Koko-Loco is a tad disappointing.
James_Shaw_San Francisco Bay Area
8 years ago
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msdorkgirl
8 years agohugogurll
8 years agoRelated Discussions
Yet more November blooms...
Comments (9)It's good to be back at the Gallery for some cold weather enjoyment of my favorite flower, now that my garden has bit the dust for the season. And Beth, you do not disappoint with those unusual luscious blooms like Helen Keller and Mother of Pearl. I had no idea Mother was a florist rose. A gardening friend grows MOP in some tough conditions and it's always in bloom. Yours is spectacular. Now to go get some chocolate ice cream--Koko Loco does that to some people. Diane...See MoreA rose by anyother name - so confused
Comments (15)You can determine whether you can grow climbers as "bushes" by asking here, on Help Me Find, your local rose societies or even trying it. Nothing gets discovered until someone tries doing it. Climate will sometimes enable you to do things otherwise not easily done. In cold climates, Ballerina is well known as a smaller shrub. Put it in a long, warm climate and it climbs. Many Austin roses do it, too. Sally Holmes is easily grown as either a climber or bush, depending upon how hard it's pruned and whether or not it's supported on walls or a trellis. Generally nearly all roses only flower at the cane ends, unless the sap flow is interrupted, either by pruning or changing the direction in which the cane grows. For those which flower primarily, or even solely on last year's growth, yes, pruning harder to encourage "bushiness" will reduce the amount of bloom. Too severe pruning can eliminate it. That's the balancing act you learn by doing. Banksiae is a huge plant, yet it can be "hedged" and grown against a wall as you would podocarpus, eugenia, even creeping fig, kept sheared and tight against large walls and it will provide some flowers because not ALL flowering growth is removed. You won't have the yards long flowering wands otherwise enjoyed, but there will be some color. Longer, more flexible climbers can be trained around shorter supports and they will flower. It requires a lot of attention and effort and the quantity of bloom will very likely be reduced, but it can be done. Victorian and Edwardian florists frequently grew once flowering ramblers as potted topiary. Those varieties were usually ten, or greater, foot climbers in the British climate and likely much larger in warmer areas. They supplied them for flower shows, holiday decorations for "great houses" and stores and flowering gifts. The "climbing" Austin roses are very much the same situation I commented about with Ballerina. Initially, when little was known of their performance in longer, warmer climates, the only size and performance information we had was Austin's catalog, based upon what he observed in Britain. You can understand the backlash when his catalog stated that Graham Thomas was a "mannerly five foot shrub", but when planted in Southern California, it could grow to fifteen feet and more, and frequently didn't flower much at all. Nearly all of his more vigorous roses can be successfully trained and used as climbers of varying heights and sizes. Any of them which produce floppy growth can be tied in to supports, bent off the vertical and grown as you would small climbers. Here in Southern California, we frequently used his thinner wooded, floppier roses, potted on trellises or tied into other growth which didn't provide color in landscaping uses. English Elegance, Lucetta, The Herbalist, and many others were best grown here in those days when used as pillar roses, on short walls or fence or even on six foot trellises. The climate and gentler pruning, allowed them to throw longer, more pliable canes which took advantage of the support, developing into climbers. Over long periods, the whole plant is going to become larger and larger, so you won't succeed trying to keep at twenty foot climber as a three foot plant, but where you can allow them to be large (ten foot or larger) masses of plant, keeping them as huge, freestanding landscape plants, can be done. The huge green bush in this shot is Fortuniana, grown at a freeway rest stop an hour or so north of where I live by our highway department. Yes, the ones which are promoted as "climbing" do get "leggy". That's what makes them useful to be trained as climbing. That legginess IS the "climbing growth". Yes, they have to be pegged, or trained against any other support to provide the flowering "laterals", just as "climbers" must. Yes, Hybrid Teas and Grandifloras which get "leggy" can often be pegged or otherwise trained as climbers, as long as their wood isn't too stiff and brittle to permit you to train them that way. Some are, some aren't. I met a gentleman years ago at a Friends of the Huntington Library plant sale who "spoke plant". If any rose "told him" it would permit him to train it as a climber, he did. His garden was on a curve on a canyon road, well known for people under estimating the severity of the curve and he frequently had people sliding off the road into his garden, until he surrounded it with a thick boulder wall with scallops of thick wrought iron. He wanted roses to cover the wall and found many of the taller, "leggier" bush roses would easily allow him to splay them out more horizontally and provide almost "climbing" results. And, why not? The prime difference between a "climbing Hybrid Tea" or "climbing floribunda" or "climbing polyantha", etc., IS how leggy, how long their canes grow. Queen Elizabeth here, is easily grown as a six foot and taller "bush". She gets "leggy". The climbing sport of Queen Elizabeth throws much longer, leggier canes. All of them genetically only flower at the cane ends. If you don't prune the bush, it will grow as tall as the resources it has available before flowering, or until something, whether it's wind, mechanical damage or its own weight causing it to bend or break, change the sap flow so it pushes "laterals", any side growth from that main cane, and flower. If you have a plant that demands to be permitted to produce long, leggy canes, try pegging it. That's what Hybrid Perpetuals and other OGR classes do and why pegging was developed. What's the difference? If the plant grows that way, treat it that way. Grandiflora flower size can be pretty much anything at least as large as you would expect from the usual floribunda. Few would accept a huge "grandiflora" bush with two inch flowers, but put four inch blooms on it and everyone is