Cindi, I think Lynn has given you some very good advice.

Thanks so much to all of you!
So many things could have gone wrong with this rose.
The daylily is 18" away from the rose, and Sue, that is what dormant daylilies look like here in the spring. That one is very well established. They come up, get frost bitten, grow some more, get bit again. This one may have spring sickness also. We've had too many days in the 80s and nights below freezing, and the poor daylilies aren't as smart as the roses. The evergreen daylilies in particular take a beating here in the spring. By summer, they look great.
I will relocate the daylily. That whole row of roses has daylily clumps behind them, so I'll most likely be doing quite a bit of digging and dividing.
I don't have gophers, chipmunks, voles or moles, but we do have mice. I'll be on the lookout for those. Rabbits do some burrowing and chewing too, so I'll have my dogs check out that area every morning for a while. Sometimes, a hole means there's a turtle nest or snake eggs!
I've been watering every day, which sounds like a lot, but the wind and heat dries everything out so quickly! That's why I had straw around the rose. It's possible it's had too much water, right?
Neal, fertilizer burn is a real possibility. I fertilized my daffodils earlier this year, and then I fertilized the roses, and in that area, I have both so it may have gotten a double dose. I forgot all about that until you mentioned it. The daffodil fertilizer, which was just basic 10-10-10, was applied the week before the Easter snow and freeze. Horrible timing for a rose, for sure.
In looking at my own picture on the big computer monitor, I see the ends of the canes look ragged and chewed. I'm not sure how that happened. My felcos are nice and sharp. When rabbits prune for me, they leave sharp edges too. This doesn't make sense?

Hybrid teas are always a challenge for me. I'm trying to do better this year, trying to figure out where I go wrong. This year, if I can't get my few HTs to grow well without spraying, then I'll dig them out. I am going to put forth some effort to grow them organically before I give up on them, though.

Cindi, I have to watch myself about things like that- focus on one plant and forget I'm also fertilizing its neighbor.

I think all of us develop our own personal theories as we work in our gardens in our climates and soils.

I think what I am seeing in your photos, Cindi, is not fertilizer burn, but that is possible, but water stress due to an inefficient root system. Of course, I may be wrong.

I do think there is a place for chemical fertilizers. I don't think it has to be just one or the other. Organic fertilizers take time and heat to break down to be available for the plant and soil to use. Chemical fertilizers, if used properly can be more readily available to both the soil and the plant without harm to either.

Please remember when I started this garden, my soil was truly dead soil. There was NO plant organic material in the soil, so there was no active soil bacteria to break down any organic fertilizers. I had to use chemical fertilizers and to build the soil so that I could move towards using more organic fertilizers.

One practice I have followed from the very beginning was to water the plants very deeply the day before I fertilized the plants. Then both the plants and their root systems were fully hydrated before I applied liquid fertilizer to the area under the rose canopy. Nitrogen, the element that causes the most fertilizer burn and the most damage to soil organisms, does not adhere to soil particles. The plant will take up as much as nitrogen as it needs and the excess leaches through the soil with subsequent waterings.

Over the years, as my soil has become more alive, I have been able to use fertilizers with lower numbers, but I doubt if I will ever be able to have rich enough soil to give them up completely as the plants use up the organics quickly and the heat of my summers seem to cook them quickly, too.

It's also easier to feed lightly with a chemical fertilizer because you know exactly what you are giving a plant.

That's my take.

Neal, so true! Until Sue mentioned the daylily, my eyes didn't even see it. All I saw was sad rose. When I'm working in a flower beds, my focus is so intense that I don't hear the UPS truck pull up, or see someone standing next to me. That bed has roses, daylilies, lilium, clematis and daffodils all mixed together, but they take turns in the spotlight. I just "saw" the one I was trying to feed.
Lyn, why was your soil so lifeless? Had it been farmed to exhaustion? What a challenge!
Should I dig out this rose, check the roots, and replant it in a pot in a more protected location?
Or cut it back more?
I made a list today of the roses that are not looking good. All are HTs, and all had red tags on them. Hmmm. Edmunds. They sure looked good when I got them 1-2 years ago. I'll have to look and see if all were late season sale purchases. There may be a lesson in that...

