Which roses would you recommend for Wisconsin (zone 5a)? This past winter (2013) was really hard on the 8 roses I have. Just one is doing well, it's an old variety, don't know the name but has been here forever. I think I have lost Mr. Lincoln, Chuckles, Oso Easy Cherry Pie, and Greetings. Still have hope for Ramblin Red. The others I don't know the names, but they are not looking good at all either. I've had most of them for 5 to 7 years. Oso Easy Cherry Pie have had 2 years. Maybe it's just one of those things...Mother Nature was being nasty this past winter and I need to "suck it up" and move on. I welcome advise on the best replacements. Note: I'm not giving up on these yet. Giving some TLC and see what happens.
Thanks for any advise,
Petruske

Cottage_Rose lives in Michigan and wrote a super article on roses for cold zones. Maybe you can get some ideas from her article.

http://garden.org/ideas/view/C...

Wow, Mr. Lincoln is a pretty hardy one in my experience! Surprised it was damaged last winter.

No matter which you choose to replace your losses, the one thing I learned when we lived in Utah (high altitude, very cold dry winters) was to mulch very deeply in the late fall. I used to pile up the wood chip mulch around the plant base, then pile all my dead leaves up around the canes of the roses as high as I could. It not only insulated the roots from the cold, and from 'heaving' in spring when there were freeze/thaw cycles, it kept the soil around the roots much more moist.

I never lost a rose to winter in 21 years living there. I had about 20 roses, and did not choose any for hardiness, just the flower colors and fragrance I liked. Double Delight was a favorite, Peace, Brandy, Tropicana, Just Joey, John F. Kennedy, a white floribunda called Iceberg if my memory serves (it was a real blooming machine with a nice lemon scent) and Joseph's Coat, a really great, colorful climber.

My mother grew roses wonderfully in Saskatchewan - north of you! - for years before moving to Vancouver where I came from. She always said mulch was the key to winter survival.

Thank you for the replies. I did check out the article from Cottage_rose. Very good information. I'm going to check out a couple of the roses she mentions in there. I'm also going to try mulch. I have never done that. I either cover them with rose cones or wrap with burlap. But I always cleaned things away from them before doing that.

Mine are growing very slowly this year, too. There are a few that are just now showing signs of life. All of my climber's canes (and I chose varieties that were supposed to be cane-hardy to at least a zone colder than I am) are dead this spring, but all but one are showing new growth all the way down at the soil line. Your present plants may yet do well, but if you still want to add to your inventory a good path to take might be to choose rugosa varieties; they're among the very few that proved to be cane-hardy here last winter and they're all bursting with vigorous growth this spring.

I definitely agree with mulching for winter. We lost almost all of our roses every winter until we re-purposed our rose cones and starting mulching instead.

Thank you chelle. I will look into the rugosa varieties. Good to know. And I will definitely mulch for the winter from now on. Just imagine how good my roses "could" have been if I would have treated them better over all these winters.

I love "All Things Plants". So many helpful people (my kind of people by the way). And so much information.

petruske said:Thank you chelle. I will look into the rugosa varieties. Good to know. And I will definitely mulch for the winter from now on. Just imagine how good my roses "could" have been if I would have treated them better over all these winters.

I love "All Things Plants". So many helpful people (my kind of people by the way). And so much information.

You're very welcome!

And it's great to hear that you're happy here!

Here's a white variety that the bees go crazy over. It's delightfully fragrant, too.

Ooh! I love the crinkly petals!

There are a lot of other classes of modern roses that are cane hardy to zone 5. (Climbers are always hard to winter protect.)

Modern roses store their nutrients in their canes and never go truly dormant because along with the repeat blooming characteristic brought into the rose gene pool by the breeding with chinas and teas, which are evergreen roses, the chinas and teas brought the inability to go dormant in the rose gene pool.

If you prune the roses back to fit under cones, you've just set the rose back as it no longer has the fuel to get through winter and for the spring push to come out of dormancy ... at least their partial dormancy. During your shorter growing season, the rose will work to grow more canes and store nutrients for the period when it shuts down. Every time you cut the plant back to fit under a cone, all of that work is wasted and it weakens the rose and over time, the plant just cannot be a vigorous rose.

Mulching works. There may be some die back due to cell damage in the exposed canes, but if you work with the rose, your survival rate will be much higher.

@Joannabanana, Joanne, wrote a great article about how she winter protects modern roses here:

http://garden.org/ideas/view/J...

One of the great things about ATP is how members share what they have learned in their gardens.

Smiles,
Lyn

Very interesting information about pruning. I did not know that. Thanks.

Survival of modern roses of all classes, still depends on the rose.

Roses that have more china and tea in their lineage are less able to handle cold conditions of hard winters than those roses that have fewer of the china and tea rose genes in their make-up.

This is because the chinas and teas come from a climate where dormancy was not required to survive the cold conditions you have in your winters. The plants never had the need to go dormant to survive and never adapted to handle the cold conditions you experience. They also come from regions with a longer growing season. All these things come into play in the survival of a repeat blooming rose in the colder zones.

