Hi, Kelly & Vapor, @celeste/NH Thank you for your ideas! i checked my friend’s location and she has humidity, too, so I am reworking my list. Rugosa are good. Kordes are great for no BS in humidity. Do you know what Old Garden Roses are best for zone 4 and humidity? @Kelly Tregaskis Collova Earth Angel & Madame Anisette are zone 5, but you have grown them in your zone 4. Are you zone 4a or 4 b? Where in your yard can you grow them? Maybe if you grow them on south side of home it keeps them warmer since they are not nade for your zone? However, climate has warmed all over and temps may not be getting as low as we are zoned, either. Also, did the cold winter get your Olivia? Olivia does really well in humidity. I have humidity & she gets no BS. Princess Alexandria of Kent gets BS, so I will not recommend for her. The DA roses list in my post above are zoned 4, but maybe DA are just not very hardy? Lichfield Angel, though, may be their most hardy rose-I have her and she grows no matter what where I have lost other roses. Yes, I heard less fragrant DA newer ones-thanks. Maybe if planted on south side home they will keep warmer in zone 4.

JESS: Thank you for the pics. & neat info. about Badger .. I really enjoy learning about the animals in South Africa. One cup of chicken manure per bush is TOO MUCH. In a British rose forum, a lady burnt her roses by using chicken manure once a month. In my cold zone, I use chicken manure VERY SMALL amount when the temp is cool & rainy. Folks use Rose-Tone (has chicken manure) once a month for roses in pots. But that has only 1/6 chicken manure. I would use only 1/2 cup, 1 cup would be too salty. I killed a rose by mixing 1/2 cup of chicken manure in the planting hole. When chicken manure touches the root, it kills the root, best to dilute ONLY 1/2 cup with soil before spreading around the bush. I started a new thread, "10/30/15: Bad habits, good habits, rose & health tips, recipes." http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3473294/m=3/10-30-15-bad-habits-good-habits-rose-and-health-tips-recipes

vtandrea, I do not grow mine wet. I let them 'almost' dry out. I grow them in large bark so it drains quickly. I can let mine go a few weeks between watering, especially in Florida. When I lived in NY I put them outside as soon as the weather warmed. In winter they grew in my very dry house. I never misted them and they were fine. I wouldn't worry about the roots. I've repotted mine many times and they were fine. I don't go crazy pulling the roots apart, but I do trim off any that are dead. If I were to make a guess, I would say you are growing them too wet. Look at those thick leaves. Let them dry out. Increase your light, I now grow my Angraceum Crestwood in full Florida sun. My Magdelenae under a tree but gets full morning sun and dappled sun after 1pm. Let it dry, don't overwater. The roots look good. Jane

The browned leaf edges do look like overwatering. Were they there when you bought it? If so, all you have to do is to continue to monitor soil moisture like you did today, and hold off on watering until the dowel is dry. Do be sure to water slowly and thoroughly when you do water. For the rootbound plants I still have in their old soil, I water once until water begins to drain from the pot, making sure to go slowly and wet the whole surface of the soil evenly. Then I come back with my fertilizer solution and water again about 15 minutes later. If the pot was very dry I usually find that the pot takes longer to drain the second time, probably because peat that had become hydrophobic was allowed to slowly moisten a little so it could absorb water again. My pots have holds around the perimeter of the bottom, so tilting after watering works great even without a wick. When I found these forums last September I was ready to repot all my plants, which were weak and rootbound in very old soil. Fortunately I was persuaded to proceed more cautiously and to improve their growing conditions instead, the idea being that it's better to wait until the solstice to repot unless a plant is, as Al says, circling the drain (and I did repot the one schefflera that was doing just that in 5:1:1, with good results). I flushed them thoroughly with room temperature R/O water; bought some 100 watt, 5000k (bright white) LEDs and CFLs, put them in cheap clamp-on fixtures, and mounted them on a shelf above the plants on a timer so they'd get some light; for rid of a spider mite infestation; started fertilizing with a weak solution of Foliage Pro every time I watered; and diligently monitored soil moisture and watered properly when needed. All of my plants responded by perking up, and after a few months they'd gained enough energy and their root systems had recovered enough that they started putting out new growth. I don't have FLFs, but my ficus benjaminas did the best (I listed a few before and after photos in Dave's recent "Then and Now" thread), and they were much improved by the time the weather allowed me to put them outside. Here's where things went sideways, because some nagging health issues prevented me from actually reporting this season. I was really upset when I realized it just was not going to happen, but frankly none of my plants are in better shape than they've ever been, and I've really fallen back in love with the ficuses, which love their half-day of bright high altitudes sunlight so much that they've filled every branch with shiny healthy leaves. I'm sure they'd be even happier with pruned roots in gritty mix (I'll use a modified ratio to compensate for the desert conditions), but I've gotten good enough at compensating for it that they'll keep looking good for another winter, and now that I already have my ingredients and a lot of prepared mix I'll be able to jump into it next June whenever I have a little energy to spare. Al says that if you have two plants in the same condition, repot one in the fall, and repot the other one on Father's Day 2018, the second one will have more growth next fall than the one you repotted now. Some folks will say just go ahead and repot anytime, but your plant looks great despite having a couple of slightly damaged leaves, and they'll respond much better to repotting if you care for them properly and allow them to accumulate the energy they'll need to get through it smoothly. BTW, Cassandra's description of repotting is spot on if you're not going to prune roots. If I had your plant I'd wait until the plant's energy production was at its highest to make sure it will bounce back with some vigor, but Cassandra's method sounds like it would work great. Lenore