There's always Bambi burgers & squirrel stew. What about getting a dog to help chase the fuzzies away? A golden retriever would be a good match. Just looked at the label from what Liquid Fence is.. it's a sulfur mix, so no wonder everything doesn't bother it! Putrescent egg solids & garlic? YUCK!
And with digging the holes 2' deep & putting MiracleGro soil in - that's what I did last year & didn't lose any Palatine roses (in fact, the only ordered rose I lost was Royal Amethyst from Edmunds as far as big roses and that's because I planted it crappily. I'm not counting the teenies from Burling.). 2 years ago (first order from Palatine) I lost 3 of the 4 'cuz I didn't do that (used only native soil, which is crap). In fact, only rose to survive at first from Palatine was Blue Bayou and that's because it was in a totally different bed (front yard vs. west side.. 3 of the 4 were planted there and none of those survived). Already debating on what to order for next year! LOL!! I was worried that Razzle Dazzle didn't make it as she looked PRETTY brown, but I started to pull back the mulch and, lo & behold! there were fresh little leaves down about 3" below the top of the mulch! Yay! So all of Palatine's survived. In fact, I didn't lose any of Cliff's roses either.. and I was worried about a few of them as I got them in so late. But I had planted them PRETTY deep with only like a couple of inches of canes sticking out of the surface and then stuck 3-6" of mulch on top of THAT. In fact, a few of them were so buried that I didn't even know *where* I'd put them, so I used the little yard flags that people use to point out where cables & pipelines are so I knew where to look for them this spring. And they all have growth!
I'll be fertilizing them for the first time this year tomorrow as it doesn't look like I have any more snow in the forecast (I have a couple of more days where it *might* get down to 30 degs, but the roses can handle that cold w/o a problem). I wanted to wait as long as possible before fertilizing. Hate seeing new growth shriveled up because of a cold snap!