happy. Remember, "grandiflora" actually means nothing. After Queen Elizabeth hit gardens, her size didn't fit with what everyone expected from "Hybrid Teas". They had to figure out something to call her so you would have some idea what to expect from the plant and be willing to pay for it. Just as "floribunda" really means nothing. Yes, you would expect it to mean "abundant flowers", which it can mean, but it honestly tells you nothing about the genetics of the plant as "Hybrid Tea" once referred to. We've come to accept standards of performance from all three "classifications" which really have little to nothing to do with botany. Our demand for a bush to hold foliage almost to its base isn't usual for most roses. Because the canes taper as they grow upward and the adhesion factor of water causing it to rise above its own level in tapered tubes; combined with transpiration, the plant actually "sweating" through the stomata, the pores on the undersides of the foliage; and the plant using the sap to lengthen themselves and produce flowers and hips, sap pressure is greatest at the cane tips. Sap flows upward very quickly, bypassing the lower buds and foliage, essentially starving them almost as quickly as new growth shades them out, causing the plant to shed them. Leaves exist to photosynthesize food; provide shade against extremes of cold, light and heat and to provide transpiration to produce sap pressure. If they are shaded from at least the threshold of sunlight required for photosynthesis, the plant no longer gains benefit from them, so they remove the sap from them, causing them to yellow and fall. That's what we mean by the leaves "getting old". Depending upon the genetics of the rose, some will only last a few weeks to months, as with some short season species, while some will remain healthy and productive for the full year, such as evergreen Teas, Chinas, Banskiaes, etc. "Disease resistance" can partially depend upon how long-lived those leaves are. Rust and black spot seem to actually be used by some species to help trigger them to shut down, harden off, before extreme winter conditions arrive and damage the plant. Many roses either inherited the susceptibility to the diseases from some of those species, or never developed the resistance because the diseases weren't supported in the places those roses evolved. Then, we come along and plant those plants where the climates and conditions support the diseases and the roses contract them, losing foliage and becoming bare. Finding roses which DON'T develop "bare legs" is the exception, not the rule. Unfortunately, no classification will really cue you in on which should be expected to do that. But, generally, those which have twiggier growth as opposed to the upright, straight canes we associate with climbers, HTs and some floribundas, SHOULD do a better job of providing that foliage cover lower on the plant, closer to the ground. As long as their disease resistance in your climate and conditions permits them to retain the foliage, they SHOULD be better able to keep themselves covered. Because that growth isn't commonly associated with HTs, "shrub" is now more regularly used as their "class", but it doesn't guaranty that performance. As has been suggested before, "shrub" simply means it doesn't it any other classification. But when you consider they're really all either climbers or bushes (or both), almost any of them might be considered as "shrubs", depending upon climate and what you do to them. Don't kick yourself for "making mistakes". You're going to increasingly find that what you're asking, no one else knows, either. The more you learn, the fewer people there are who know MORE. An "expert" is simply the person who knows one more thing than you do. None of us knows everything, None of us can guaranty how a plant is going to perform in your garden, because none of us has experience with your garden. Something may be perfect in your front yard and a disaster in the back yard. Conditions can dramatically vary in just a few feet. And, every one of us has made many mistakes and will make many more. Nothing new is learned without making a lot of mistakes. No one learned you could grow some Austin roses as climbers until they made the mistake of trying to make bushes out of them. No one learned you can whack the dickens out of monsters like Banksiae and Fortuniana and have them still flower until someone made the mistake of trying to grow them where they couldn't be allowed to eat their house. We didn't learn which roses would tolerate more shade until we made the mistake of trying to grow them where they wouldn't receive the sun levels we were told they required. As long as you are comfortable paying the prices, keep experimenting. The more you experiment, the more you discover and learn and the faster you become "The Expert"!...See MoreWhen to give up?
Comments (36)jjpeace, I feel your pain. You should see my bamboo stake garden, augmented by that low wire fencing around certain roses and other plants out back. It's soo ugly, but bamboo stakes driven into the ground with more lying on the ground, are the only things that keep quail from making their dust bowls around certain roses and plants, and pecking to death other plants they love. Before you all think to yourself "what harm can a little dust bowl do?", think again. You should see the excavating the quail do. They can expose roots and have started some real erosion problems down the back slope. Every ground cover plant and seed for tough groundcovers I try, they devour. I'm onto setting out small lavenders and the native blue flax on the slope, but have to surround those plants with bamboo stakes, and put large rocks and hard dirt clods near the poor plants to keep the quail away. Some of the bowls look like small caves in the raw soil. Dusting is done mostly by females while the male mate stands around and watches. The females can dust for up to 15 minutes, and the poor males die of boredom, but they never leave the females side, and chase off any rivals. Sigh. I know far too much about quail. I'll continue this saga at a later time...there's more. Diane...See MoreThe blooms are diminishing but October has been amazing!
Comments (15)Thanks y'all! Curdle, you absolutely won't be disappointed in the creamy/pinks to bring inside! Some of my very favorite colors as you can tell :) Chris I believe J&P carries it for sure. I can't remember where I got mine. I've had them several years now....See Morebethnorcal9
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