The thumbnail photo is Cinco de Mayo.



It's May Day! I lived in Japan for three years when I was a child and this always brings back memories. The first year we lived there we didn't know that it was the day the leftwing hordes rioted in Tokyo. My sister and I were at a theater downtown, where we suddenly started hearing the sounds of people shouting and cars being pushed into the Imperial Moat. An American soldier quickly bundled us into a jeep and drove us home. We never left the house on May Day again.

Lucky the American soldier was there to rescue you. In France they just give you a posy of lily of the valley!

When I was young, it was a holiday the opposite of Halloween. We gathered bouquets of flowers, made paper baskets with handles, and took them to neighbors. We suspended them from the door handle, rang the bell and ran! It was such fun.

Children in my neighborhood did that every year up until last year, when they must have grown out of it. I miss the May Day baskets.

In the rest of the world, May Day is similar to our Labor Day in September, but with a leftward slant. As Wikipedia says, "May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist and anarchist groups." The riots in Tokyo were particularly bloody and destructive and they continue to this day. Pretty scary for two little girls from Sacred Heart Academy, where we had just taken part in a procession proclaiming Mary the Queen of May before going to the theater to see a Disney double feature.

My May is shaping up nicely. The roses I managed to prune before cold weather, rain, and the wound on my shin stopped my progress are just starting to bloom now. All the others were already blooming in March and April. I really have to stop pruning my roses. It just delays the bloom season and it doesn't do much to retard the growth of the unruly giants. I pruned Rainbow Niagara down to 3 feet, for instance, but it's already at 7-8 feet now.

Sue brought me Wollerton Old Hall, a new Austin rose, a few days ago, and it already has many buds on it. I'll post photos as soon as they open. When Sue and I went shopping last week, I also bought a Scentimental rose that had mutated. It's a lovely hand-painted red rose. My theory is that it reverted all the way back to Maestro, one of the parents of Peppermint Twist, which is one of the parents of Scentimental.

Rose (Rosa 'Maestro')

All your roses look wonderful. Mine were doing well when we had a bit of rain. Been in a dry spell with minimal moisture. The rain made some of my roses ball up, particularly the ones I really wanted to see the blooms. Well, it isn't summer yet so there is still hope for more production.

I have a small NOID rose bush that I put in (I don't remember when) that really never even bloomed until this spring after my awakening to pruning and fertilizing. The other day it put out some medium sized white blooms with a nice fragrance. I believe it to be a floribunda. I was very happy I finally did something good for it.

A question please. I have about 5 small roses in pots (mostly DA's). They are only 6-8 inches tall. How long should I leave them in the pots before putting them in the ground?

An interesting rose. It reminds me of an old velvet curtain, or, perhaps, I should say drape.

Molly, the kind gurus on here taught me to leave those tiny roses in pots until they have a decent root system. How long depends on the rose, as some establish much faster than others. For me, Austins are among the fastest, with the exception of some own root ones.
Porkpal, I agree, that rose looks like an old theatre drape.

I finally dug out the rose that failed to leaf out along with all of the rest of my roses yesterday, 'Sweet Afton'.

I hate to say that it was just one variable that caused the problem because there were several that probably caused the rose to fail, but I think the primary problem was root competition from the junipers on the slope above the rose. I think I failed to understand how that dynamic would play out during drought conditions ... or maybe even in regular conditions.

The rose had a root mass three times as large as the top growth and it still failed. There was no way it could compete with the juniper roots for both moisture and nutrients. The junipers won hands down. I won't be planting roses in that spot. My plan is to plant things that I don't care if they live or die in that spot. Superstition says, they will live if I don't care one way or the other ...

This is a photo of part of the root mass of 'Sweet Afton'



The slope above where 'Sweet Afton' was planted:



To end on a positive note ... those junipers are doing an excellent job of erosion control ..

Zuzu, 'Cinco de Mayo' aka 'Celebration Time' is a wonderful choice - May is really a time to celebrate the garden because there is so much happening!!

Lyn about your bed in front of the Juniper - what about putting in a root barrier? It may help and you would be able to plant roses again.

Sharlene,

Thank you for the suggestion, but at this stage of my gardening life, I think I am going to take a less labor intensive problem solving approach to that end of the garden.

It's time for me to shorten my project list and start enjoying my garden instead of working so dang hard ..

I am planting the roses I had purchased to put at that end of the fence bed in another part of the garden where they won't have to battle it out with juniper roots and will plan something else for that spot.

I was kind of joking when I said I would plant things I really don't care about there because I know that's when they will thrive. I'll see something that will call my name and will experiment.

Lyn, those roots do look impressive. You could try sticking the unproductive rose in a plant pot for a few weeks and make sure it's well watered. I had what I thought was probably a dead rose, but I wasn't sure. As soon as it was potted up it started throwing out leaves and new shoots and it's doing really well now. Made me think it just didn't like the garden soil where I had planted it.

Mika ...

You are right.

Actually, I am rescuing the rose and plan to give it to the local Garden Club for their plant sale at the end of May. It should be looking pretty good by the end of the month. I don't have another spot for a rose that has the potential to be close to six feet tall in my garden, but someone will ...

