Sorry, I got behind on my forum reading and just found this topic. I put some bushs of Campfire in last spring and so I can't yet talk about hardiness although I think that is a given. We really enjoyed the flowers. The bushs bloomed all summer and were not bothered by bugs nor did they show any disease. The blooms keep changing colour so they are sometimes yellow and sometimes red and sometimes a combination. Definitely a winner in my Ontario garden. I will let everyone know how they do overwinter and into the second season.

My mom lives in zone 5B (Northern Nevada). it gets hot in the summer, heavy frost and snow in the winter. She absolutely loves her 'campfires' and has two big ones right in front of the kitchen window. Hers might be some kind of a hybrid though, because they grow tall & less sparse that the average bush and were already planted when we moved into the house. Very very hardy, they come back every year and my mom literally does nothing but prune for 5 min in the spring and water lol. One spring, they were completely infested in aphids & lady bugs (we did nothing lol) and while most of the plants in the front yard died that year, these bad boys still bloomed continuously and then still grew stronger than ever the fallowing year. I've noticed the color and size in flowers can vary greatly, but all blooms are fragrant, long lasting and beautiful. not sure what kind of life expectancy the average Campfire has, but hers is deff 10+ years and counting. 10/10 - would recommend!!!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Roses! We all start small, then things grow from there. Blackspot is a fact that we deal with around here -- without a preventative fungicide spray applied regularly, most of our roses will have it. I spray my roses with Bayer Advanced Disease Control every two weeks to help prevent blackspot and mildew. I don't know the spray interval for Immunox -- check the label to see what it is. The idea is to prevent the blackspot spores that are around from causing blackspot disease on our roses, so try to spray on a regular schedule if you can. I'm not familiar with the two floribundas you got, but Peace will definitely need to be sprayed. (It's one of my favorite roses, and well worth whatever effort it takes to keep it nice.) I have had hybrid teas and floribundas in pots for as many as 4 years in some cases, and I can tell you that the roses will definitely perform better for you if you are able to plant them in the ground. At the very least, upsize those pots. A 5-gallon pot is too small for a full-sized rose. (They'd be a great size for your minis, however.) Mine are/were potted in the largest size plastic pot that Walmart had at the time. I'm a little south of you in Fredericksburg, and I have never brought my pots inside for the winter -- not even into the garage. I scoot them as close together as I can in a more-protected place in my yard, away from the prevailing winter winds if I can, and I bid them farewell till spring. I check periodically if they need water -- though they need very little water during the winter since they're not growing. I figure it this way . . . if I have to baby a rose for it to survive here, it's probably not one of the roses I want to grow. I'd rather select roses that will survive and thrive in our climate. Last winter, my pile of pots contained at least 60 roses of varying sizes (some relatively small one-gallons, up to large hybrid teas) and I lost only one. Last winter was a bit more mild than usual, however. If you would like to meet more rose growers in the area in person, consider coming to my garden social on October 19. We have other GWers coming, as well as rose people I know from rose societies and various other rose-related activities. Send me an email from My Page, and I can give you details. You will find the Rose Forums a very nice place to be. We're a bunch of people who love our roses, and we welcome others to come aboard and talk roses with us. Connie

I have always pruned John Cabot when I prune my other repeating roses. It never occurred to me to prune him like a once bloomer. Mine have a spectacular bloom in the spring and continue to bloom throughout the season. They seem to always have color. Some years they get a light pruning and some years I really give them a thorough hard prune, depending on how out of control they have gotten. If you prune yours now to control the size and shape, you won't lose any blooms.