We've bought the house, we've moved in, and now the fun starts. I need to figure out what to do with the plants that are here before I think about what to add/remove/change, but I know from nothin' about roses, and that's what's here.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2001

Answers

First of all, who has a wonderful site that can help me try to identify what I have? I'm working on getting pictures somewhere, but that may take awhile. All I can tell at this point is that they're your standard stick-like roses, and at least two of them have red blooms.

FYI, I'm in the far western DC suburbs, and the plants in question get almost full sun for about 1/2 the day, with a west/southwest facing.

Of the eight roses I've found (heh), three are huge, gangly things that appear to be crying out for stakes or trellises. Three look like one or two sticks coming out of the ground, though all of those have leaves and one has produced nice blooms. Two more look what I would call "normal" - not falling down with weight, but not just sticks.

The problem is that the previous owners moved out of the area before doing any cutback on them, as near as I can tell, so they missed out on all of the springtime pruning and maintenance they should have had. What can I do now to compensate for that, short of staking them, killing the bugs and waiting for next year?

Problems I know of:

- Beetles. Ick. Treatment is underway, though I suspect too late for at least one.

- Brown spots on two or three. Fungus? Something else? How can I tell? It hasn't been very wet - occasional thunderstorms, but they're draining well. The soil appears to be rich, brown, and moist - not too wet, I think.

Since *all* I was left with were one lovely magnolia, one (alleged) pink cherry tree, these roses and some really sick-looking (scraggly, trimmer-burned) hedges, most of this summer will be in watching the weeds - er, grass - grow and planning for next year. So I suppose I'll try to fix the roses as best I can, even though I'm not a big rose fan. :)

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2001

I would suggest the rose forum at GardenWeb:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/roses/

I think that's right. They know everything.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2001

Roses are easy: feed them regularly, water them *a lot*, deadhead the rebloomers down to the first five-part leaf, and then cut them back without mercy (unless they are climbers or shrubs or you live in a hot place) before winter sets in.

The other rose rule I follow is: if it gets sick a lot, shovel prune it and replace it with a healthier one. There are so many great roses out there that there is no sense in putting up with one that is always fainting and sighing. Unless you can't live without it, of course.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

For this year, I would probably find out when the proper time for pruning roses is in your area (in mine, it's roughly Martin Luther King Day, but it varies by climate), and wait until then to prune them. You won't hurt them any if you prune them now, but it won't hurt to wait, either. Also find out when people in your area do their first spring fertilization. Try calling the local rose society.

You're in D.C., right? I can't remember. If so, you'll have fungus problems that folks here in California can't help you with -- again, the local rose society is a good resource. We also don't have Japanese beetles, but I know there is a milky spore product that is supposed to be a good defense against them.

Now tell us about your house!

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

I'm going to name my first child "milky spore product."

Also, is it possible to grow roses in a bucket? I'm serious. Well, maybe a realy big pot. I'd love to have a rose bush on my fire escape, but I'm not sure how much room they need to grow.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

On second thought, maybe a "really" big pot would be better than those inferior "realy" big ones.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Jen, roses in pots work fine... I've even got a big climber (Sunny June) in a pot. Roses with compact habit will work better though unless you want to have to deal with spiky rose canes flailing about when you are trying to escape from those pesky fires.

But does your fire escape get enough sun? I can't remember exactly but I think they need 4+ hours a day of sunshine to bloom well. Although there are roses that need less.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Well, we've developed a fire escape plan that involves kicking over big pots of oregano and trampling buckets of tomato plants, so I guess it should be a problem, working in a way to avoid inferno even with spiky rose canes in our way.

The 'scape is very sunny, though, through most of the day. It's drying the hell out of my geraniums, and the basil can get wilty on really bright days. I'm guessing it's more than four hours.

Thanks, viv. (Next you'll need to give me taking-flower-pictures tips.)

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Only if you promise to give me pointers on how to continue to sparkle pinkly through the haze and smoke of global inferno. We can look to you for that, now that you've read up on it, right?

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Yes! I'm an Expert, and am writing a book. It shall be entitled "How to be Fabulous, When Everything's Fucked." And I will mail you many autographed copies with which to impress friends and loved ones. Or to stop up holes in your underground bunker.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Actually, I have roses now too (inspired by Xeney's diary), and I grow them in a window box. They're miniatures - one pot of white ones from the supermarket that are kind of mum-ish in the flower conformation (no, they're roses, not mums, but their petals are in descending size and very thick and the whole rose goes almost globular when it's open all the way, like a mum) of which five plants survived, and a lavender one from Down East that has what I think of as more 'rose-shaped' roses.

I was so terrified I'd killed the white ones, when I first got them. I unpotted them right away (because I've never gotten a supermarket plant that wasn't horribly rootbound), and teased them apart as best I could. There were seven plants. I had to rip a lot of roots to get them separate; two were intertwined enough that I just loosened them a little and left them together until they've grown a bit. I planted them in a line in the windowbox, in fresh potting soil (with fertilizer included) mixed with peat for drainage/water capacity. And then they started dying.

It was quite disheartening, the way the leaves turned brown and curled up and fell off. I started pruning off the dead sticks, because I've heard roses like to be pruned firmly (Hurt me, mistress! Prune harder!), but the poor plants were getting smaller and smaller. Finally they paused in their decline, and I quietly hoped and kept watering them. I keep them in a west-facing window, right on the sill, indoors. There's no ledge big enough to put them outdoors easily. We could build a little box outside the window they're currently inside, but I saw no real reason, because:

They started growing like gangbusters. All but the runt (one of the two tied-together roses - I really thought it was going to die like two others did. It shrank back to a stick about three inches long and two scraggly leaves of a five-leaf cluster, and then started coming back) put out cluster after cluster of baby leaves, tightly curled and then spreading. The lavender one came, and I planted it in with the others (in the space a casualty was in. It started putting out leaves too. Now all the white ones are about twice the size of the lavender - almost leggy in spots. One of them is almost as long as my forearm. Quite heartening when I'd been convinced they were all going to die.

The white ones are blooming more prolifically, too. Perhaps the lavender wants more feeding. Perhaps the white ones are just rejoicing at being away from the awful supermarket-supplying nursery, while the lavender's pining for its friends and gourmet fertilizers. :-> Either way, I'm getting lots of rosepetals in the ziploc in the freezer; I'm saving them to make rosewater with.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2001