Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot at a "bargain" of
5 bucks a rose? When I go on these wintertime jaunts to find the first rose
of the winter, I look for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

The roses are double delight(two) and a queen elizabeth climber I don't have
room for. Currently they are still in their original cheap packages awaiting
a reasonably tepid day for their owner to release them from their bondage
and put them into pots where they will stay, inside a shed on cold days and
nights, and come out when temps are above freezing. They will stay this way
until about April 1 as my rose garden is in a little hollow and frosts and
freezes aggravate me to no end. Then they will go in the ground with the 150
or so other roses.

COME ON SPRING!!!!
ed

"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them. I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them. I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them. I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them. I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them. I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 12:25:38 -0500, "Mark. Gooley"
wrote:


"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

I've had nothing but success in directly planting bare roots into the
ground directly from shipment. I don't even really soak them
overnight, because they're always still moist from the wet paper that
they're packed in.

Of course, all of my bare roots have come from Edmunds and they offer
really robust, healthy bare roots. Also, I have really great soil to
start with. I don't have to do *any* amending other than sprinkling a
little compost in the hole and completely covering the exposed bare
roots with hardwood mulch. This to me is the key to success (as well
as making sure that I wet the mulch daily until they are to be
uncovered, usually about a month). This works in Zone 6b perfectly -
I'm not sure if you'd modify it for Florida though.

Even my quasi-bare roots did well, because I treated them as bare
roots by shaking off all of the sawdusty filler and planting them
exactly as I would the regular bare roots - that is, dig a hole as
deep as it would take to have the crown roughly at ground level,
building a little mound in the middle of the hole and arranging the
bare roots to lay over the mound. The fact that they weren't
Europeanas was a ****er, but they were certainly pretty healthy...

Here are a couple of photos of three Bel Amis about 2 weeks after they
were uncovered:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804228

This first photo was taken on June 2nd (they were planted on Monday
after Memorial Day and they had actually sat on my porch for several
days, having been delivered that Saturday - I didn't get back in town
until Sunday but was jet-lagged and didn't actually get them in the
ground until the next day). You can see that a dog had already dug
into the mound, uncovering one of the plants. That was my cue that I
could probably uncover the rest of them, which I did a couple of days
later.

Here are the same three plants on 29 July, about a week and a half
into the first flush:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804079

And here is a week into the second flush, on 29 August.

http://www.pbase.com/image/20859880

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them.

That's why I don't try to put off planting my bare root roses - I
don't want to end up forgetting about them...

I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 12:25:38 -0500, "Mark. Gooley"
wrote:


"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

I've had nothing but success in directly planting bare roots into the
ground directly from shipment. I don't even really soak them
overnight, because they're always still moist from the wet paper that
they're packed in.

Of course, all of my bare roots have come from Edmunds and they offer
really robust, healthy bare roots. Also, I have really great soil to
start with. I don't have to do *any* amending other than sprinkling a
little compost in the hole and completely covering the exposed bare
roots with hardwood mulch. This to me is the key to success (as well
as making sure that I wet the mulch daily until they are to be
uncovered, usually about a month). This works in Zone 6b perfectly -
I'm not sure if you'd modify it for Florida though.

Even my quasi-bare roots did well, because I treated them as bare
roots by shaking off all of the sawdusty filler and planting them
exactly as I would the regular bare roots - that is, dig a hole as
deep as it would take to have the crown roughly at ground level,
building a little mound in the middle of the hole and arranging the
bare roots to lay over the mound. The fact that they weren't
Europeanas was a ****er, but they were certainly pretty healthy...

Here are a couple of photos of three Bel Amis about 2 weeks after they
were uncovered:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804228

This first photo was taken on June 2nd (they were planted on Monday
after Memorial Day and they had actually sat on my porch for several
days, having been delivered that Saturday - I didn't get back in town
until Sunday but was jet-lagged and didn't actually get them in the
ground until the next day). You can see that a dog had already dug
into the mound, uncovering one of the plants. That was my cue that I
could probably uncover the rest of them, which I did a couple of days
later.

Here are the same three plants on 29 July, about a week and a half
into the first flush:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804079

And here is a week into the second flush, on 29 August.

http://www.pbase.com/image/20859880

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them.

That's why I don't try to put off planting my bare root roses - I
don't want to end up forgetting about them...

I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them. I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 12:25:38 -0500, "Mark. Gooley"
wrote:


"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

I've had nothing but success in directly planting bare roots into the
ground directly from shipment. I don't even really soak them
overnight, because they're always still moist from the wet paper that
they're packed in.

Of course, all of my bare roots have come from Edmunds and they offer
really robust, healthy bare roots. Also, I have really great soil to
start with. I don't have to do *any* amending other than sprinkling a
little compost in the hole and completely covering the exposed bare
roots with hardwood mulch. This to me is the key to success (as well
as making sure that I wet the mulch daily until they are to be
uncovered, usually about a month). This works in Zone 6b perfectly -
I'm not sure if you'd modify it for Florida though.