Cindi ...

When I bought my house it was in January and everything was covered in snow. I thought the back yard was all lawn. Nope.

The house pad was cut out of a rocky slope. The previous owners planted the slope with four kinds of junipers for erosion control, thank God and covered the house pad with weed barrier and decorative rock. Since the house pad level was lower than where nature would have had plant life growing there were no plant organisms in the soil at that level. The soil was dead. When I had the rocks removed. Weeds would not even grow there for the first year.

However, along with a lot of gardening ignorance going for me, I had perfect drainage ... I didn't know I couldn't create a rose garden here. In fact, I was gifted with 150 roses from Ralph Moore's nursery as a house warming gift. I was ready to go ! Of course, the first year, I had to work on deferred maintenance on the house, but WOW !

This is what I bought ... the slope is much steeper than it looks in this photo:



This photo was taken at the end of the season a while back. I'm workin' on it ...

Quite a transformation!

Well I see why the deer consider it a feast! It really looks welcoming.
You really made quite an improvement.

PP ...

In a way, I am even happy about the weeds. I get to complain about them like every other gardener ... My soil is alive enough to grow weeds

I have lots of worms and other soil insects and fungi. My soil is no longer dead. That's what counts.

Cindi ...

Deer have only gotten into this part of my garden once, but that doe sure had a great meal ...

Always great to see before and after pics Lyn, especially after a couple of years. That's when you realise how things have grown!!!

My Double Delight rose today. Love that scent.


Snapped these also, but did not make note of the names, so I won't guess. I do know Chrysler Imperial, Miss All American Beauty, Proud Land, Touch of Class (has to be the Orangish Pinky looking one) would pretty well cover them, just not in that order.






And of course this is a Double Knock Out.

Bloom excitement heats up!

Rose (Rosa 'Helen Hayes')


Rose (Rosa 'Golden Celebration')


Rose (Rosa 'Heaven on Earth')


Rose (Rosa 'International Herald Tribune')

Thanks for sharing ... it's wonderful to see photos of blooms ... I won't see any in my garden until near the end of May, but I can enjoy them vicariously ...

Not anything pretty but this is the reason I have to cage all my planted roses. Gophers get super active every spring. They are attacking my bearded iris right now and do so off and on throughout the year.

Last week I caught two gophers in one day and a mole a couple of days ago.

Another victory today, my largest catch ever!
This is my best trap, the cinch trap, in the smaller mole size. I have one set right now and hope to have #4 by tomorrow morning.

Before and After

Looks like an interesting design, and much better than the mole traps I tried using back in the 80s (never killed the first mole with it).

Lovely blooms Larry and Suzanne! Ahhh...wish I could smell them, but I've got hyacinths and daffodils to keep my sniffer happy at the moment

Lovely blooms Larry, Suzanne - I'm with Lyn! Got to wait another month or so.
Larry, I planted Double Delight because it is my Dad's favourite rose - he just sent me a pic of what is probably the last bloom of the season (Johannesburg, SA) and you have just posted the first! There is always a rose blooming somewhere.

Suzanne, I am so glad I don't have to resort to extreme measures to cope with the added menace of mice, gophers or moles. Haven't seen any here! Don't envy you at all! I believe they can reek havoc!!

Sharlene, what a happy thought- "There is always a rose blooming somewhere", I love that!

yep, that's right up there with "it's 5:00 somewhere"
I have buds on roses....but that's cheating, because I just bought them and they were greenhouse grown. My Dr. Hueys have little buds. No wind today, but I'm working!

I went out to take a picture of five cats on the outdoor settee. Left to right, Chantilly, Pepplegoose, Ambrosia, and Jasper. Rabelais is up on the pillow. Do you think there's a class system at work here? Is Rabelais, a lowly tabby, not allowed to snuggle with the long-haired cats?



Anyway, while I was out there, I noticed that the view from the deck is improving considerably. Still 90% buds and only 10% blooms, but much better than the boring winter landscape.