To create a rose with good repeat that can survive cold winters is really kind of a breeding miracle, but the gardener still has to do his/her part to help the roses survive. Even roses that are cold hardy may succumb in a particularly long or harsh winter in northern climate zones.

Like all things gardening ... it depends.

Smiles,
Lyn

After loosing every rose I ever planted after a year or two (here in Wisconsin) I talked to a friend who is a landscaper. He recommended Double Knockout. He has used them in landscaping in the area and has had really good luck with them. So, I got one, and am giving it a try. Here's a pic of it. I will be planting it today. We'll see!

I don't know about your climate, but I do know Knockouts are tough. Good luck!

Tom ..

Knockouts were bred in Wisconsin, which means they were initially tested in Wisconsin. They should work for you.

Smiles,
Lyn

This Friday I plan to plant two Knock Out® Roses (Double Red, Rosa hybrida 'Radtko' PP16202) in my SO's yard.
Rose (Rosa 'Double Knock Out')

I'm going to plant them in partial sun, flanking stairs that lead up to a front door. It's a forest setting (a manufactured home park in a cedar (I think) forest. What little soil there is was amended years ago with what looks like a few expanded shale pellets. I plan to dig down a foot or so and amend with bags of composted manure, then mulch with 2 inches of coarse bark chunks or wood chips. Zone 8.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have in my yard one Knock Out® Red, 'Radrazz' PP11836, that grew HUGE in a raised bed that I amended deeply (very heavy clay to start with, now pretty heavy clay, but the raised bed gives good drainage since it is 16" tall on one side, and 8-12" on the other side).
Rose (Rosa 'Knock Out')

Back then I didn't know that you're supposed to prune these severely every year, so now it's pretty dense, as tall as I am, and maybe 4-5 feet wide. Last winter I started thinning it out by removing some branches near ground level and shortening others. I meant to shorten every tall branch (cane?) later, but never did. I hate pruning!




Anyway, based on the blooms on the 2 gallon potted plants I bought, the 'Radtko' blooms look larger and "roseier" than my 'Radrazz' blooms. More petals ('Radtko' = 26-40 petals. 'Radrazz' = 8-15 petals), and less "open" than 'Radrazz' blooms.

The advertising calls the 'Radrazz' blooms "Red", and calls the 'Radtko' blooms "Cherry Red". That, I don't know about. My bush has yet to bloom this year.

Does anyone have any experience comparing these two cultivars?

@RickCorey, Rick ...

Heads up !

Don't put compost or manure in the planting hole for a rose.

I sent you a t-mail with more info.

Smiles,
Lyn

If you hate pruning, Rick, don't prune.

http://garden.org/ideas/view/z...

Thanks, Lyn, I found it:

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

>> "I never put manure or compost in the planting hole. The feeder roots of a rose are in the top 6 to 10 inches. If you put the manure and compost in the bottom of the hole, the rose won't use it because it only has anchor roots down there. With manure deep in the planting hole, you are taking a chance of damaging the roots with "salt burn". "

That's a very good point. I use compost by reflex, to loosen heavy clay, because "heavy clay" is all I've ever grown in. Since I can't make enough compost, I've settled on a bagged product that is composted manure. I'll look for something else to loosen the deeper soil, like bark fines.

>> I always do a perk test on every planting hole because we can get 50 inches of rain in one season. If the hole doesn't drain, at least over night, the chances of having root rot after a very rainy winter are much, much higher.

I agree that in slow-draining soil, you NEED to assure drainage or the planting hole becomes a mud hole and roots drown.



>> I do use manures and compost on top of the planting holes along with mulch.

My friend has warned me that these plants will mostly have to thrive or die on their own, with minimal care from her. Fortunately, she has a mild climate, and the rains are very seldom heavy. More like drizzle 8-9 months each year!

But I can spread compost and mulch when I visit. My main concern is that she won't water them enough during their first few months. My compensation for that was to buy plants int he biggest pots I could find, hoping the roots have almost filled the pots (they look like 2 gallon pots or more).

>> "Grow roots the first year."

That's what I'm hoping has already occurred.

Thanks, Zuzu!

>> Gardeners with limited space may need to prune their roses to keep them within reasonable bounds,

I was wallowing in how big and covered with blooms my monster KO Rose was getting when we thought about moving it to my SO's place (partly to free up my only really good raised bed). I started pruning it so that it would fit into a van, and also so that losing some roots wouldn't make it unbalanced.

That's when I learned that they "should" only grow to 3-4 feet in all directions.

And I noticed that it WAS getting very dense on the inside of the bush, and only bloomed on the outer surface.

Then I saw YouTube videos where gardeners cut THEIR KO Roses down to 18" - 24" skeletons each year! I felt like a Bad Parent. Your article reassures me that I wasn't abusing the rose.

I think I will still push myself to do some thinning-out pruning every year or two, and maybe keep it's height within reach.

Eventually, the desire to grow something in my sunniest spot besides a rose bush may motivate me to prune severely, and root prune, then dig it up and move it. Are they like trees where you might prune 1/3 to 1/2 the roots one year, then move the tree the second year?

Rick, I don't think that kind of long-term planning is necessary for roses. I move rose bushes all the time without pruning the roots. I do prune the tops a little when I move them, but I never prune the roots.