Well, now that we've had some VERY warm days, most of the snow in my front yard has melted & I've been able to wander around & check out the snow/cold damages from this winter. I don't think we'll have any more extremely cold (lower than 0) days, but I *am* expecting a couple of nasty wet sloppy snow storms, probably gonna dump (hopefully) 2-4 feet of wet sloppy snow. That's what I'm hoping.
So, as I'm meandering through the front yard (the back yard is still an iceberg), I'm pulling back a little on all the mulch to see if the rose is still a little green. And, I'm happy to say that I believe that over 90% of my roses made it! Yay! This has been one of the coldest winter on record for the D-metro area (technically, the 7th coldest on record) and one of the driest as well. But, because it *was* so darned cold, couldn't winter water. ugh.
One of my potentially favorite roses is Ebb Tide. I love the smokey purple color, the intense smell, ah it's a magnificent rose! The Ebb Tide I bought last year, however, never did well. In fact, it actually lost all its leaves at one point and, only because of pampering with lots of Age Old Kelp did it actually produce SOME leaves. It never flowered for me, however. I was just happy to have some leaves on it, so I wasn't going to push the poor thing.
However, when I pulled back it's mulch pile, I didn't see any green. I think I have a gonner with it. :(
The whole purpose of this thread, though, is to ask: anyone else grow Ebb Tide? Is it that delicate of a rose that it won't withstand the abuse of extreme temps like that? I can replace it with a Neptune.. I have a color pattern in the front row of roses with a purple (Ebb Tide), yellow (Arlene Francis), orange (Arizona), yellow (Strike it Rich), & purple (Lagerfeld) (although those two are actually backwards).
What does everyone think? I realize that everyone here pretty much lives in Rose Heaven and I concede to the fact that I have NO experience, so that's why I want to learn from y'all.