Even my quasi-bare roots did well, because I treated them as bare
roots by shaking off all of the sawdusty filler and planting them
exactly as I would the regular bare roots - that is, dig a hole as
deep as it would take to have the crown roughly at ground level,
building a little mound in the middle of the hole and arranging the
bare roots to lay over the mound. The fact that they weren't
Europeanas was a ****er, but they were certainly pretty healthy...

Here are a couple of photos of three Bel Amis about 2 weeks after they
were uncovered:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804228

This first photo was taken on June 2nd (they were planted on Monday
after Memorial Day and they had actually sat on my porch for several
days, having been delivered that Saturday - I didn't get back in town
until Sunday but was jet-lagged and didn't actually get them in the
ground until the next day). You can see that a dog had already dug
into the mound, uncovering one of the plants. That was my cue that I
could probably uncover the rest of them, which I did a couple of days
later.

Here are the same three plants on 29 July, about a week and a half
into the first flush:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804079

And here is a week into the second flush, on 29 August.

http://www.pbase.com/image/20859880

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them.

That's why I don't try to put off planting my bare root roses - I
don't want to end up forgetting about them...

I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 12:25:38 -0500, "Mark. Gooley"
wrote:


"ed" wrote :
Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot
at a "bargain" of 5 bucks a rose? When I go on these
wintertime jaunts to find the first rose of the winter, I look
for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

I've done it at Home Despot and even at WalleyeMart. Got
one of those red and white things (Double Delight? Fourth
of July? I forget) and a Sonia and a few others in late fall,
bushes almost defoliated by black spot and weather and
whatnot but with healthy new growth on them, marked down
to $2 each. Oh, and I've bought over twenty of those bare-root
waxed things, just as I've confessed in earlier postings,
prices ranging from $2.50 to $5.97, a few even own-root.
I've been putting the bare-root plants into gallon-sized grower
pots -- the survival rate seems to be better when I do that. I
have plenty of room...the only problem is that eventually I
still have to PLANT the roses in the ground, or else keep
moving them up to bigger and bigger ones.

I've had nothing but success in directly planting bare roots into the
ground directly from shipment. I don't even really soak them
overnight, because they're always still moist from the wet paper that
they're packed in.

Of course, all of my bare roots have come from Edmunds and they offer
really robust, healthy bare roots. Also, I have really great soil to
start with. I don't have to do *any* amending other than sprinkling a
little compost in the hole and completely covering the exposed bare
roots with hardwood mulch. This to me is the key to success (as well
as making sure that I wet the mulch daily until they are to be
uncovered, usually about a month). This works in Zone 6b perfectly -
I'm not sure if you'd modify it for Florida though.

Even my quasi-bare roots did well, because I treated them as bare
roots by shaking off all of the sawdusty filler and planting them
exactly as I would the regular bare roots - that is, dig a hole as
deep as it would take to have the crown roughly at ground level,
building a little mound in the middle of the hole and arranging the
bare roots to lay over the mound. The fact that they weren't
Europeanas was a ****er, but they were certainly pretty healthy...

Here are a couple of photos of three Bel Amis about 2 weeks after they
were uncovered:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804228

This first photo was taken on June 2nd (they were planted on Monday
after Memorial Day and they had actually sat on my porch for several
days, having been delivered that Saturday - I didn't get back in town
until Sunday but was jet-lagged and didn't actually get them in the
ground until the next day). You can see that a dog had already dug
into the mound, uncovering one of the plants. That was my cue that I
could probably uncover the rest of them, which I did a couple of days
later.

Here are the same three plants on 29 July, about a week and a half
into the first flush:

http://www.pbase.com/image/19804079

And here is a week into the second flush, on 29 August.

http://www.pbase.com/image/20859880

( did the bare-root-into-pot shtick with a couple hundred trees
a few years ago...then neglected them.

That's why I don't try to put off planting my bare root roses - I
don't want to end up forgetting about them...

I now have those trees,
most of their roots well below the pots, having pierced a layer
of ground cloth, in a big mass...I've begun hacking them out and
I suspect I'll lose most of them, but I haven't much choice.)

Mark.

I've had pretty good luck getting those bargain baggie roses up and
running. And I don't get the first ones off the truck, either. I
"rescue" the last refugees still on the rack just to see if I can keep
them alive. I usually can, no matter how bad they are when I get
them.

The usual caveats apply though: you didn't really buy a pair of
Double Delights and a QE climber. You only bought labels that say
those things, and those labels are wrong something like 15% of the
time. Maybe more often than that. You won't know until your "Double
Delight" blooms yellow and the "Queen Elizabeth" makes a compact
little shrub with red flowers.

The best tip I'd give anyone trying their hand at the cheap bagged
stuff is to cut off the first flush of blooms immediately. These poor
roses had their roots hacked to virtually nothing when they were cut
out of the ground. They're two year old plants with the root stock of
a first season seedling. Until the roots have time to really get
going again, the effort required to support the blooms might kill the
entire plant. Cut those blooms off and let the plant put its energy
into growing instead.





