More great tips from Paul Zimmerman
http://www.finegardening.com/i...

I love his articles and videos, and I really love it when an expert agrees with me on the benefits of overhead watering.

Thanks for the article.

None of my roses bloomed this summer - not after a few dribs and drabs in June, but since I've never had roses bloom in the summer I ignored it. None of my roses grew much in the summer, but it wasn't until late August that I really got a clue.

One clue was that Rosarium Utersen lost all its leaves mid summer. I would have dug it up if I'd had a replacement to put there. But I didn't. I started doubling water rations at the start of the fourth week in August. A month later most of my roses are putting out new growth. And after two or three months without leaves RU has pea-sized dark green leaves the length of the cane.

I've never known roses to get quite that dormant in hot weather, but it seems like a remarkably useful trait for roses growing where spring and fall are long and pleasant, but summer is almost intolerably hot and dry. It improved my already high opinion of Rosarium Utersen.

Steve - you too? I noticed that in the east side of my back yard, nothing really bloomed except in my pond area, which I was watering heavily due to new plants being put in constantly. I always thought that roses liked hot & dry (well, not dry, but not wet). Makes a lot of sense considering my front yard has been so-so with blossoms due to watering and the extremely thick mulch (1' thick in some places) keeping it moist but the back, it's like a dustbowl for an inch, then solid as a rock.

I really need to watch these videos, but can't at work and never remember when I'm at home.

That's right Steve, the roses are going to start going crazy here over the next few weeks. Loads of roses for the table for Christmas dinner, here, not sure about Prescott. It's a little chillier than here.

Alan

Fall growing season will probably be a narrow window here. We'll likely have hard frost in mid to late October. Some roses will remain green through the winter - wichurana minis and climbers, for example. I don't really expect blossoms after mid-October, though. I think it was unseasonably warm here for the monsoon season. It meant we had a good amount of rain, but it was about eight or ten degrees warmer than usual for much of August.

The 90F heat finally broke. And I see new growth on virtually all my roses for the first time since May. Some are really going to town. I'm hoping that the ones from ARE that I put in the ground today will grow leaves and that the leaves will be on the plants long enough to earn their keep.

I keep meaning to mulch but it hasn't happened yet.

Wanted to bump this forward since so many are experiencing some extreme temps.

Amazingly, my roses are blooming. The plants look awful, with much smaller than normal leaves and stems. i think we've been at 100 or more for the past month. i have to water mine a bit because there are other plants in the same beds, and they are not as tough as the roses. We usually do have a good flush in September once it starts to cool off a bit.

Inspite of the drought, I have watered my roses very little this summer. Quite a few of them are growing in places that are nearly impossible to water. Yet they are doing remarkably well and continue to bloom - although the flowers are rather undersized in many cases. My white Lady Banks which has never been watered and was partially sprayed with herbicide by the county, is having a small repeat bloom! To be my rose you need to be tough.

I'm still getting blooms, but everything's always fried to a crisp by the end of the day :(. I can't wait for this heatwave to be over.. I haven't lost any bigger roses, but some of the tender growth on some of the little ones are dying. I think I heard one of my cactus' screaming from the heat yesterday...

Thanks for bumping this one up again
the article sure helped!
I have always gotten after hubby for just turning on the sprinkler in the rose garden
I was always told watering from the top was not a good thing, but in this heat I figured any water they got was helpful.

I read recently that photosynthesis slows as temperatures exceed 85F. I have always noticed that roses seem to rest through the heat of the summer, then resume growth when the hot weather breaks. In places where humidity is not terribly high, overhead watering will tend to cool the leaves of plants in the heat of the day and this will encourage growth.

The problem comes in places where the humidity is high. One consequence is that evaporative cooling doesn't work. Another is that the moisture can really spur fungal growth. So overhead watering can be an excellent tool for a lot of people in hot, dry places - especially if it gets cool at night. Maybe not so much in places with warm nights and high humidity.

I suppose every garden is a little different, and one just has to try out ideas and see how they work.

I noticed that my roses are putting out massive growth right now considering I've been watering every day (can't depend on rain.. the weather people give us a 60% chance and not a drop, they give us a 10% chance & we get an inch..). Even the new roses I got from Cliff are starting to put out leaves.. and they've been in the ground less than a week! And I get funny looks when I'm watering in the middle of the day... watering like that would kill grass in no time flat, but I'm not watering grass, I'm watering my purdies!

Mine are starting to grow quickly, too.

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I recently had five roses do something peculiar. We're doing some building here and in March I moved most of the roses I thought would amount to anything from an area that I thought would get worked over by a back hoe. I abandoned a number of roses in that same area, being almost certain they were a hopeless loss. It didn't rain in April, May, June, or the first half of July - not a drop. Then we got a few inches of rain in the last half of July and I saw six rose plants pop up: Two Ambridge Rose, three Cupcake, and one Eglantyne rose. In mid August they were blooming more vigorously than any of the roses I had watered through the drought.

Does anyone have a similar experience? Is this any way to treat a rose?

That's amazing! I hope it works for mine too as we have had an extended drought and I have many dead/dormant roses that I can't water. I will be interested to hear from others.

We've just come out of a 6 week rainy season and today, my hardiest roses are putting off new blooms. I worked very long hours all summer and missed a lot of the grafted roses blooming, but know they did 'cause I finally got a chance to do some deadheading.

It has been hot here in North Central Florida since May, high 90's all summer. Although we are very humid here, I believe the dry sand they grow in seem to help offset. I am not bothered by black spot or fungi and only get some balling on one of my bushes. I simply cut them all off and they come back better on their next bloom.

I seemed to have lost touch with many this summer, with too much work and the transference of our threads from one place to another. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Molly

We're glad you're back in touch, Molly, and also glad to hear that your roses have come through the heat nicely.

Molly, what you notice about black spot is interesting. Normally my roses are decimated by it as our climate is very humid too, but not this summer; it has been so hot that no fungus seems able to survive!

This is all very interesting reading about roses and heat. Mine were all doing perfectly fine until about a week ago when it suddenly got really humid. Now I've got singed blooms, mildew, and for some insane reason, SAWFLY larvae damage. I thought I was spared from that this year. Ususally it happens in June, but it's NEVER happened this late in the summer. Sooooooooo depressing

That's really odd! I have never seen sawfly damage at this time of year. I had less of it this year, along with less damage from curculio weevils and cucumber beetles, but some of my modern roses are showing signs of powdery mildew for the first time. It has always been confined to the OGR's in my garden until this year.