I know why it's called the Dog Days of Summer (dominant constellation in the sky right now is Sirius Major, the Dog Star), but I'm so tired of the oppressive heat. And my roses are pretty tired of it too. Mainly because they're tired of not being watered until I get my lazy butt outside as we haven't had any rain almost at all this month. My front yard is doing OK, there's enough mulch to keep the soil moist and cool. The west side of the house, too, is OK as there's the left-over mulch from last winter, so the roses there are doing OK. The east side, however, is about dead. I put in over 40 roses in that area and I honestly do believe that 20 are still alive. And, almost 100% of the deaths are my fault.
One thing that I've learned as a beginning gardener is not to listen to advice from "professionals". They just want you to feed all kinds of expensive additives w/o explaining WHY I need these. I've learned to listen to people who actually HAVE roses. THEY know what is what. And, I guess that with what the advice of keeping the mulch away from the roses so that I don't harbor insects was WRONGO! Based upon my own observation, I don't have insect or mildew/mold problems, I have HEAT and INTENSE heat problems. The top 3" of my soil is a extremely dry dust that you can't dig through, it's like poof! Below that, the next 6-8" is a solid clay that is almost impossible to dig through without watering for an hour. Only when you below 8" (which is where I put the root balls of my roses, below the clayline) is a sand base. The clay is horridly hot all the time, the sand is actually semi-moist and cooler.
I'm going to have to make a map of what I have in the ground, but, I can almost guarantee myself that I've lost so many unusual roses that it's going to be painful to replace them. Simple roses like Mr. Lincoln are ok. Stranger roses like Florescent Fuschia are almost toast. I lost all the roses from Pickering and Chamblees, but, I'm not blaming them at all. I'm blaming myself. In fact, I think I've lost 3-5 from Roses Unlimited as well.
Oh well, there's always next year. And, best of all, a lot of these are HD roses, so I'll just dig 'em up, get my receipts (I've spent over $2000 this year at HD on plants and whatnot), and take 'em all back. *sigh*
