regardless of what the stats say on the soil maps, Strawbs, I can definately say my soil is alkaline - not as much as yours but rhodies and azaleas are a distant memory from my northern childhood - our black silty fen soil is top class for cabbages, celery and onions and sugar beet. Anyhow, unfortunately, I am not much of a guide to soil ph and roses since this is an issue which rarely comes up - at least not as much as mildew, rust or blackspot. The only dodgy roses (chlorotic, needing regular sequestrene) I grow have had too close a brush with rugosas - and one of my only Austins, Wild Edric is definately a pale and pasty specimen....although Compte de Champagne comes awfully close and I couldn't say what its parentage is. Annoying, as the rugosas are generally happy with well drained, sandy soil (I am on calcareous grassland. Of course, I do not have the extremes of temperature that you have so I have been able to adopt a blase attitude to ph as it is practically impossible to actually kill a rose here. Nonetheless, not dying is emphatically not the same as thriving - there are roses which are doing considerably better than others. I did expect china roses would be a bit feeble but have surprised me with their general willingness to grow and bloom - Sophie's Perpetual, Mutabilis and Sanguinea have been stars. Even more surprising, the infamous bourbons do well for me too. I would have to say that the majority of my roses are species or close hybrids although I have a weakness for Harkness floribundas. I am incredibly fortunate in that Beales and Trevor White (2 out of 3 old rose growers in the UK) along with Harkness and Legrice are based in East Anglia with similar soil and climate conditions as myself....and fervently believe that this conflation of conditions has a whopping bearing on the subsequent health of the rose once it is planted in my garden so I think you are right, Strawbs, in pondering specific nursery circumstances before considering buying from them.

SouthCountryGuy, I'm in your position, added to which is slick, grey clay. You could make clay pots out of my soil, no lie. I did all of the above suggestions, and still have isolated problems to which I throw sulphur and if really desperate (my grapes), Ironite. But it doesn't solve the problem completely. When I plant more roses, I just rope my husband in for some serious digging. I try to dig up a LOT of soil around wherever I think the rose-roots could possibly grow in the future, and just amend, amend, amend. For beds, I just dig up whole swathes, and I make sure to amend many months before roses go in, to give the sulpher time to work in the soil. After planting, I amend some more. Sometimes it's all I do! The good news is that I've read that clays contain more potential for health than acidy soils. I don't know if it's true (I've only been a rose nut for three years now), but I'm hoping it is, and so far so good! NaCl here is still a problem in the groundwater and sometimes percolates out of the soil after a gully-washer. I don't know any other way of dealing with it but amend, amend, amend. But out of about 2 dozen antique roses I have so far, only one is looking sad (winter damage, but recovering), so, for the time being, Randy and I must be doing something right.

I only have 5 grafted roses i bought and planted in the heat of summer after i removed 2 large juniper bushes. I have about 275 or so own-roots. The grafted ones were potted and on sale at a local nursery. I just plop them into the ground and they have done well despite the heat of summer and i did water occasionally. I have even got bare root own root roses this spring and i just planted in the native soil. The only mounding i have done is in some raised beds i made this summer, because i am on flat land that has some low spots where the water stands for a while in the spring rainy season because the water has nowhere to go. Roses cannot tolerate standing water and will drown in about a week. Roses love water but they also need good drainage. I know they always say to mound the soil around bareroot grafted roses when you plant them, but i think that is because they water the heck out of them after they plant them. I don't think it is necessary to mound them unless you have drainage problems.

One thing I'm curious about is that my OGRs on Multiflora over the years seem to have much more trouble with it than my modern roses. *** Here is an example. I have an informal hedge of 6-8 'Golden Celebrations.' The first one planted (and the largest) of them came from Hortico, and is on Multiflora. It was one of the first GCs planted in our part of the country. I think there's an even chance it is not virused. It is very vigorous, and repeats like a champ. It is almost always chlorotic to some degree or another. If that doesn't bother you, it's fine. (It bothers me.) ----------------- The rest of the plants are on Dr. Huey. They are almost certainly virused. If they get enough water, they're very very vigorous, and repeat like champs. They are NOT troubled by chlorosis. The color contrast between the big yellow blooms and the deep green foliage is beautiful. The difference in the foliage between the one plant on Multiflora and the several on Huey is striking. Jeri