Cindi ........
>>>>If I think of it as keeping a new rose in a pot means one less stressor on the plant, then I get it. You hit it on the mark with the dry soil. I've seen new plants wilt because I missed 1 day watering. Our wind just never stops, and even without heat, the plants are drying out. I keep replacing mulch because it blows away too! It's hard to keep more than a couple of inches of loose mulch around plants.
You've
almost got it
It's not just one less stressor for the plant, but good roots/good foundation sets the plant up to survive other stressors better.
Just think, if that new plant had more roots before you put it into the ground, it would have more tools to pull up moisture. You might even be able to miss a day of watering in spite of the wind ...
As for keeping the mulch from flying away with the wind, you could try a couple of things a friend of mine did when she faced the same problem. She also had a problem with rabbits.
She put up a short ... less than one foot tall rabbit fence around the perimeter of her roses. She found that the mulch pretty much stayed put and did not fly off to hither and yon.
On another part of her property, she pegged chicken wire over the mulch to hold it in place.
When I told her that I would hate to weed under a rose with chicken wire holding down the mulch, her comment back to me is that she really didn't have to do as much weeding because the mulch stayed put !
Re: your potting soil ... I hate the barky stuff, too.
I usually ammend my potting soil using perlite because I think I get better and more consistent drainage.
You might want to read Ken Ramsey's article about vermiculite vs perlite
http://garden.org/ideas/view/d...
Smiles,
Lyn
