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Hello,everyone! I took photos of the sickly bare-root roses but the light was so bright that they are hard to see; I'll try again today. They have horrible stem canker, it seems. I am afraid to un-mound, since temperatures are supposed to remain about zero,but today I plan to change the mounding soil with dry peat moss and remove the dead canes ( in the case of Perennial Blue, that's all but one). Is there any hope for little bare-root roses to survive even with bad canker;i.e.,bounce back enough in spring to grow sufficiently that one can then cut off the sick canes? I will try to post a few pictures in the gallery, but have to get out to the garden to do this change of mounding stuff... regards from a worried bart
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Hi There,
It depends on far down the canker is. If it is into the bud union than probably not. Your plant of cutting off dead canes and remounding sounds good. Perhaps mound with something that does not stay "soggy"? Perhaps the roses are rotting from too much moisture?
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Yep, in 0°c you shouldn't really need to do anything to your roses, they will only need protecting under -10°C - perhaps your mounding material is too soggy/moist? We would say prune hard back and get rid of the canker, then just let the roses get on with it.
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Thanks for your answers. This doesn't look promising, I must say. I should have done this way sooner;now it may be too late. (I'm having health problems myself, that is part of the problem). Now the forecast is for snow,maybe all week,and then temperatures dipping down to -10 degrees at 400meters above sea level. My garden is at about 640 meters a.s.l. What's more,in order to get there I have to drive for about 35 minutes, on a north-facing mountain road that is not well maintained, so I don't dare un-mound them,not knowing if I will even be able to get out there to re-mound them if necessary! So it looks like I'll have to wait at least a week to do the pruning(though I DID change the mounding material).
So all I can do at present is hope for the best.
When I CAN finally prune them,what is the minimum length one must leave the canes? PB says to cut to 6inches; Barni says 10cm. But if I find the canker/dead wood goes further down, could I eventually cut them to,say, 5cm? bart
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Best time to prune I feel is when the forsythia begins to bloom. In the case of diseased canes cut to healthy even if it's to the bud union. If the canker is in the bud union they most likely won't live.
From a U.S. rose growers standpoint this is why I prefer own-root roses. No issues with bud unions and even if the rose dies to the ground generally it comes back.
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Yeah,own-root would be nice, but it doesn't seem like they are very easy to find here in Europe!
Here in Italy,waiting for the forsythia before pruning would be way far too late; here,one does it usually in January and early February,but it depends on how the season goes. That's why it's nice to have a sort of "recipe based on Nature" (i.e."when the forsythia bloom"),but it isn't valid here. I probably WOULD do the prune even now,but I had flu yesterday and the weather forecast is not encouraging. What's more now I see that the temperatures could go down to -13,so forget un-mounding!
Would a copper spray be a good idea once I finally CAN un-mound? bart
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Copper spray is an excellent idea eve now. Spray and remount back up when you are feeling better.
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Hello,everyone. I did the hard prune on my bare-root roses,and also the copper spray. But since I think Pete's advice is really good (these things need light and air, and the opportunity to grow),I decided to avoid re-mounding them. However, I don't dare leave them without protection, either (maybe Hannes can relate to my position,since I believe his garden is far from his home,as is mine).The fact is that it could still get very cold,and these poor things are stressed out enough. So I made little "greenhoues" around them, using various things as supports (wire "cages",etc.) and covered them up with clear plastic,making sure that air can get in,My plan is to take off the coverings every time I can get out there,and put them back on when I leave in the evening,to permit them to get light and air. It's a tedious prospect, but here I think I'm in the situation where I didn't do the proverbial "stitch in time", so now I have to do nine stitches... Of course I'm nervous that there may be something wrong with this plan,but maybe instead it will work.
I did contact the nursery and sent pictures and we will have to wait and see what happens in the spring,but I can't send or post pictures of the pruned plants, since the camera doesn't work.
Hopefully they will start to grow and then I can un-mound. Really, a lot of them look quite bad off;I wonder if they will ever be able to thrive. regards, a sad bart
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Hello Bart,
I definitely can relate to your situation regarding your garden. Much would be easier if we could just step outside and into our gardens ... On the other hand, I'm also happy to have a garden at all. 