Sometimes just changing where a rose is sited in the garden makes all the difference in its performance, but this time I just don't have a new spot for SA

SA is a pretty rose and I wish it had worked out, but I have enough roses to enjoy. I don't mind sharing.

That's a kind and generous gesture, Lyn.

This discussion makes me wonder if I'm about to make a mistake. I ordered several types of willow from Vermont Willow, planning to put them on the end of our pond that erodes the worst. Then I ordered 8 Watercolors Home Run roses in a Brecks deal (for $37 shipped!) and wanted to plant them in a group by the willows. Some of the willows stay small, but I was hoping their roots would hold the bank. I'll probably throw in some daylilies as I divide clumps this summer. How far should the willows be from the roses to not affect their roots the way the junipers impacted Lyn's rose? The willow roots should travel down to the pond, right?

Last fall we dug out the Zephirine Drouhin rose that was eating my front porch. We moved it to the pond bank. A windstorm blew it out of the ground a few days later, but I didn't see it for a few more days. It was really dried out. The same thing with a Carmella Fairy Tale rose I removed from under the kitchen window. This spring, the "mostly dead" Zephirine has one green cane that is happily sprouting leaves. BUT we evidently left a root by the porch, and now the one tiny root is growing rapidly into a full size Zeffy.
Carmella-by-the-pond is deader than dead....BUT I see a new rose growing where it was before--so I'm hoping it's Carmella and not Huey. I can't remember if that one was grafted or not. Actually I think that one came from Palatine and the growth doesn't look like multiflora so I may be in luck!
Porkpal, I need you here to help me figure out what all is Huey!
If Sprint is generous in bandwidth today maybe I'll be able to post a picture or two. I tried last night and after 10 minutes of loading, I still could not get a single photo uploaded.

Well, I have plenty of Dr Hueys for comparison!

One question about the willows: are they to be planted on the pond's dam? Our Ag. extension service warns that willows will cause leaking when allowed to grow on dams. They certainly do hold their own well on the riverbank that forms the west boundary of our farm, though.

@CindiKS, Cindi ...

Do wonder about root competition, please ....

I know that early in my rose life, I heard that one of the things that roses do not like is "roses do not like root competition". Over the years, I've had enough roses show me that those rules always depend upon the rose, I often experiment to determine if they apply to "this rose; in this climate; in this site" rather that take it as an absolute given.

The "rule" about root competition is one of the reasons I made my post. Just looking at how far those junipers are placed away from the roses in my photos doesn't quite describe the distance, but I never considered their roots to be part of the problem with the rose because they truly were not planted close to the rose.

That slope crosses all the way across the back of my lot. Mrs. J. planted four different types of junipers and faced the slope with river rock for erosion control. Trust me, that old fence is NOT holding that slope in place. It's the roots of those junipers that keeps it from taking the house down the mountain to the river.

I do have other roses planted along that fence that are growing with various degrees of success and can provide photos. Some own root, some budded.

I can tell you that I found juniper roots extending into the house pad level at least five feet yesterday when I dug the rose hole for one of the other new roses. No, the roots were not as dense and I doubt if they will cause much difficulty for the rose and I will water differently and can monitor the issue differently, but the roots were there.

Maybe, we can enlist others from the tree forum and permaculture forums to give us some input to solve your erosion control problem with your pond. It's better to take a good look now than later. I think that kind of input is very important.

No, nothing but big rocks on the dam. They will be on a bank where the pond curves. It is a steep slope in between two creeks that feed in. The "pond" is actually a dammed creek that receives year round inflow from geothermal heating and cooling systems from 3 properties. Some winters, it's the only open water around, so we get quite an assortment of birds. I'll try to post a picture.

Oh Lyn just now saw your post. I will think again about using the roses there. I'm thinking it does make a difference if the plants are thirsty or not. Your junipers are drought tolerant because they are fierce competitors. The willows are not real drought tolerant. They do send roots a long long distance in search of water, but if I plant them right next to the water, won't that help?

Our river bank willows grew from the low-water edge all the way up to our back "lawn"which is about 60' higher - until the drought of 2016. All the higher trees died, but the ones within about 30 feet of the river did fine even though they were on a fairly steep slope. When the river floods, most of them are under water, but they hang onto their piece of terrain and thrive. I hope that helps you with your plan.

CindiKS said:Oh Lyn just now saw your post. I will think again about using the roses there. I'm thinking it does make a difference if the plants are thirsty or not. Your junipers are drought tolerant because they are fierce competitors. The willows are not real drought tolerant. They do send roots a long long distance in search of water, but if I plant them right next to the water, won't that help?

Cindi ....

That's why I suggested that we reach out beyond the rose forum with these questions. First, I think it would be kind of fun, but also there are people on the site that know so much more about trees and other plants.

I am replacing another rose that was planted near a neighbor's cedar tree that I thought failed due to root competition. There were NO cedar roots near the rose. I can tell you that I am not the person to ask these kinds of questions ...