redwolfdoc, no expert here, but I hilled up my newly planted bareroot roses this spring, after watching a video someone posted on this forum from one of the rose vendors. He explained that it is needed to keep the rose from drying out while it is getting established. He demonstrated planting the rose as you normally would and then piling on bark mulch. We have had a lot of wind this spring and I'm glad I knew to do that. I've also already seen new growth on just about all of them and have lowered the mulch coverage a little because I had them covered. The video said to leave it that way for the first two weeks. So I linked to that video from Palatine Roses below⦠P.S. I now know why it says barefoot in the title, I typed bareroot and the auto correct changed it to barefoot. [g] Here is a link that might be useful: Planting Your Roses / When to Plant

As long as the ground is not frozen, you can plant a rose. Even if it burns, cut it back. However, if this is a full plant, I would opt to keep it inside until weather is nice, taking it in and out during the warmer parts of day for sunlight and bring it back in, plant it later and trim it up a bit.

MM, I got one of the little sticks to strike last year, I guess I will have to do better than that this time as I really want both of these little plants to survive I have been wondering where Mr and Mrs. Thrip have gone, there are many old names missing from this forum and they were all so friendly and helpful when asked questions. Hope they all come back in rose buying season. Marion

Do you have pear trees or those pink weeping cherries? Those are blooming here now, too. And other orchard trees like peaches and apricots. I usually just prune out the discolored canes from winter, back until the canes are nice and green. Then prune out any canes that will cross too closely to another one (unless it's a small plant that needs all the canes and leaves it can get). You can take some height off of most modern roses if you like (or leave them tall), but if the rose only blooms once a year wait until after it blooms to do that. Some of the good canes may not actually be a great green. I have some that get kind of purple in the winter. That's fine. And some old canes can look kind of dead when they are just woody, so look for live buds pushing leaves if it's a particularly woody rose bush. Then you do have to cut off canes that have bad, cankered spots in them. You have to cut those off below the cankered area. Those are usually pretty obvious, I think (or I don't worry about the small ones). I hate to have to cut off long canes for that, but if you have a big bad spot on any cane, the cane will have to come off sometime. The canker can spread/creep down and up the cane, so go on and take care of that before the rose wastes all kinds of energy on the cane. Sterilize your pruners between cuts when dealing with canker.