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.

For me Grandmother's Hat is a nice rose but not one of my most frequent bloomers. She only blooms in small flushes and no more than others of my HPs. HPs in general do well here as do Bourbons. Mme Pierre Oger is a monster (from Vintage who obtained a virus cleaned clone so maybe that accounts for some of the robustness???) Bourbon, healthy as can be and blooms repeatedly. Souvenir de la Malmaison is more demure in size but also a very healthy Bourbon with very good repeat. I can't remember whether she has many thorns. However, my HP Reine des Violettes is thornless and repeats about as much as Grandmother's Hat. Another HP I have is Comtesse O'Gorman, she is quite healthy and has few thorns. GH, RdV, and COG all seem to have very flexible canes, not twiggy/stiff like what I think of as HT habit. The HP that has bloomed the most for me is Baronne Prevost. She has also never shown any disease and has flexible canes. I have an HP from Eurodesert that came misidentified as Symphony but Cliff said it clearly wasn't. It's very pretty and healthy but quite strange. Grows in a very narrow, elegant, upright shape. I don't have a single rose that has that particular growth habit. Some canes are bristley while others are entirely smooth. I wonder how many of the found roses aren't any particular historic rose but rather seedlings of them. We know that in France back in the old days if you ordered a rose with a certain name you just might get a seedling. So what do we know about very old American nurseries? What were their practices? Did they always sell the actual variety or were seedlings sent? I really don't know but am curious about it. In addition, it seems modern day roses can easily get mixed up in commerce, so I have to wonder how many times that happened in the past, and we just don't know about it. Or if someone, way back got a seedling and that rose did really, really well, it might have been passed on to friends and spread because it was such a good plant. It won't match precisely a famous antique variety because it isn't. But should be treasured because of garden merit. With roses at Sangerhausen, I wish someone or a group would visit and discuss, in depth, the ID's of roses such as Cornet and Mrs. R. Sharman-Crawford with staff. How certain is Sangerhausen that these roses are correct in their garden? Do they have documentation that helps in the ID, and can this be viewed? Were these plants growing in parts of the garden that were bombed to heck during war, or in areas that came through unscathed? Then it would be nice if DNA of GH, Cornet, and MSC could be compared to see if they are related or are any of them identical.

Oh, I can manage a bloom or two. No seriously, I lived in the hills outside of Monroe for 10 years on five acres and in Woodinville for another 10 years and here in Seattle for 20. Like probably anyone here on this forum if there is a will there is a way. Ask jerijen or RoseCanadian. We all do what we need to in order to grow roses. Some of the rose bushes I planted in Woodinville are still there, 20 years later. I don't remember them looking much different from what I have now tho' I do remember having to amend heavy clay soil. Just choose the sunniest spot in your yard and they should do fine. The closer you are to the Puget Sound the milder the weather. Maybe 5 or 10 degrees difference but you can google that. As Embothrium said the closer you get to the Cascades Mtns the colder or wetter (snowier) I don't know where you are located but like anyone I wish our rose season was longer. I'm just happy I get to grow roses. Whether you will like it here is another matter. From what we hear on the National news would anyone want to spend their winter in a blizzard in the Northeast, yet millions and millions of people do. And they grow roses. Or the Southeast with the hurricanes or the Middle of the country with tornadoes and floods? And they grow roses. Or the Southwest with their years of drought? And they grow roses. We have so many people moving here it's rare to bump into a person born here. Seems like they're mainly from California. It's fun to see how the area is growing, better than to see it die and not change. Except traffic, of course, and that's probably true anywhere:) Unfortunately I don't have pictures online from when I grew roses in Monroe or Woodinville but here are some from my roof deck last summer (some of you have probably already seen this pix, sorry) and some from a local rose garden. Good luck on your decision. And no, my feet aren't webbed:) Quack! :)

I agree that the roses are busy building up roots... I would not try to push for flowers right now.... let them continue to build their roots.... you will be rewarded with flowers when it cools down some..... In fact in Florida we are advised against putting fertilizer down to push flowers or even to cut back when we plant.... we want roots first then flowers.... that was the hardest thing for me to learn.... I wanted instant flowers.... Good luck with your bushes.