Seal any cut canes with glue to prevent boring insects from eating the cane centers. They kill the canes as they eat them.They can damage and kill the plant. I use Elmers white glue. The brand name one works better for me than the dollar store variety. I keep a bottle in my gardening basket.

In your zone, you will have to lift and store dahlias for the winter. I put mine in rubbermaid tubs with a bit of peat moss. I throw a few mothballs in the tub to keep the rodents away .... if there were something else that worked as well, I would use it.

I am not a mb fan, but use some outside to keep the critters out of the crawl space, garage and cutters. I don't plant the MB, but my grandma used to plant MB with her tulips to keep the critters from eating them.

Mothballs are highly toxic when ingested by children, pets, and beneficial animals, so I don't recommend their use. They've also been reported to cause cataracts in humans and animals.

Your purple rose, Andrew, could be a Gallica, which blooms only once a year, but for a long time, usually for the whole month of June in your zone. The foliage and thorns look like those of a Gallica rose. I also suspect it's a Gallica because you had better luck with the cutting from the base. Gallicas spread by means of suckers, and these suckers root quite easily. There are many purple gallicas, but the most popular are Belle de Crecy, Charles de Mills, and Cardinal de Richelieu.







If your rose is a Gallica, it should be pruned as soon as it has finished blooming. If you wait too long after that, you're likely to cut off the start of next year's buds.

GardenQuilts said:Seal any cut canes with glue to prevent boring insects from eating the cane centers. They kill the canes as they eat them.They can damage and kill the plant. I use Elmers white glue. The brand name one works better for me than the dollar store variety. I keep a bottle in my gardening basket.

Andi ...

That is common advice, but I don't think it is necesssary unless you know you have boring insects in your garden that cause severe cane damage. In my garden, I have boring wasps that only bore into the canes for about two inches. They do not kill the roses and there is no need to seal the canes. I only need to cut out those two inches and the problem is solved. For me, sealing canes is unnecessary in this garden. I think that kind of advice is garden specific.

When you are pruning 100 + roses, sealing pruning cuts can be a real chore, so I believe you should do so only when warranted, not as a general practice.

I also have a wasp that creates galls. That is not an indicator of crown gall. Many people would misdiagnose the symptom and remove the rose, when all that is necessary is to cut out the gall.

How do you tell ? With the internet, we can do a lot of research and check things out before we do a lot of unnecessary work or take drastic steps. I think it's a case of doing our homework to find out what kind of insect we are dealing with and what kind of action is required for our rose care.

Thankfully boring insects aren't a problem here, so I've never had to seal cuts. That would indeed be a chore the way I have been accumulating roses.

Those Gallicas look like an old noid I have that was given to me, from a plant that was originally found growing in an old cemetery. This spring the first bloom was hidden, but I caught a whiff as I walked by it, which prompted me to find the bloom. Such a fun little hunt when that happens!

gemini_sage said:Thankfully boring insects aren't a problem here, so I've never had to seal cuts. That would indeed be a chore the way I have been accumulating roses.

Those Gallicas look like an old noid I have that was given to me, from a plant that was originally found growing in an old cemetery. This spring the first bloom was hidden, but I caught a whiff as I walked by it, which prompted me to find the bloom. Such a fun little hunt when that happens!

I can smell my grandmother's roses on a calm day from about 10/15 feet away but it's huge as it's been unchecked for a while.

It's about 6 feet tall and around 5 feet in diameter with tons of small blooms.

It's been blooming since mid May and as of a couple days ago had new buds.

Would a Gallica do well in a large planter?

Hmmm....not sure about that, I've not grown many roses in containers. Could diminish its ability to survive the winter though, because the roots would be above ground level.

Gallicas are hardy to zone 4, so their roots would not be harmed by a zone 6 winter even in a container. Unless the container is truly huge, however, they would be stunted. Gallicas like to spread outwards. I grew Charles de Mills in a large container for a few years, but I ultimately had to put it in the ground because it was too constricted and was beginning to produce fewer and fewer blooms each year.

I have boring insects here, do I seal the canes. Sometimes twice. They even bothered a skinny cane that I didn't think needed sealing.

Boring insects leave the cakes looking like a straw, with a hole in the center. This is not normal forvroses, evev for dead canes. You are lucky you don't have them.

On my phone until the new isp is installed.