Roses…..

This is a Madame Alfred Carriere rose that has climbed up the side of the second story and is coming into the bedroom.  Beautiful rose but you can get hurt just rolling around in the bed.

A beautiful rose, but very invasive.

We will spend Father’s Day cutting back this climber.  I don’t care if it is the wrong time to prune…..you can get hurt just stretching in bed!

We did….cut it back to 4 main canes….no greenery on it at all, but did get some blossoms for the house.  Will clean up tomorrow and try to bend these main canes laterally…so the bud unions can form and we can get new growth.  The Cecille Brunner was  cut back severely this early spring and it is again blooming.  That bush almost tore the chimney down.  It looks cruel to prune so severely, but you do get new blossoms and canes.  The problem is the growth is so fast on these climbers you have to have ladders and someone brave enough to climb and clip…and duck.

I will miss waking up to a face full of blossoms, but it will always try again.  Nature Rules.

This is the new Rose Garden.  We had about 20 plants in containers for a year and then put them in the ground.  Then we dug more holes in this Georgia Clay and scant top soil, and put in 15 more a few weeks ago.  They were mostly English roses, David Austin varieties, which have very weak stems….Lady of Shallots, and  others I can’t remember names…and a lot of Knock Out roses that I wouldn’t do again because they really are invasive.  I have to clip, prune them every 5 weeks or so or sooner.  Can’t get down the garden path to that arbor if I don’t.  A few roses came from Walmart, just because they looked promising, and they lived up to the promise.  O.L. Weeks, and Mister Lincoln we planted in containers on stands in the middle of each side of the rose garden, because the Knock Outs just were BIG and swamped these two.  One from Home Depot was “Coretta Scott King”….a white rose tipped with a dark pink.  Lovely. The Lady of Shallots are a beautiful peach/yellow, but have to be staked where they are planted because they are so wimpy stemmed.  There is a really silly rose….a red variegated with white that has only 5 or 6 petals but is so pretty.  I used to be a real snob about where I bought my roses, mostly English and German and a few French roses, online, but now I go for the easier ones to grow and fill up a new rose garden.  These Knock Outs are disease free, constant bloomers and can be pruned into civilized shapes.  The arbor is covered by two “New Dawn” roses…about 15 years there, and they just had no structure beneath them….until we squeezed an iron seated arbor two years ago on Mother’s Day.  Perfect fit with some weaving of canes over it and it has taken off.  Those New Dawns are the mass of pink/white roses over the arbor.  They smell like Ivory soap.

There are two peach roses in planters from Walmart and they are just beautiful and remarkable bloomers.  I didn’t think they would do so well, but they really are impressive.  And cost next to nothing.  Tight budded and incredible fragrance.

My beautiful picture

“Lady Banks” that died when we cut it down and tried to transplant it to the side.  We planted another, but not in that place.  It ate up the corner of the house!

My husband holding a blossom of Lady of Shallot.  Too weak stemmed.  English teas can be that way.  English climbers are much better.

 

Lady Nyo

Rose Garden in the Spring…..

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We’ve been working on this rose garden for two years and finally it’s taking flight.  The New Dawn roses are old, probably 15 years old, and lucky for us, they were far apart enough to set the seated arbor last year.  Most of the roses are varieties:  David Austin Roses, others I can’t remember having been transplanted from different parts of the property, and these patio roses that will take over the landscape and certainly a contained rose garden.

Though the patio roses don’t have much scent, the English roses do, and species like Graham Thomas and Madame Carriere on the side of the house and now 15 feet high, are highly scented.

Trying to grow grass between plants, but so far the only thing I have been able to grow under the roses is catnip.  I mixed blueberry (in pots ) with the border roses because they both seem to like each other.

Of course, this being Georgia, we have to contend with red clay, but ta-da!  Roses like clay…a mixture of good soil and clay.  The clay feeds into minerals the roses need.  I throw in coffee grounds and chicken manure from my 8 chickens …I don’t care if it is ‘hot’ .  After a few days it’s not.  Chicken manure and feathers are some of the very best rose food, and if you look at the ingredients of the most expensive rose food, like Osmocote… you will see this in the first few ingredients.

I need to find bee balm to plant within the spaces of the roses….it will help with pollination and hopefully will transfer to the veggie garden.  Last year, Fred bought one of those ‘get rid of your mosquitoes sprays….and overnight…there were hundreds of dead honey bees out there…around the flowering catnip plants.  I sat on the steps and cried.  This will never happen here again.  Catnip really brought the honey bees around…a precious and endangered pollinator.  I am trying to do everything I can to promote the pollinators.  Planted what I thought was butterfly bushes (stupid Home Depot) and I have yet to see any blooms.  I want to put a bee skept in the garden just to see if I can provide a home for bees.  But I don’t want to get stung. Nor do the cats…..

Lady Nyo

Fred’s hand around a Lady of Shallot…very sweet scented.

My beautiful picture

Blurred closeup of the New Dawn Roses…..they smell like Ivory Soap!

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Haven’t a clue why some of my pix are coming out on their sides…but this is a blueberry (potted) bush laden with blueberries, not ripe yet, but soon.  Rabbit’s Eye I think.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, April 29, 2017