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Welcome to Roses inc Tulsa.
Greetings!
Hello, I hope you have been enjoying this beautiful weather as much as I. For those of you that are in other parts of the country, Oklahoma's trees are in full fall color and today was nearly 70 degrees with a clear blue sky. The beauty of our state this time of year is hard to express in words.
Joseph came to me yesterday and exclaimed: "It is 50 degrees and I just found spider mites!!!!" Yes, even the spider mites are enjoying this lovely weather, or, at least they were before Joseph broke out the spray. It was a nice day for a funeral though.
There is a pretty good chance that if you look you will find spider mites somewhere in your rose garden also. With winter just around the corner and the cool nights they will not do much damage but I think the only good spider mite is the one who stays on weeds and away from my roses. Another important fact that we here at Roses inc . must consider is the possibility of any destructive agent getting into the green houses where they would flourish in the warmth.
For those of you who missed the Day in the Life of a Rose Seminar, you missed a fun afternoon of learning and roses. As always we had a real fun time and talked roses for more than 4 hours. We hope that you can attend next year.
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Fall Colors
This time of year I always receive calls from Rosarians asking me what is wrong with their rose bushes because the leaves are turning red and yellow but there doesn't seem to be any black spots on them. Take heart, there is nothing to worry about. You see rose are one of the many plants that are deciduous. A big word which means they loses their leaves during the winter months. Roses like most of our native trees not only do the leaf dropping routine but they also turn those beautiful fall colors before they do.
I know you have noticed that some trees are more colorful than others and the same holds true with the roses. Many of the rose bushes stay green until they loose their leaves in the winter but others like the family of Rugosas show off their fall colors plus some really pretty, large, hips that range in color from pink to orange to deep red. Rugosas are large bushes that work really well as a focal point in you landscape and are not really suited for mass planting with other roses. They are very sturdy bushes that thrive almost everywhere. They root deep so the summer heat and lack of rain does not bother them and they hate to be sprayed and will show you their disdain by dropping their leaves after being sprayed with certain chemicals that the other roses tolerate with no problem. Of course the best way to deal with that is not to spray them which they deal with well because they are very resistant to disease when they are allowed to get good airflow and a lot of sun. And did I mention that they bloom prolifically throughout the growing season with medium blooms of red, lavender, white, pink, and yellow depending on the particular variety you plant.. So if you have an area in your landscape where the sun is plentiful and there is room to breath a Rugosa may be right for you.
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Preparing for Winter
It will not be long before we will see cold temperatures low enough to push our roses into dormancy. Hopefully you headed my earlier advice and quit cutting your roses the first of September so they have been able to start setting hips and are preparing themselves for the winter to come. If that is the case all you will need to do is make sure that there is 4 to 6 inches of pine bark mulch on your rose beds and wait for the real cold to come. If you failed to stop cutting in time or at all your roses will be subject to some dieback this winter no matter what you do. Mulch and wraps do not stop the rose bushes from freezing, they just stop the temperatures from moving up and down so rapidly, which is harmful for the bushes. I know some Rosarians that go to great lengths to protect their roses from the winter cold. They have a lot of really neat (and labor intensive) ways to protect the roses from winter. Some of these folks have roses bred for showing and in some cases budded to root stock that is not known to withstand the winter this far North. They have also continued to cut their roses to show them right up to this last week end. I can not advise those Rosarians what they should or should not do so I would say that if it is working for you, keep it up. For the rest of us there is little we need do. The roses will be just fine without wrapping with insulating leaves in cages, newspapers, tar paper or buried in mulch. In fact, if you have let your bushes go dormant at their own pace you will have little or no winter kill leaving them naked to the elements.
I am asked very often this time of year when roses should be pruned. That is a chore best saved for spring. If you prune them at all now and we have warm days they will be spurred to growth and that new growth will be killed the first time the thermometer drops to 20 degrees. Even those rose bushes that are very tall should not be topped at this time. Wait for them to go dormant. At that time you may top them by 1/3. It has been practice to do this topping to stop the winter wind from rocking the bushes root system loose in the frozen ground. For the last several years the ground beneath the mulch has not frozen more than 1/4 inch deep so topping wasn't at all necessary. I like to leave as much of the rose bush as I can. The top of the bush serves to protect the crown or bud union from the miseries of winter and I believe the roses will do better if the are left with as much foliage as possible.
Another question I get frequently this time of year is: When do I stop spraying? Once again you should continue your spray cycle until the roses go dormant and lose their leaves. Healthy roses will winter better and be in much better shape for the coming spring.
No kind of fertilizer is good for the roses this time of year. So set back, relax, and enjoy the coming weeks and the blooms and fragrance your roses have to offer this time of year secure in the fact that your roses are ready for the winter to come..
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Orphans need a home!
We still have 6 shelves of orphan rose bushes that need a good home. The adoption fee is $5.00 to $6.00 depending on the size of the bush. There is still plenty of time to plant this season. So, won't you give an orphan a home?
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Below is a photo of a long stem Hybrid Tea rose called Eternal Flame that Joseph grew in his garden. The photo is of the top 9' of an 11' cane. The cane was only one of several that were very tall. The stem at the base is at least 1/2 inch in diameter and all stand up to wind. He grew it and all of his roses with Roses inc. Special Rose Food.  |
 
From left to right-Bright Melody, Winter Sunset, Prairie Sunset and my favorite Allamand- Ho. Griffith Buck Roses
Chances are that if you have talked roses with me lately you have heard me sing the praises of "Buck" roses. Above are just four of the more than eighty varieties that are identified and still available for purchase. I say identified because the Buck roses were all but lost in the last 30 years. You see, like many visionaries Dr. Buck was ahead of his time in what he did. While others were out trying to produce that prefect show rose with almost no attention being given to fragrance, disease resistance or hardiness, Dr. Buck was breeding for just those traits. During Dr. Buck's life he produced a large number of really wonderful roses so you may ask why you may not have heard of them and why now are they becoming popular?
During Dr. Bucks life he was very free with his creations in the truest since of the word. He tended to give his new creations to rose growers all across the country, sharing his creations with those who loved roses. Though giving roses away was not the way to make himself rich it did serve a purpose that was not to be realized during his lifetime.
Several years ago some folks in Texas had an idea. If they could find roses growing and thriving at locations such as old home places, cemeteries and abandon Home sites they should be good roses for the garden. So they named themselves the Texas Rose Rustlers and set out to find those roses that were thriving with little if any care. What does this have to do with Dr. Buck? Well it seems that some of the roses they found were not known to them so they were named after the area or the person where they were found. One of the most popular of the group was a rose which they named Katy Road Pink. It was a beautiful pink rose with abundant blooms and little signs of disease. As it turned out that rose was a rose developed by Dr. Griffith Buck that he had named Carefree Beauty. That find and others directed attention toward Dr. Bucks roses for their hardiness and disease resistance. We are growing all 84 of Dr. Bucks roses here at Roses inc. A carefree beauty can be found next to the drive way in a half whiskey barrel with another in the rose garden with others still in commerce. The 4 above are just a few of my favorites. My photography skills leave a lot to be desired but I think you can see the wonderful variety of colors in these photos. All of our Buck roses are in bloom now and you are welcome to come stroll the garden and enjoy both the beauty and fragrance of what is sure to be a very popular rose for your garden.
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