About Basic Care

To Keep or Dump? Time to Evaluate Your Roses!

By Phil Ash

Stay, sit; you're a winner!!

Out, Out! You had your chance! Its two years now and you've won no ribbons at the Del Mar Fair. You're gone; you're history!

Maybe you don't feel that you can use my criteria in evaluating roses; it's pretty simplistic, but it works just fine for me.

Right now, as this year's growing season starts to slow and you've still got the plant, foliage and blooms in front of you, evaluate the performance of your roses this past year. When you bought each rose, you had some expectations, things you wanted the roses to be. It might have related to size, color, growth habit, fragrance, the picture just looked pretty, some expert listed it as a good rose, or your spouse simply said, "I like that name, it's so cute!" Whatever the reasons, now evaluate the rose, was it what you'd hoped for?

If the red rose you wanted turned out to be pink, plan on dumping it if you aren't satisfied. You wanted a little border shrub and it's 10 feet tall, either put it on the moving list if you've got a spot to move it to, or it, too, may be a candidate for outward mobility. Look at the criteria you had in mind. The plant tag said "disease resistant." It wasn't and has been covered with mildew every single day since the leaves first grew. It didn't look anything like the picture and wasn't near as cute as the name implied. Think about what was good about the rose as well as what did not meet your standards. The time has come to balance one against the other.

As part of your evaluation, consider your own rosarian skills and abilities. You have "X" number of roses. Overall, how did they do in your garden? Were they all mediocre which could hint that maybe they were all lacking in some basic levels of care? Or was it a slow growing year for all your roses? Was this rose the only one that failed to achieve? Does this necessarily mean that your cultural practices were OK for the other roses but not for this one? The length of time you've had the rose may be significant. You planted it in March; it was just a little stick with roots. Now six months later it has some canes, some leaves, and not much else.

Time to get rid of it? That may be hard to say. The old adage, "First year sleeps, second year creeps, third year leaps," seems to apply to roses having old garden rose stock in their parentage. Your rose could fall into that category and really need more time to get started. If you bought two of them and one grew like topsy and the other stood still, the answer comes easier. You know the rose is a winner out in El Cajon where it's hot and sunny. Is your gloomy, cooler coastal climate ever going to permit that kind of success?

Having looked at both the desired characteristics of the rose and your own garden know-how and performance, you may decide the time to shovel-prune has arrived. Yes, deliberately get rid of the rose. Don't waste another penny of time, effort, or money; dump it. Total up what you have invested in the rose; initial cost, bed preparation and planting, fertilizing and dealing with pests and pestilence, and watering. Then factor in the value of the time you have invested in the plant. This plant didn't satisfy you or meet your expectation, so why compound the problem and keep it and the related significant costs for another year?

Oh, but I just can't throw it away, it's a living thing! Shovel pruning and dumping don't have to be taken literally. You can dig out the plant, re-pot it, and give it to a friend, bring it in to the rose society raffle, or donate it to some organization that will recycle it. The point is you have opened up a spot in your garden. You can now start researching other roses. For next year, you'll know just exactly the qualities you want in the new roses! Good luck!

Rose Care ABC's

Get it all in one day; answers to rose questions, displays, box lunch, all for $20! Saturday, November 10th, San Diego Rose Society Rose Care Seminar speakers will start with making a bed for roses, how to select and plant them, watering and feeding, organic care, pest management, and internet information sources. Get a speed start on rose season 2002! Information and sign-up form at this link.

This article was originally published in Rose Ramblings, Vol. LXXIV No. 9, October, 2001. © 2001 San Diego Rose Society, Inc.

Keywords: Selecting