University Place

- Hi everyone.

I also wanna thank you for taking time out of your lunch hour to join me for a talk about roses.

My name is Diane Sommers.

I am the president of the American Rose Society.

You might not have heard about us.

We were founded in 1892, so if you do the math, we've been around for 132 years.

And our overall mission is on education and preservation and enjoyment of roses.

How many of you in the room grow roses?

Wow, look at that!

You know, roses are really one of the most popular plants out there and everybody loves to grow them.

And everybody, you know, wants to have more in their garden, right?

My goals today are to, number one, to take care of the myth that roses are hard to grow, because they're not.

Not anymore.

And then second of all, my second goal is that when you leave this room, you go and buy one, two, three more roses to put into your rose garden, right?

And then maybe you won't even stop there.

So thank you again for joining us today.

A little bit more about me.

I have been growing roses for over 40 years.

I know you don't think I'm that old, but I really am.

Right?

[all laughing] I am a master rosarian for the American Rose Society, which means that, you know, I continue to take education credits so that I can provide informative seminars such as this.

I enjoy not only growing roses, but I compete with my roses in horticulture as well as creating flower arrangements.

And I'm a judge for the American Rose Society for both horticulture and arrangements.

Now, you might think, "Where is this lady from?"

I actually live about 50 miles east of here.

So I am in a zone five Wisconsin area, just like most of you probably are.

And I grow, right now, about 250 rose bushes in my garden.

I've had as many as 400 in my previous residence.

So yes, I enjoy my roses, right?

So in the next 40 minutes, I'm gonna try to give you as much knowledge as I possibly can that I've accumulated over 40 years.

So we'll see how I do with that.

We're gonna cover several topics, and you can see those on the screen here.

The photographs are from my garden, okay?

Again, this is Wisconsin, right?

You don't have to live far away to have beautiful roses.

And the garden that looks all brown, that is in springtime.

It could have been just taken yesterday when you look at the kind of spring we're having, right?

I do not winter protect any of my roses, okay?

So there's another fact.

You don't have to spend a lot of effort protecting your roses if, in fact, you have the right roses in your garden, right?

And then the picture with all the beautiful flowers was taken last July.

So you can see how quickly my garden rebounds.

The new roses that are coming into the market are truly bred for hardiness, disease resistance, and fragrance.

And that's an important fact for you to remember.

So if you're looking for a hardy rose, look at the ones that have been introduced in the last 10, 15, 20 years.

And you're more likely, number one, just to have a plant that's going to be more hardy for you.

I actually attended a program by the head breeder of Kordes nursery.

They are located in Germany, and this was just last week.

So it's very timely.

And he gave their breeding priorities at Kordes, and this is in order of priorities.

So their number-one priority is resistance against fungal diseases, okay?

So that ugly word, black spot, you know, they can take care of that.

And in fact, with Kordes roses, most of them are completely resistant to black spot.

Winter hardiness is also a key priority.

And interesting enough, heat tolerance is.

Who would've ever thought heat tolerance was certainly maybe something we don't think about in Wisconsin.

But remember, other areas of the country have some really, challenges with heat and dryness throughout the year.

And so Kordes and other nurseries and breeders, they are really testing their roses in all different kinds of environment, which also means that some roses grow better in one environment or the other, right?

So think about that as you're selecting roses for your garden.

It's interesting, I have a list of roses that I know grow very well in my garden that people in San Diego, which is just a lovely growing climate, they can't grow in their climate, right?

So it's very different no matter where you are.

But after resistance, hardiness, heat tolerance, then breeders are looking at flowering abilities.

They're looking at the quantity of blooms, the duration of flowering, how they look when the blooms are getting old, and how intense the colors are.

And then, finally, they're looking at other flower characteristics: color, shape, fragrance.

And if you notice that first slide, you saw a variety of colors and a variety of shapes.

That's what's happening in the world of roses today.

You can add a rose anywhere in your garden, and you're just going to enjoy the variance in color and quality of the bloom.

Let's talk first about how to select a quality plant.

Now, I'll maybe start with those middle pictures there because I always have to kind of chuckle when I go to a store and there's the $1.99 specials in a big box in the middle of a store and people are, you know, fighting over which one of those they want.

And you know, a lot of those plants were packaged last fall.

They've been sitting in a warehouse someplace.

They obviously haven't been watered, okay?

They're a great bargain, but if they don't grow well, they're not such a great bargain, are they?

And so I ask that you think about buying a quality plant to start with.

Many of our roses that we buy are still grafted.

And the example here on the left is with Multiflora, and you can see that the canes of the rose are coming out on top.

And look at that nice root structure that we have in that plant.

This is actually an Edmunds' rose that I bought just a few years ago.

If you look at the roses, the packages in the middle, look at how tiny those root structures are.