On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 15:49:59 GMT, "ed" wrote:

Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot at a "bargain" of
5 bucks a rose? When I go on these wintertime jaunts to find the first rose
of the winter, I look for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

The roses are double delight(two) and a queen elizabeth climber I don't have
room for. Currently they are still in their original cheap packages awaiting
a reasonably tepid day for their owner to release them from their bondage
and put them into pots where they will stay, inside a shed on cold days and
nights, and come out when temps are above freezing. They will stay this way
until about April 1 as my rose garden is in a little hollow and frosts and
freezes aggravate me to no end. Then they will go in the ground with the 150
or so other roses.

COME ON SPRING!!!!
ed

I've had pretty good luck getting those bargain baggie roses up and
running. And I don't get the first ones off the truck, either. I
"rescue" the last refugees still on the rack just to see if I can keep
them alive. I usually can, no matter how bad they are when I get
them.

The usual caveats apply though: you didn't really buy a pair of
Double Delights and a QE climber. You only bought labels that say
those things, and those labels are wrong something like 15% of the
time. Maybe more often than that. You won't know until your "Double
Delight" blooms yellow and the "Queen Elizabeth" makes a compact
little shrub with red flowers.

The best tip I'd give anyone trying their hand at the cheap bagged
stuff is to cut off the first flush of blooms immediately. These poor
roses had their roots hacked to virtually nothing when they were cut
out of the ground. They're two year old plants with the root stock of
a first season seedling. Until the roots have time to really get
going again, the effort required to support the blooms might kill the
entire plant. Cut those blooms off and let the plant put its energy
into growing instead.





On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 15:49:59 GMT, "ed" wrote:

Is it silly to have purchased three roses from home despot at a "bargain" of
5 bucks a rose? When I go on these wintertime jaunts to find the first rose
of the winter, I look for the healthiest appearing rose as opposed to a
specific type. Anybody else do this kind of insanity?

The roses are double delight(two) and a queen elizabeth climber I don't have
room for. Currently they are still in their original cheap packages awaiting
a reasonably tepid day for their owner to release them from their bondage
and put them into pots where they will stay, inside a shed on cold days and
nights, and come out when temps are above freezing. They will stay this way
until about April 1 as my rose garden is in a little hollow and frosts and
freezes aggravate me to no end. Then they will go in the ground with the 150
or so other roses.

COME ON SPRING!!!!
ed

On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 19:29:13 GMT, torgo
wrote:

The best tip I'd give anyone trying their hand at the cheap bagged
stuff is to cut off the first flush of blooms immediately. These poor
roses had their roots hacked to virtually nothing when they were cut
out of the ground. They're two year old plants with the root stock of
a first season seedling. Until the roots have time to really get
going again, the effort required to support the blooms might kill the
entire plant. Cut those blooms off and let the plant put its energy
into growing instead.

You know, I used to do this as well, but I didn't for some reason with
the Bel Amis that I posted a link to. I think that part of it was the
fact that each of the three plants threw about 5 -8 first buds
simultaneously and I didn't have the heart to trim them. As it turns
out, they bloomed profusely TWICE before the end of the year.

Of course, the question will be, how will they do making it through
the winter. So far, they seem to be fine.

So, I'm not sure if this guidance is always the best. It might depend
on the rose. I know one thing - if I had cut the first flush of the
Bel Amis, I would have definitely been cheated out of about 20 blooms,
and I'm not sure if there would have been much benefit. Having said
that, I'll have to evaluate how vigorous the plants are going to be in
the spring. I have no absolute way to judge them against a control
group, but I think it will be pretty apparent if their root structure
suffered because of excessive blooming the first year depriving the
plant of energy to the roots.

Just my .02.

On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 19:29:13 GMT, torgo
wrote:

The best tip I'd give anyone trying their hand at the cheap bagged
stuff is to cut off the first flush of blooms immediately. These poor
roses had their roots hacked to virtually nothing when they were cut
out of the ground. They're two year old plants with the root stock of
a first season seedling. Until the roots have time to really get
going again, the effort required to support the blooms might kill the
entire plant. Cut those blooms off and let the plant put its energy
into growing instead.

You know, I used to do this as well, but I didn't for some reason with
the Bel Amis that I posted a link to. I think that part of it was the
fact that each of the three plants threw about 5 -8 first buds
simultaneously and I didn't have the heart to trim them. As it turns
out, they bloomed profusely TWICE before the end of the year.

Of course, the question will be, how will they do making it through
the winter. So far, they seem to be fine.

So, I'm not sure if this guidance is always the best. It might depend
on the rose. I know one thing - if I had cut the first flush of the
Bel Amis, I would have definitely been cheated out of about 20 blooms,
and I'm not sure if there would have been much benefit. Having said
that, I'll have to evaluate how vigorous the plants are going to be in
the spring. I have no absolute way to judge them against a control
group, but I think it will be pretty apparent if their root structure
suffered because of excessive blooming the first year depriving the
plant of energy to the roots.

Just my .02.