It's summer, all month! Gardeners in every zone should have roses in bloom now. Let's see those pictures!

The thumbnail photo for this month is Summer Song, a beautiful David Austin rose that seemed to come and go in an instant. It was available for only a few years before being ignored and forgotten by the powers that be at Austin headquarters.



I love July here because the hot weather eliminates some of my garden's problems. The heat of the last several weeks has produced a new flush of blooms and lots of new growth. The foliage previously marred by black spot has been replaced by beautiful spotless leaves. The saw flies have finished their dirty work and the curculio weevils are gone until next spring. The July flush of blooms might not be as magnificent as the one in May, but those blooms were best appreciated from a distance, far enough away not to see the damaged leaves. Now everything looks better up close.

I love that color!! And shame they decided to let this one lapse. I would have bought it in a heartbeat.

A beautiful and very appropriate rose to start July; unique colour and wonderful scent. Strange that it's no longer available in the US because it's still going strong here.

I agree, a very unique colour - I hope our summer turns out to be as bright as that bloom
There also seem to be quite a few nurseries here in Switzerland and Germany that carry it as well.

zuzu said:I love July here because the hot weather eliminates some of my garden's problems. The heat of the last several weeks has produced a new flush of blooms and lots of new growth. The foliage previously marred by black spot has been replaced by beautiful spotless leaves. The saw flies have finished their dirty work and the curculio weevils are gone until next spring. The July flush of blooms might not be as magnificent as the one in May, but those blooms were best appreciated from a distance, far enough away not to see the damaged leaves. Now everything looks better up close.

Zuzu ....

My heat is, shall we say more intense than yours, but you are correct, the bugs and disease are gone. The roses have gotten most of their new foliage back and I am getting a lot of bloom because I did dis-bud all of my roses and they are really pushing enough blooms that it is almost like having a second first flush.

Yesterday it was 107F / 41.6C and few of the roses had crispy blooms and none were weeping due to high transpiration rates. I only water deeply once a week with what I call a feeder root watering about three or four days later. Of course, I've selected roses that can handle the heat and have prepared them for the heat. They are also, for the most part, mature plants with good root systems. Drip irrigation doesn't work in glacier slurry ... ... so over time, I've developed a watering method that seems to work in this soil for the roses.

It's too hot to take photos because I need the cool hours, which are few, to be doing garden work, but, I, too, love July.

btw ... the blooms on 'Queen Elizabeth' look as fresh as they did a couple of days ago when I took those photos, so I can recommend that rose for a hot climate ...

Wow Lyn - too hot for me! Can completely understand that you take advantage of the cooler hours for gardening! Our temperatures are back to around 25C so not only am I happy but the roses too.
Here a small selection of some blooms from last week
Mainzer Fastnacht (aka Blue Moon) - Chandos Beauty - Compassion

Blauwe Stad - Alexandrine - Papagena (aka Oranges 'n' Lemons)


It actually rained all of today so we only hit the 20C mark. In between showers, I took this picture of a florist rose that I grafted from a bouquet last year. I think it is even prettier than the original (on the right)

cliftoncat said:A beautiful and very appropriate rose to start July; unique colour and wonderful scent. Strange that it's no longer available in the US because it's still going strong here.

Summer Song never was available in the United States, Mika. It was one of the Austin roses regarded as unsuitable for the United States because it couldn't take prolonged periods of hot weather and was never sold here as a result. I bought one from Palatine in Canada and another from Hortico, also in Canada.

But yours seem to be very happy... ? Of course that could be down to your excellent care and expertise. I haven't tried SS in France.

Calif_Sue is also growing two Summer Songs successfully. I think our climate here in Sebastopol is quite different from most other locations. Our heat waves never last that long, and our nights are always cool, sometimes 40 or 50 degrees cooler than our daytime temperatures. Whatever the reason, our area seems to be perfect for Austin roses. They get some black spot at the tail-end of our rainy season, but I've never seen rust or powdery mildew on an Austin rose here.

Hello everyone. So a co-worker was telling me about these roses called "dragon roses" i found some pictures on Google. Are these actual roses and where can i get them if they are.

