This year's rose season is almost over for many of us and we're already ordering roses for next year.

The thumbnail photo is Tan Cho, a Suzuki hybrid tea.

what I'm worrying about is this winter. The trees here are so badly sunscorched .. the heat, the extreme UV (we had over... what, 40? days of UV in the "intense" range, which means that humans can get a sunburn in 15 minutes or less), and the drought. Some trees are suffering worse than others.. mainly aspens and crabapples. Young trees were burned badly, too. One of my trees, a Thunderchild Purple Plum, I'm worried wont' make it through the winter. Didn't matter how much I watered it, it still got pretty scorched. And if we have a cold cold winter, many trees just won't have the strength to pull through. Saw buzzards flying south today, so I guess that it's official. Been seeing geese heading south now for over a month, a couple of burning bushes are turning red already.

*sigh*

Just have to plug along & hope for the best.

My burning bushes are toasted, totally brown. We were at 104 yesterday, expecting 105 today. Will this wretched summer ever end?
We're hoping for a cold winter here. Last winter was so warm that the trees couldn't rest, and that made it worse this summer. The buzzards are circling here, because they are feasting on all the dying fish in the ponds that are drying up. Starving deer wandering into neighborhoods are more and more of a problem. They can't find water either.
The only real tourism our state has is out of state hunters, and this year, we won't get that. Cattle, corn and airplanes were all a bust this year. only thing that brought in good money was wheat.
What amazes me most are the plants that ARE doing well. I have some apple trees that are having their best year, full of apples and green leaves. A Japanese maple that had lost all its leaves put out all new leaves after our little 1.5" rain last week. The only roses I lost were the ones from Edmunds that never broke dormancy.
And 1 or 2 from Palatine...need to email them about that.
The paper today had a correction. This wasn't our hottest year ever, just our driest.

zuzu, that Tan Cho is absolutely beautiful! Where did you order it from?

Hi, Marti. That rose came from K&M. It's a wonderful nursery that carries a lot of roses no one else has, but everything's grafted onto Fortuniana rootstock, which wouldn't be suitable in your climate.

http://www.kandmroses.com/inde...

Zuzu - already perused their catalog.. they don't have it. Why wouldn't fortuniana work?

Fortuniana is the rootstock of choice in Florida, but it also performs well in the southern states and in California. It's only used in zones 7-11.

rats. So only the warmer temps can have this? *sigh* Oh well, still have Palatine... must be good for only warm & moister climates.

In that case why is everything around here grafted onto Dr Huey?

Because Dr. Huey has always been the rootstock of choice in California and the grafted roses available in most states probably come from growing fields in California.

For a long time, Fortuniana was treated as a rootstock exclusively for Florida roses. J&P even had a division producing its roses on Fortuniana rootstock in Florida. It was called MerryGro Farms. They had a huge sale when they were going out of business about 5 years ago, and it was the first time many of us ever grew roses on Fortuniana rootstock. Some of the biggest roses in my garden today came from that sale. People in the northern states didn't do so well, however. The roses failed miserably in the colder zones.

PPal - Probably Dr. Huey's like a weed & incredibly strong.. strong enough, in fact, to take over most grafts. I'm gonna have to yank out 3-4 more Sterling Silvers/Stainless Steels that reverted back to Dr. Huey.

The more likely reason, Toni, is that your Sterling Silvers and Stainless Steels are only hardy to zone 7, whereas Dr. Huey will survive the winter in zone 6. They died and Huey survived.

Zuzu - No, actually, I have a double blooming rose. The blue roses bloom all season & the Dr. Hueys send out this MASSIVELY long canes that bloom for like a week & then that's it. Kinda like a 4-in-1 apple tree. I don't have any with actual decent blooms on them right now otherwise I'd show you pictures. But you can tell the difference w/the Dr. Huey versus the blue rose.. the Dr. Huey's have teeny light-colored leaves & the blue roses have the bigger, darker green leaves. I can take pictures of that to show you.

I believe you, but if you leave the Dr. Huey suckers on the rose, Huey will take over and your other rose will disappear. Pull the suckers off the rose. Don't prune them. That will only stimulate more growth.

I was going to wait until next spring as it's too late this year to dig down as deep as the bud union is. I wasn't sure on the trimming.. thanks for letting me know that would have been a BAD idea. I've got any number of Dr. Huey suckers all over the place & I just trim them, but they still keep coming back. And I knew better than to use any kind of RoundUp or anything like that.. that would have killed the entire plant. Grrr!!

Dr Huey is sort of becoming a weed around here...

I would start a parade, but I doubt I'll have many blooms this month. I think my roses have just about had it for the year. So I'll just stick my Red Intuition (2012, Palatine) here. I had just watered the night previous (planted some salvias), so the bloom was a bit droopy from the water.



9news was having an article warning people to keep watering their trees otherwise they won't make it through the winter. I need to fertilize all mine w/some Age Old.

This morning, couldn't see the mountains at ALL. Not even a little bit. The smoke from the fires in SD & NE are blowing west (?) and making the air quality here HORRIBLE. But it's a lot better than being IN the fires! Those poor people...

My garden has been quite different from the norm this year. For one thing, we've had no triple-digit temperatures at all. The result is that the water bill I received yesterday is for only $318 instead of the $423 owed on the bill I received last year at this time. That's an appreciable savings.

I've also noticed that there have been hardly any flies or mosquitoes this year in my garden, and the spiders this year are quite small. Most years I have to dodge huge spiders in huge webs at this time of year, but the webs and the spiders this year are small, probably because the spiders didn't get to eat enough flies.

The day I came out to San Diego they had 100 degree temps. I can't seem to escape the heat!! Actually, though, the weather is perfect now. The Tri-Rock Triathlon was today and the harbor water was 74 degrees, about the same as the air. Very comfortable.
The roses out here are in full flush. Hopefully, I'll have some good photos to post soon. The rose tour I flew out here to see was cancelled because they didn't meet their quota of tourists. My local club is planning a trip to Tyler and Shreveport in October and it is in danger of cancellation also. i need to rent a billboard saying "get on the bus!!" I guess. Don't people know what they are missing? There's full buses headed down to the casinos every day, with people happy to drop $$$$. They all need some fresh air and colorful roses, I think.

Cindi - That's because of the illusion of winning lots of money versus just looking at flowers. I see it every weekend myself w/people going up to the casinos in the mountains (Cripple Creek / Black Hawk / Central City) versus going to Estes Park & the Rocky Mountain National Park. I don't get it.

Zuzu - I agree w/the lack of skeeters. This year was the least I've ever been bit in my entire life. I think I got only about 10-15 bites. I normally get that a night. But we've had only like 2.21 inches of precipitation when we've should have had around 9" by this time. But Wed & Thurs we are on the track for getting rain. It looks like today's the last day of 90+ deg temps.. we're *finally* going to permanently cool down hopefully for the year. In fact, next week, our lows are supposed to be down in the 30s! Finally! I was *so* sure we were gonna see snow by the middle of the month... *maybe* some mushy stuff on the 18th, but nothing too extravagant.