Hi Bart: Thank you for asking for simple terms, then I don't have to spend hours pulling up U. of. Extension research. If your soil sticks to your shoes, then it's clay and high in salt. Magnesium is what makes clay sticky, thus no need to add Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). Clay soil is fertile and high in salt, no need for chemical fertilizer. What clay soil needs is buffering agent, or organic matter to neutralize the soil pH, and create space between the tight particles. Clay soil can be acidic like my last house, or alkaline like my present house. Organic matter like leaves buffer extremes in pH. Peatmoss, pH 4, glues up with clay because it's a fine particle. I get better result with large chunk organic matter, leaves (acidic at first, but buffers later), pine park (pH 4.5, acidifies longer, since it decomposes very slow). Sandy soil, and loose/loamy soil benefit from manures and chemical fertilizer... salt is not a problem since it can be leached out when the soil is loose with good drainage. I already tested muriate of potash (potassium chloride) ... My husband bought that by mistake instead of sulfate of potash. 3 roses haven't recuperate from the salt-damage and wilting, despite tons of watering. I will never use that stuff, except to de-ice in zone 5a winter. I put that muriate of potash on the new bed of tomatoes ... blossom end rots, had to throw 3/4 tomatoes away. High potassium drives down calcium, resulting in black-fungal on the bottom half of the tomatoes. I prefer unsulfured, blackstrap molasses as soluble fertilizer for clay soil, since it's cheap & low-salt, with NPK 3-1-5, 20% potassium, 17% calcium, 20% iron, and trace elements. That's better than cocoa mulch with NPK 3-1-4, and way-better than horse manure/bedding at NPK 0.7 / 0.3 / 0.6. Bart, your green manures and alfalfa hay are great for clay. Here's an excerpt from the link below "At the end of that first growing season we moved some roots of mint into the bed with the roses. The thinking there was that mint brings a substantial amount of minerals and other nutrients from the sub soil to the top soil because of the it’s deep roots. During the year as the mint grew to around a foot tall we’d cut it back and mulch around the roses with the cut mint. We’re still doing that now, so the roses get fed and we’ve got lots of mint for tea. The routine now is that during the year when the roses are in flower they’re constantly mulched and fed with cut mint, in the winter they’re pruned hard back and mulched with layers of hay." *** From Straw: I think it's clever to use plants like mint to fertilize roses, plus to keep deer away. Nutritional analysis of mint: 9% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 2% calcium, 7% iron, and 6% manganese ... the last 2 are much needed in alkaline soil to fix chlorosis. The picture of Summer Samba rose I posted in the other thread with very dark green leaves ... that has tons of clover growing in the pot. Roots of plants secret acid, so the soil where there was decomposed grass, tested less alkaline in red-cabbage juice. The soil with nothing growing on it, is rock-hard and very alkaline. Thank you, Bart, for that great idea about clover, I'm going to order clover seeds, they make a nice carpet around roses. Below is another shot of Summer Samba, bought from RU end of June, you can see the clover growing inside the pot, which I foolishly killed most of them: Here is a link that might be useful: Growing roses without manure This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Aug 12, 13 at 18:05

I was searching for threads on the David Austin rose "The Ingenious Mr. Fairchild" and there isn't much here. Does anyone grow this rose? I'm considering it as another pink possibility, but I will already have several pink roses so any new pink would have to be quite special to be included. What is it like? Mature size, disease resistance, habit, scent, spread, vigor, hardiness, are the flowers as pretty as they look in pictures (The flowers seem to be a medium pink - not too light but not too dark either - descriptions say that the outsides of the petals are supposed to be a lighter pink while the insides are a darker pink with tints of lilac). Opinions? Love it, hate it, indifferent? Is it a "must have" or only if you have a lot of space . . .

Suebelle, I actually joined before 2001. More like 1998 or 99, but somehow it got changed to 2001. Maybe that was back when Spike sold us out. I dunno. And I've been "collecting" roses since 1990. That's why I have so many. But being here certainly has had an influence on my purchases. LOL And as far as missing blooms... not likely. I'm obsessed, so I'm out there every moment I can be, within reason. My problem is, I work so much and don't have time to keep on top of the fertilizing and pruning, and all the maintenance, so some of the roses don't do as well as they could. I'm hoping to change that issue this season tho. Even if it kills me..

I've had Wildeve for one year. It's a healthy mounding plant, but the flowers only last a day or two before shattering. The fragrance is nothing special. I wouldn't buy it again nor recommend it to someone else. St. Cecilia has the same color flowers, but everything about it is much better than Wildeve. I've got The Ingenious Mr. Fairchild on order from Heirloom but don't know much about it yet. It looks similar to Heather Austin and Huntington Rose, so I will probably plant them all together. Unfortunately, I don't think Wildeve is a good substitute for TIMF.