The container roses are all looking pretty good, for the beginning of April. Over the winter I cleaned up the container roses, and planted the two new ones that I bought. They all have a fresh layer of arborist chip mulch. With the current weather, they don't need much care right now. Growth has been pretty good so far this season. Behind the fence, there are two more rows if roses. Mostly hybrid teas or floribundas but also a few English roses. I'm not confident that this old rose will survive what I did to it. Roses can be tough, but... Here it is now, a week after transplanting it. The canes are green, and the new growth isn't wilted. But here it is when I dug it from its previous location. I think the red circle shows the main underground trunk. I had to cut it off because it was under a boulder. I don't know if there are more roots in the mass of soil that I moved with it. Every day I look and ask, "How is it possible you are still alive?". If it does live, it will get lots of TLC this year. Today I dug out and discarded a rangy polyanthus - type rose. It was too hard to control its wild growth, and the flowers didn't amount to much. In another part of the yard, behind some shrubs and trees, was a rose bush that needed a better location. I THINK the David Austin, "Scepter'd Isle" but not certain. I pruned it, dug it up and moved it into the spot that I had just cleared. It had good looking roots, so I think it will be OK. With some TLC. It needs some mulch. In a few days, when I'm able. Most of the rest are random rose bushes that we collected over the years, and that survived being moved from the old house thirteen years ago. Several were started from cuttings, and most of the rest were bare root bushes from the grocery store over the years. There is still a lot of cleanup work ahead in the main rose garden. I wasn't able to for a couple of years, and blackberries and other weeds invaded. I'm gradually getting there now and hopeful for a nice year with many colorful and fragrant roses.
Wow !! You have a lot of roses!! I thought I had quite a lot but you're way ahead of me. At last count I had 23-25, don't really remember exactly. I think the one you left the main trunk behind on will be fine. I have one with a very old gnarly trunk too. I bought it that way and the old trunk just keeps getting bigger and gnarlier but it has a wide root system coming off of it. I think those roots are feeding it more than the ones from the old trunk.
We might be in the same range. I've never counted. Plus there are some climbers around, and a few mini roses from the grocery store that I repotted. Some of those do great, and some not. Despite downsizing much of the garden over the past two years, I added two David Austin roses this winter. I wanted stronger scented ones than I had. I bought Desdemona and Munstead Wood, both listed as very fragrant. There are a couple of climbing roses on the vegetable garden fence, too. They started as prunings that I stuck into the ground in vegetable beds.
While at the mega grocery store, I wandered among the racks of bare root roses. I had one in mind, but they didn't have it. Still they had "New Day", a hybrid tea from the 70s, which is yellow and listed as having a spicy fragrance. Internet photos show the color as light yellow to deep yellow, so who knows? I had it in the shade for a couple of days, while recovering from a knee injection. Today I planted it. I soaked it for a couple of hours and did some minor pruning of shredded stem tops, otherwise no major surgeries at this point. I always plant in unamended soil. I figure that's what they will be in anyway for the long run, and it avoids interfaces between soil qualities that might affect hydrology and root circling. Even though, roses are pretty resilient and might not care. Mr. Duck and Ms. Duck follow closely for bugs slugs insects and caterpillars that might be loosened in the freshly dug soil. I watered in well. It's a gloomy, rainy day, good for the foliage to adapt without any scorching sun. Tomorrow might be the same. I also mulched with arborist chips. I did the same with the Scepter'd Isle rose that I moved a few days ago. Sorry about the blurry photo. It's hard to get the auto-focus to focus on stems. There appear to be buds swelling below my prunings, good. So the rose garden renovation is going pretty well so far. Still a lot to do. I think I'm about halfway through he hard work parts, then it can just be puttering. Last year I wasn't up to keeping up with all of the gardens. That I'm doing it now, makes me happy.