Look how they had to cut 'em down to cram 'em into those, you know, those containers, which they tell you you don't even have to unwrap 'em, right?

Put 'em in the ground because I don't think they want you to see what happened to that rose, right?

So I would suggest staying with a very nice quality plant, one that's grafted.

You can see that, you can order grafted rose bushes that come without soil on them, okay?

And there's a lot of companies that do that.

I do that for most of my roses because I'm kind of selective because I'm looking for particular varieties.

And truly, you'll get a rose bush.

You'll probably pay less for it if you buy it this way because the nursery doesn't have to plant it and care for it and grow it, right, 'til it gets to that nice beautiful rose bush you see on the right.

But still, you might not wanna bother with that.

You wanna get a nice big rose bush.

So therefore go to the rose center, the garden center, and buy something that's growing and it's got leaves and it's got buds on it, right?

In May, Mother's Day is a big deal at the garden nurseries.

Have you noticed that?

Yeah.

And so they work really hard to have those rose bushes ready to go with buds and blooms on 'em, et cetera, to really entice all of you into buying their rose bushes.

So if you wanna just plant one or two or three, go to the nurseries end of April, early May, you'll probably find just a great selection.

We're gonna talk about some generalities here.

But in general, hybrid teas and grandiflora roses tend to be not as hardy as some of the other roses.

Why is that?

Because years ago, they started to breed these roses to have these big, beautiful blooms on them, right?

And that's what the public wanted.

These tend to be very upright plants with one bloom on the top.

You know, you think of that long stem red rose, right?

Or perhaps it's a grandiflora, which grows the same way.

Only it has sprays on it.

So plants, just like people, only have so many chromosomes, okay?

And so if they wanna bring in those features, then something else has to go.

And in the past some of that, what was going was that hardiness or maybe that fragrance in the rose.

Now breeders know that it's the hardiness and the fragrance which is helping them sell more and more roses.

Which is why you see more roses like that coming back into the market.

Now, if again, you buy a hybrid tea or grandiflora that was introduced to the market 2000 or later, you most likely have some of those same characteristics of hardiness and disease resistant.

Because again, that's what breeders are doing today.

It takes over ten years to bring a rose to market.

And in the 1990s, or even earlier, the breeders in Europe were working on creating these types of varieties that didn't require any kind of chemicals in the garden.

It's kind of required, when you look at Europe, they don't allow you to use chemicals, right?

And it wasn't until after that that the United States breeders pretty much came on board with that.

I just wanna note that my photos that are in my program, these are primarily roses in my garden, okay?

So again, this is zone five Wisconsin, and these are hardier types of roses that you can put in your garden too.

So we have a beautiful Moonstone there, just one of the most favorite roses for a lot of us rosarians.

We have Sitting Pretty; Sitting Pretty is a grandiflora.

It won the gold medal at the International Rose Trial at our headquarters in Shreveport, Louisiana last year.

It is bred by William Radler.

Anybody heard of Radler?

Yeah.

Yeah; what?

The Knock Out rose, right?

That's what made Will famous.

And I think today, it is still the number one-selling rose in the world, and it's known for its hardiness and its disease resistance, right?

Will actually has over 30 roses that he has brought to the market, and many of them are doing very well in trials around the world.

Another favorite in my garden is South Africa.

That's a grandiflora.

You can see those beautiful golden blooms on that.

It is from Kordes, okay?

Kordes sells a lot of their roses in the United States.

Winter-hardy, disease-resistant; it won't get black spot.

I have several of these.

This is just one plant of mine, and they grow very, very well in zone five.

So we're gonna talk a little bit more over time about key words, and Kordes is one of those you want to remember.

They're being sold more and more throughout the nurseries in the United States.

And again, very hardy and disease-resistant.

I put the names on here because sometimes I might forget.

But also if that's something that, you know, you find interesting, it gives you something that you can take note of.

Now, low-maintenance roses in general are going to be the modern shrub roses.

Today, these are really bred for their disease resistance and how much they bloom, and the variety of colors.

This is where the breeders have really been focusing a lot these last few years.

Again, these roses are all from my garden, but you can see the variety in color that is appearing in the market, right?

Now, Music Box, if you like something that's fragrant, Music Box would probably be a good choice for you.

If you had, wherever you are, you plant that thing in your garden, you can just smell the wonderful fragrance of Music Box.

Someone asked me yesterday, "Well, how big do these shrubs grow?"

Shrubs actually are a wide classification.

They could be a foot tall, they could be ten feet tall, right?

So you wanna make sure that you're reading about the rose before you buy it.

So you make sure you have that right rose in the right place.

In between the higher maintenance and the low maintenance, we have those in the middle.

Many of our floribundas are polyanthas, climbers.

A lot of people really enjoy climbers, fall into that category.

So you just have to read the label and understand when was the rose introduced?