Dave ... it's a scam. The only roses that grow true from seed are species roses ... think 5 petals for the bloom form.

I figured it was a scam. Especially when i saw the blue one. That is almost near to impossible of a blue for a flower, let alone a rose.

Dave ... not only that, there are no true blue roses because roses do not have the gene for the color blue in the rose gene pool. They have been trying to genetically modify roses for blue since the 1980s, but the roses just haven't gone along with the program ...

Save your money on the scam dragon seeds, but keep your eyes open at the grocery store or anywhere that sells mini roses if you like little striped ones. I got a red/white striped mini that grows well in the garden, surviving zone 6 winters. They don't name individual cultivars, but you get 3-5 in a pot for a couple dollars. There is a thread about minis.

Queen Elizabeth does well here as well. She is a versatile lady.

These are the first blooms ever on my climbing Don Juan rose. Not remarkable blooms, but special. I have been wanting to grow that rose since I saw it in RosesAreRed's beautiful garden.

Summer Song is a unique color for certain, I have two side by side because it does tend to grow upright and a bit gangly for me unless I cut it by half mid season.
(I like the name so much that I named by little Etsy business after it, Summer Song Cottage)

The full plant shot was taken before the second one to the left filled in.

A few shots taken with my cell phone this morning.

Royal Sunset


Heaven on Earth


Morning dew on Distant Drums


Innocence


A couple of fancy petunias

Lovely roses and very, very fancy petunias - I have never seen anything like that on offer in the nurseries over here!!

The first one is


The second one is Petunia 'Cha-Ching Cherry'
This one was taken in the sun last year.


If they don't return after winter, I buy them again each spring.

Sue ...

If the color on my monitor is correct ... per the photography forum .. ... that is one of the few orange roses I think I would like to grow, but I doubt if it would stand up to my high summer temps ...

If you were to look at my garden this year, it the overall look seems to be roses and weeds. I've been transplanting the roses I want to keep into just a couple of beds and giving away others as I am changing the garden to be more of a xeriscape type of garden that is more suited to this climate and soil. By clustering the roses into just a few beds because they have different water needs, it means I can't grow as many roses as I have in the past.

It's been hard to decide which ones to keep because the roses are looking so good this year.

I took a few photos the other morning when I was trying to figure out why I couldn't get good photos in morning light and was going to try again this morning, but realized I should be spraying down the roses instead because this is spider mite weather ...

I'll try and add other photos later. For now, this is part of the fence bed in front of the slope:

Whew! Playing catch-up here, so many pictures!
I still have not downloaded my photos from my treck to Sangarhausen or any other garden, for that matter. I took so many photos that I jammed up my phone. Did you know that apps stop working when you fill the card with photos? Apps like the gps... important things.
When I finally got back from Germany, I was too tired to even look at the garden. Turned out, I had pneumonia. The garden was untended for 3 weeks, but luckily we had rain about every 4th day. The weeds grew like crazy! I'm back with the living now, mostly, and trying to get caught up. This weekend, when the weather finally cooled off enough that I could work outside, my husband decided we needed to go away to the lake, so the weeds got another reprieve. We came home only when a storm came up, and boy what a storm! We got over 11" rain in 24 hours. I emptied the rain gauge twice, and the second time it was overflowing so who knows how much rain we really got. A friend said she had 16". Guess I need a bigger rain gauge! I now have weed trees that are 3 feet tall!
The daylilies are stealing the show now. The clumps are just huge, so there's another task on my to-do list. Since most of my hybrid tea roses dropped their leaves, should I prune them back hard? It's very humid now, which is unusual for us. It's too hot for most diseases, so should I also take the time to feed with milorganite or alfalfa? I'm expecting fast growth with all the rain, and I don't want to miss a window for feeding if there is one.
I will eventually get some pictures posted, I promise. It is just taking me forever to get caught up on work, and all the stuff that didn't get done while I was gone and while I was sick. I am so so lucky we had rain. When I was checking on the plants this morning, I found a small tree that was almost covered in brush that had washed in with the flood water. Then I found a small fish there too! Mother nature was adding compost, mulch and fish emulsion for me, what a deal!