Ayk, you could plant them in the ground (and mound them up) and construct an awning of sorts over them to shade them. They do sell shade cloth for this purpose. I never recommend keeping roses inside. They do not like the conditions in most homes. And I don't recommend plastic bags either. They don't breath at all and can trap too much humidity and promote fungal diseases. Paper bags will shade them but won't keep the canes from dehydrating. That's what the mound of soil does. Never, EVER use top soil or garden soil in pots! It is too heavy and dense and will not drain adequately. Although roses love water they hate to sit in soggy soil. Always use a good light weight potting soil. With or without fertilizer, with or without moisture control crystals, with or without added perlite it doesn't seem to matter for me as long as it's soil meant specifically for POTS!

Quick answer, buy where you get value for your money. Know what value looks like. IF you decide to buy bare roots, there are three things I think you should look for. 1) are the canes green? It they are black or brown or green with black/brown splotches, KNOW that those canes are dead already and imagine the bush without them. If the canes are coated with a greenish wax, use your fingernail to flake off a bit of the wax and check the color of the canes. Greenish wax makes a lot of canes look ok. 2) have the canes already broken dormancy? Are there leaves at leaf nodes, even if they are dead? Can you see where the dead leaves from earlier this year are fingerpruned off? Are the canes starting to get wrinkled from lack of moisture IN the plant (that was lost when the earlier leaf break happened?) Each leaf axil on a healthy rose cane has three buds. Two are backups. But does the cane look as if either of the two backups will make it? 3) does the bagged up root mass that you can't see have enough roots to support the canes you can see? Two stories. I had Don Juans growing on my porch in Algiers Point, and I wanted to add a fourth one. I found one bagged with really good canes, and I got it home and found that there was a huge bright scar where half the roots had been pulled off in processing. I should have returned it. I didn't. With the same care that had supported the other three, #4 died. I remember that mistake. And how I confused densely packed sawdust for good roots. That lead to my not making a mistake several years later when I saw (insert music) from across a crowded room/nursery a mass of seven of the best looking canes I had ever seen on a body bag rose. Perfection. It was Purple something and it was a climber. And I grabbed the base of the bag, and there was close to nothing there. Not even much sawdust. Maybe one woody root. I knew that that root hadn't supported seven one inch canes in the growing fields. I put it back. And remember it to this day. Ann, putting off going out weeding.

Agree not too early. As the instructions usually say, do cut back the canes, and do mound soil or mulch over the bud union and lower canes. These steps are important to protect the plant from moderate freeze/thaw cycles and desiccation.

I was thinking the same. I might put a bucket over it tomorrow night to protect from the cold wind. I also have a planted one gallon that has a few leaves. I was thinking of filling a bucket with leaves and placing it over the rose.