Neal, sounds like you are off to a great start! Nice to incorporate other plants with your roses. You have a lot to deal with in creating a new garden bed. I'm in a typical suburban setting. about the herbicides, but sometimes there aren't alternatives. We used chemical weed killers many times & it never really worked for us...duh..but kept on using it. My husband now uses a dragon to stay on top of our weed situation. It works and he loves burning those pesky weeds!

Something I hadn't bargained for was battling bindweed. It had been running amok in the forsythia bushes that I dug out. Chemical controls don't even work on those monsters, its a matter of pulling every sprout at least every 2 weeks for the next 2 -3 years (during the growing season). Starving them by denying them ability to photosynthesize has been the only way I've been able to get bindweed under control. Monotonous, but at least its easy work. Since I don't have much planted there yet the hoe works well. ....which reminds me, I need a new hoe- mine is so dull its a real pain, and the handle is getting weak.

The dragon sounds like a pretty handy tool!

We have a lot of black locust trees here and they can be really weedy. We cut a large one from the back yard several years ago, but the roots form runners that naturally form thickets, so I've been battling locust trees ever since. I have resorted to herbicide for those before. A couple of years ago one popped up in a bed and kept coming back after being cut many times. I had allowed it to attain a height of about 5 feet (which happens astonishingly fast). I bent it over, weighed it down with a cinder block, and put a garbage bag over the top. Then I sprayed the foliage in the bag with roundup and closed it. It was the only way I could think of protecting the garden plants and lawn, and it worked beautifully! The stump had rotted completely this spring, and now a Westerland rose is growing quite happily in that spot

There is, however, another of its offspring in the new garden space, but it will be easier to deal with since there are no ornamentals very close yet.

Neal, I don't know what kind of hoe you have, but having read one of Sherry's posts I found and bought a hula hoe. It's brilliant - cuts on both sides, self-sharpens and oscillates. Weeding is now almost fun! And I think they're a lot cheaper in the US than they are here.

I remember that conversation- thanks for the reminder! Sounds like I'd get a lot more use out of it than a regular hoe.

This reminds me of a crazy/funny friend of mine. Her dad sharpened her hoe for her, and she said "Thanks Daddy! Now I'll be the best hoer ever!"

Great story, Neal with Mika. We've used a Hula Hoe for years and love it. This past January a few AZ gardeners were gifted a short handled Cobrahead weeder/cultivator by Noel Valdez at the Direct Gardening Association meeting in Phoenix. Thanks again, Dave, for the invitation. Noel is Very personable and really understands gardening. If you look up Cobrahead, you will see videos available. The tool comes in long handled versions. It is a great weeder! Very high quality.

Neal ...

Larry R wrote a good article about bindweed ...

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

I use a slightly different approach (described in the comments), but whatever works is the best approach ...

That's pretty much what I do. I removed rhizomes while working the soil and digging out the forsythia bushes. Of course lots of sprouts still emerging, which is to be expected. From time to time I'll still be digging rhizomes, but in between I yank or hoe all the sprouts. As time goes on, the sprouts are smaller and weaker as the plant is starved.

gemini_sage said:Something I hadn't bargained for was battling bindweed.

Neal, the battle with bindweed is something I know all about - took me three years to get rid of it!
Here are two pictures from 2007 just before we moved in - really nasty stuff!

Sharlene ....


Your photos make me very glad I caught my bindweed early.

Unfortunately, the dang poison oak has taken off through the junipers and I am highly allergic and I am going to have to have to have someone come in and take care of it. $$$

Wow! Sharlene That was a big task! Having seen how wonderful that space in your photos looks now, I feel more confident about taking on the battle ahead.

The last garden space I had a bindweed problem in was covered with a black tarp and solarized for a year. The rhizomes still crept to the edges and had to be contended with, but it was a big help.

Perseverance - Neal! Eventually you'll get rid of it as well.
I still have some seedlings once in a while which somehow find their way over from our neighbour's garden. They think bindweed is pretty! Just got to get them early before they take hold!

PS Neal - thanks for the

Is anyone planting buff/beige roses this year? Any recommendations? I'm still searching for "Cafe" a year later. Would really like to plant a rose in this color range.

Mary, a couple that I planted last year in other areas turned out to look more buff/beige to me than I had expected and last fall I moved them to the bed I've been working on. First was Teasing Georgia, that several sources call yellow. It appears more buff to me and was one of the better performing Austin roses in my garden. The other one I moved is Lion's Fairy Tale that I thought would appear more white in the garden. The beige tones made it look kind of dirty next to cleaner whites.

I have Foxy Lady ordered from Palatine for that bed, described as " one-of-a kind coppery-orange fading into the most sumptuous shades of smoky salmon."

I too find Teasing Georgia to be more buff than yellow, and Ducher which is usually described as pure white, blooms decidedly creamy for me.

@gemini_sage & @porkpal
Interesting to hear how roses perform in different gardens. You both mention Teasing Georgia, interesting. Will look into those you both mentioned. In my zone I'm thinking heat will be a big factor in color change.
Neal, did you win the battle of the bind weed?

These two aren't buff colored, but they are odd colored and may work with the other plants you mention.

The Austin rose, Christopher Marlowe
Rose (Rosa 'Christopher Marlowe')

The Buck rose, Honey Sweet - a favorite of mine, originally from Chamblees
Rose (Rosa 'Honeysweet')

Mary, so far, so good dealing with the bindweed. Its not all gone yet, but I did a decent job of staying on top of it last summer. It will be another couple of years of fighting it in the new bed, but I'm committed to the task now because I've added quite a few special new plants I have a feeling Teasing Georgia may appear more yellow in cooler climates, but I imagine you would see similar coloring to what porkpal and I have seen.

Porkpal, how does Ducher perform for you?

Andi, I hadn't noted the buff looking reverse on Christopher Marlow until you mentioned it as a companion- it would indeed be gorgeous among the buff varieties!

Ducher is a very vigorous rose here, blooming generously and almost continuously. The blooms do, however, ball in wet weather. Right now she is covered with new, red foliage as she recovers from our big freeze a few weeks ago.