Hi Luis - You don't need cold to initiate bloom, just stop watering. When you decide your want your plant to experience "winter", stop watering. Think of it this way - you have a rainy and a dry season. When the dry season comes, it is the tropical equivalent of winter and even the indoor plants need to dry out. The leaves will die and it will kill you not to water the thing but be strong! Feel the bulb and you will see, it is firm and has plenty of moisture but your goal is to get the leaves to all die down. After at least half the leaves have dried and died, you can start watering again. You also need to give that baby a little more root space. After the dead leaves are all trimmed or pulled off is a good time to do this. Plant it in some new soil in a pot about 8 inches in diameter and 8 inches high (uh, make that 20 cm or so) I would let 2-3 months go by without watering. About 3 months after you have repotted and start watering again, you should have flowers. Lived in Hawaii for a while and this worked there. It is a little cooler there, though.

I believe there is a good article on how to get AV's to bloom again in the FAQ section (main forum page, above the threads). What happens with plants that have just been bought, they were fertilized etc to produce maximum bloom for the 'sale window'. Most plants need to recover from that energy expenditure. Using a balanced fertilizer (not a 'bloom booster') you should be able to achieve near constant bloom, though not the same bouquet style as when you bought it. Show plants with lots of blooms have typically been disbudded for months, along with a (tricky) repotting, fertilizing and light schedule, designed to bring the plant to maximum potential. Oftentimes they get chopped up and re-started after a show, rather than being nursed back. Karin

It must be Spring in California! I love how they stay green in mostly shade, and have the purple, red leaves when grown in full sun.

I still think these Fortuniana rootstock roses should do great for you. Just don't feed them anything after Labor Day. Water heavily during September and stop watering when October rolls around. If you get a basil break during the fall, enjoy the blooms and when you get your 1st freeze, cut it off a the base. It will freeze and die anyway and could cause more problems when it dies into the graft. I have been growing roses on fortuniana since leaving Fl. and moving into the N.E GA. MTS. in the fall of 08. I grow 72 roses that are grafted onto an understock. 60 of those are grafted onto fortuniana. of those 60, 9 have been in the ground since day one. That's 8 winters with 3 of them VERY harsh. The only roses I've lost were to winter tender varieties that froze to the graft and never came back. For now on any new roses that come into my garden must be winter hardy to zone #6. I still grow two varieties that are very "iffy" in my garden zone (Moonstone and Marlon's Day). If I loose any of them to winter, I will be replacing them with winter hardy varieties, on fortuniana. Sara, if you are able, plant you're fortuniana bush's on the South and East side of your home with the graft at ground level. Scepter'd Isle on fortuniana this past spring. It was planted in Sept. 08