Trust me, if it is disease-resistant and if it's resistant to black spot, the breeder's going to make a note about that because they want you to buy it.

And that's all the work they've put into that rose to make sure it's good for the market.

Julia Child has been a member choice rose for many, many years of the American Rose Society members.

It's a floribunda.

It gets about three feet tall and it has a lot of bloom to it, right?

It's like a grandiflora, only shorter.

Oh So Easy Peasy, in the middle there, is a polyantha, so it's a little lower, smaller flowers, but huge sprays of those flowers.

This rose actually also won at the International Rose Trial last year in Shreveport, Louisiana.

And then finally, Cherry Frost, that's a climber.

I have that in my garden; it's ten feet tall.

It's green to the tip in the spring, okay?

So it's very, very hardy.

If you like a red climber, this might be one for you.

So what's important again, is identifying those roses that do well in your area.

Each year, the American Rose Society has a handbook that they put out that rates all the roses that have been in commerce, but also we continue to rate the new ones coming into commerce.

There's a few of those handbooks back at the back corner there when you leave.

I've also added a QR code with a nice digital booklet on growing roses.

So you can get some information on that as well.

Many shrubs, though, again, are hardier than those hybrid teas.

David Austin shrubs.

Some gentleman was asking me about David Austin before we started this presentation.

David Austin started in England, and they created roses that are like those old-fashioned roses from years ago.

Many-petaled, fragrant.

They took it to the next step and they added a repeat bloom to them.

And then they are working on making sure they are that disease-resistant and hardy rose.

I have about 25 of them in my garden.

Very, very nice shrub roses.

They'll grow at all different heights.

You have to read the descriptions.

And you can purchase those roses a lot of times in your garden center.

You know, it'll say it's a David Austin or again, you can purchase that directly from David Austin in the United States.

We've talked about Will Radler and his wonderful roses at Rose Innovations.

Easy Elegance, another key word if you see that in the garden center.

Drift Roses, Kordes Roses.

Altman Roses, Ping Limb.

He's a breeder from Minnesota.

He sells his roses through Home Depot.

So if you're shopping at Home Depot and you see, oh, Altman Rose, then you know that that's probably going to be a very good quality rose.

Check out your local parks.

You know, they have roses in them, and they grow the kinds of roses that are going to do well in your environment.

Also, think about attending a rose show.

The American Rose Society has rose shows all around the country, including the Wisconsin State Fair.

And that's hosted by the Greater Milwaukee Rose Society, first Sunday in August.

And everybody in the state is welcome to come and bring their roses.

You can come and bring your roses, and they're put into competition and they're judged.

It's a great way, again, to see the roses that are growing in your area.

I did a little survey in January.

I wanted to see if I asked my consulting rosarians in Wisconsin, what kind of roses would you recommend to a beginner gardner?

And this is the list I got.

So maybe you wanna take a picture of this or you could see it later, you know, as it's out on another, YouTube or wherever.

But notice again that shrubs are dominating this list.

And this is only a sample 'cause frankly, I could have given you 50, 60, 100 of 'em that I really like, right?

And so could most of my friends.

But this is a good list to get you started if you're looking for particular types of roses.

But again, shrubs are dominating, many different flower forms, many different colors available to you.

So let's talk about planting and growing your roses.

The number one thing is you need to have sun.

If you have all shade in your yard, you just aren't going to get these big, beautiful blooms.

Roses need at least about six hours of sun a day.

Now, if you have a shady garden, but maybe you've got a place on your patio that's kind of sunny, you can grow roses in containers.

They do very, very well in containers.

But then we just have to be careful about what we do about those in the winter.

And we'll talk about that later.

The more sun, the more air that that plant is going to get, the better for the rose.

If it has morning sun, it's going to dry off the leaves faster.

Why would that be important?

Because things like black spot will form if the water is sitting on the leaves for four to six hours, okay?

And if you think about it, in the evening, there's no sun, there's less wind typically.

And so those leaves can't dry off, especially those near the bottom of the plant.

I like to tell folks that if you like to go out and have dinner and then you like to go out and water your garden, that you might be promoting an environment for black spot.

Okay?

Water your roses earlier in the day.

When I used to have my garden of 400 rose bushes, I only watered with my overhead sprinkler.

That is just fine.

I think that roses like a bath, just like the rest of us.

And what I have done is I always watered in the morning, right?

And then all the plants dry off.

As I said, they like to have good airflow.

That helps them dry off as well.

Avoid root competition from those large trees.

And try not to put companion plants too close.

However, roses do really well in your perennial garden.

You know, they're just like any other perennial, and they will bloom throughout the whole summer.

And many perennials don't, right?

So consider adding a rose bush.

So one of the aspects that we see with our roses, it's that generally, they can come grafted or they can come own-root, it's called.

