Steve812 said:
Toni, I hope your strategy works. Somehow playing in the mud seems much more appealing to me here in March than it does in November. But I'll be interested to know how it works. Good luck with Charles de Gaulle. Saw a bunch of blooms on mine today before I saw you were getting it and I was reminded of your love of 'blue' roses. I do hope you like it.
*sigh* that's what I'm hoping for. To be honest, my favorite blue rose as far as true blue color has got to be Blue Bayou. That rose doesn't really show much of the pink overtones that many "mauve/lavender/blue" roses show.. they look almost 100% true blue (a soft pastel blue, but blue nevertheless). But as far as planting the roses in November rather than March.. I did this back in '10 when I got 2 roses from England. They were shipping out late October & I received them mid November. So I planted them very deeply & covered them 100% with mulch. Those two roses are some of the most vigorous roses I have.. and they were "bodybag" roses! The 2 roses I did this with RU (planted late, covered w/mulch until they literally were peaking out of the bucket w/growth) survived & bloomed nicely this year as well. So I'm going to try it. I'm not too worried about bugs eating the canes, but I *do* have to worry about extreme weather snaps killing off the tender new growth. I swear that's what killed off almost 100% of the roses from Cliff I had gotten.. they started to grow, then we got a freak cold front or something.
I've lost too many from Cliff.
And I had a 100% survival rate from the dead of winter until the beginning of spring!!
But this summer was murder on the new growth..
