekly watering might work better. But roses do take most of their water from the topsoil, moreso than typical plants, according to the limited research that has been done.

Toni, right, except that we never, ever reach 105. We only get to 100 about once in 5 years. But from mid-June through mid-September, we'll go above 90 every day, and July and August, at least 95 every day, with night temperatures falling only into the high 70s all that time. We've not had a night below 70 since May. 74 tonight. So we normally get a big growth flush in early June, then no growth at all until about now. Under our summer conditions (unlike in the North, where you get breaks from the heat now and then), plants which use the C3 photosynthetic method (citrus are prime examples) barely break even on their energy collection balance. Photorespiration, a process which uses the photosynthetic machinery, but which wastes energy, becomes a serious drain on energy resources when temps are high and in bright light. So trees (not just citrus, also the pecans, magnolias, etc.) in our type of climate make most of their net carbon gains in the spring and fall, and therefore, that's when the tree has enough energy to actually grow. The high night temps add to the problem, in that they keep the "normal" respiration rate high, burning off even more energy. Plants which use the C4 pathway, such as sugarcane, corn, sorghum, redroot pigweed, Johnsongrass, just grow faster and faster, as it heats up. They love high temps, as long as they have adequate water. That's because they do hardly any photorespiration. But the C3 plants (99.6% of the earth's species, and almost all of our commonly grown crops) really are not well-adapted to growing during such weather; rather, they are adapted to surviving it while waiting for cooler temps.