Can any one

[riobrazos2]

Can any one

25 Aug '12 12:37 am

tell me if it is possible for an established rose to survive if it is only green stems, with less than six leaves?

[Kerole]

Re: Can any one

25 Aug '12 8:30 am

Ah yes, the case of the defoliating rose bush! One year several of my blush HT standards did this. Very mature plants (25 years+) and otherwise healthy, dropped almost every single leaf. I believe due to stress but I don't know what caused the stress other than the usual things that the plants have dealt with every year. I don't spray my roses so it may have been disease but the leaves looked ok before I found them all over the ground.

All my plants survived having next to no leaves. By early autumn new leaves had grown and the plants flowered again.

Some years later, most of the standards are still doing ok. One died unexpectedly 2 or so years ago, and another is looking a bit sickly too.

Are you having problems with a nude rose B?

[riobrazos2]

Re: Can any one

25 Aug '12 5:15 pm

Yes, I am Kerole. And not just one, all of the few I have left. Grasshoppers, skillions of the gnawing mouths. Has depressed the you know what out of me. The main reason haven't written anything in my Jardine journal. Now, one of my most favorite rose nurseries is having a great sale, but am just not sure the little new ones could make it. I bought two bare root roses this spring. They are both dead. Bitterness, bitterness in my heart. I just don't think the mature roses will be able to put on any foliage they can keep long enough to fortify them for winter. My BD present in June was to be the nucleus roses for the Lady Moosey Corner. After evaluating, checking and selecting the ones I wanted, I backed out as it looked to be verging abnormally hot and dry this summer. Hubband said I could get them this fall. . . . Am most discouraged, as am not sure I could protect them from the gnawing masses. One of the bareroot roses I ordered earlier was pricey, but beautiful and just what I wanted for part of The Corner. Ordered it kinda late for the season, but the sweetie took off like a champ. I was beyond upset when the grasshoppers killed it. Ah well, this is exactly why have been scarce on the forums. I be massively depressed.

Am glad to know your roses made it, most especially since it is the standards!!


b.

[Kerole]

Re: Can any one

26 Aug '12 10:27 am

I wondered why I hadn't seen you around lately.

I'm sorry you roses are not doing well. Dastardly 'hoppers. Plague proportions by the sounds.

Your idea for a Lady Moosey Corner is a lovely one but it seems that the odds are stacked you against you.

Don't get me started on how much money, heartache, time and effort I have given to plants that have not survived. I know the frustration well my dear.

But we gardeners are made of pretty stern stuff. Or perhaps we are just plain stupid. Either way the gardening bug never really goes away. The wins are celebrated and the losses are chalked up to a mix of crappy luck and gardener error. Forever the optimists, we shake it off and set about planting new things once again. A few dead roses will not be the end of you B! Gardeners have more backbone than that.

I miss my old cat terribly (see my thread) but I am not silly enough to think there won't be another puss to share our couch in the future. And this goes for plants too...