It has been sensible to protect your newly planted roses. Covering them somehow is a good idea as you didn't want to re-mound. The important thing is to not only shelter against the cold but against the winds as well to protect the canes from drying out. Also a good idea that you didn't make your coverings airtight – I killed a camellia shrub that way a few years ago. That's why I'm not that confident in using plastic, prefer branches of pine or from other evergreens.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for you and your roses, judging by the photos you posted earlier some of them should survive. But it will be some more weeks until you'll really know. What have you heard from the nursery? Did they just request photos and told you to wait until spring?
warm greetings
Hannes
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Hi Bart,
Don't be too sad, it sounds like you have done the best you can under the canker situation. Give it a few weeks and see how it goes then
Regards
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Always keep in mind that roses can come back and bloom again from only one inch of cane. Even if you need to cut them right back when spring starts, there can still be hope for them.
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There is a saying here that if you run a lawn mower over an Iceburg it will grow back! Some roses are surprisingly resilient.
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Thank you, everyone, for your kind and encouraging words. Hannes, I agree with your uneasy feeling about using plastic,because of the air-circulation issue,but in this case I think they also need light. However I tried to improve the air "vents" even more after reading your post. And, as I said before, I do try to uncover them whenever I get a chance to go out there,and then re-cover them when I leave.
What do you all think is the best mounding material? Maybe I should start a new thread on this subject. I think it has been a sort of "disease-y" winter season. I've started pruning and am noting some disease in canes of established roses too. I think what did it was the intense cold and snow just before Christmas, followed by a long period of a lot of rain and milder temperatures.However, I am still not entirely convinced about the plants from that particular nursery...we will see in the spring. regards from bart
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Hello Bart,
... wasn't my intention to scare you with my remarks about plastic. I just wanted to emphasize the need for ventilation.
As for mounding material for newly planted roses, I just use top soil from another part of the garden (also soil from my many molehills!). I think any material that drains well and doesn't get too soggy is OK.
Last year I had a few newly planted roses that I had forgotten to mound so I put a thick layer of fallen oak leaves on top when it got colder. Usually I would have used branches from evergreens so I later felt quite uneasy about the leaves, thought the leaves might get too soggy but luckyily this didn't happen. Come to think of it, Camilla from Norway once said on the forum she uses hay for winter protecting her roses as this is the cheap and easily available material for her.
We have been talking about that on the other thread already, I'm absolutely with you about the roses from that particular German nursery. To me everything suggests that the plants already were somehow damaged when you got them.
greetings
Hannes
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Hi Bart - try horticultural fleece - it is light enough to let in air and light but lifts the temperature 3 degrees I think. Anyway, I am a fervant fan of it - my allotment looks like some wierd ghostly snowbound place but I drape it around like a demon. Keeps all sorts of stuff off my veggies, from blight to carrot fly and pidgeons protects from frosts (my peaches), costs hardly anything - what is not to like?
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Don't despair! It's amazing how resiliant roses are!
Some of my roses have been moved round the garden repeatedly & defied all odds,like moving at the wrong time, & come back better than ever!
I currently have 3 roses which I dug up last Autumn because they were looking really sick, not flowering for a couple of years, very few stems.
Put them into pots with fresh compost etc. & they are already showing healthy new growth.
Coralie
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Hello,everybody.Campanula,that horticultural fleece sounds interesting. Can you describe it for me? Is it just that synthetic fiber cloth sold for plant protection? Because remember, I'm here in Italy,I can't go to the store and ask for horticultural fleece!
I'm hoping for the best. Some of the plants seem to be coming back. Others seem to be goners.I don't want to pronounce definitively on any of them. There's no doubt that the ones from that one nursery are, as a group, the worst off. But the hard winter seems to have taken it's toll even on the others. I'm afraid for Emmanuela de Mouchy,Climbing Cecile Brunner,and especially Ornement des Bosquets and Nancy Hayward.All that remains of E de Mouchy is one maybe one-inch long piece of cane. Clbg. C.Brunner, too, had to be cut back to just tiny little stubs, but at least there are four of them! O.des Bosquets, too, had to be cut way back, and only has two very short stubs left;one is less than a quarter inch. Nancy Hayward may be dead;just one tiny stick about as long as your thumb,which doesn't look totally dead but not really alive, either (it's brown). But these are all hybrid giganteas,chinas, Noisettes;i.e. sensitive to cold,so it surprises one less. regards, bart
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