And here's a picture that shows both; when it's grafted, it's grafted onto other plant material.

That helps the nurseries to really be able to grow many roses faster and get 'em to market faster.

The plant will take off faster.

So it's a better experience, right?

For all of us.

Own-root takes a little longer, but it's gonna be stronger in the sense that the root structure for that particular rose is right there.

And you don't have to worry so much about winter freezing.

Note that when you see the black line under that grafted joint; in a zone five or zone four, et cetera, you wanna make sure that you place that grafting point under the soil.

Two to three inches is good, okay?

Like I said, I don't winterize my roses, but in the springtime, sometimes if we've had a bad winter, I'm cutting those things down to the ground.

And after a couple weeks, they pop back up, right?

But if you have the graft sticking out of the soil, you're outta luck.

And as experienced as I like to think I am, that happened to me the first year in my new garden 'cause I planted them where they should be.

But I had new soil, and guess what happened?

The soil shrank, right?

And when it did that in the spring, all my grafts were above the soil.

And I was like, "Oh, no!"

So I've had to work on that a little bit.

We learned something every year.

So when you're planting that rose, again, if it's an own-root, which today, many shrubs and easy care roses are coming out own-root.

Sometimes you actually have a choice.

When you buy roses online, if you want it own-root or you want it bare root.

It will be slower the first few years.

They even say not to fertilize it too much.

Let it get, you know, accustomed to your soil and your environment.

It should be better overall for cold tolerance.

And you plant that right where the canes were coming out of the plant.

But it will take a few years 'til you have a lot of bloom on it.

You have to be a little bit patient.

Those grafted roses, they start out and you'll see big flowers on 'em in no time, right?

You can even buy 'em that way in the garden center, right?

You'll see 'em with those big buds and those big flowers on them.

That is the benefit of going, again, to a grafted plant.

But again, keep that grafting point under the soil to help from a freeze perspective.

As far as soil preparation, it is important to get a soil test.

And we are very fortunate that our county extension services just are a great resource for that.

If you go to their site, they will tell you how to do it.

And when you send in your samples, they'll tell you how to correct it if they see a deficiency or issue with soil pH.

Why pH is important is because the nutrients cannot be absorbed by the plant if it's too far outside of a certain pH zone.

So pH is a measure of acidity in the soil.

Generally, we say 6.2 to 6.7 is good.

When I was an early rose gardener, and you know, you're around a lot of people growing a lot of roses.

And trust me, every rosarian has a different plan and a different schedule and uses different stuff.

Probably just like every gardener in this room.

And I was putting all these fertilizers and stuff on my plants, and they sure didn't look nearly as good as the other friends that I had.

And one day at a meeting, they actually had a scientist there.

He brought a pH meter in and he tested my soil, and it was at eight.

So now I knew I was wasting my time.

I was wasting money buying product, fertilizer to put on those plants because without the proper pH, it couldn't be absorbed into the plant.

So even today, if you think you're having a problem and your plants don't look as vigorous, maybe get a soil test this spring.

I start out every spring with soil testing.

When you're planting your rose, you wanna have a wide hole and make sure that it's deep enough for the type of plant that you have and where you want those roots to be established.

If you have a lot of clay, and a lot of us do in southeastern Wisconsin, make sure that you're not in a situation where the water cannot penetrate down into the soil.

Roses again, are like people: they need water, but they also need to breathe, right?

And I had a great example of this last summer.

My husband was digging holes for my tomato plants.

I don't give my tomato plants great areas because those all go for my roses.

And so he dug this hole and I put this tomato plant in, and I filled it up with soil and I watered it.

And it was like it was out on the sea.

The plant just kept going like this.

Back and forth, back and forth.

And it was very obvious to me that that soil was not draining, right?

That was not a good place for my tomato plant.

I eventually pulled it out, I put it into a pot, and I grew it in a container for the summer.

So make sure that you have proper soil.

It just makes common sense with any of our plants.

If you need to amend it, what we often talk about is using a lot of compost and continue to work the compost in.

But don't just take out the clay and layer compost in because again, you're gonna have that, what we call that bathtub effect.

Once you have your soil, I fill the hole up about halfway, and then I fill it full of water.

I wanna see that that water is draining out.

Okay?

And then I'll fill it up with soil the rest of the way, and then I'll water it again.

I typically will add some compost into the soil that I'm throwing back in that hole.

And then I'll apply an organic mulch on top of it.

We've talked a little bit about water.

Plants like water, roses like water.

But again, make sure that you've got good drainage, right?

In the springtime, in June, that's when our roses start to bloom.

They look so beautiful and lush, and they're so full of bloom.

And then what happens in July?

They kind of slow down a lot, don't they?

They maybe don't look so hot.

Well, July is one of the hottest months of the year in Wisconsin, and maybe they're not getting as much water because June, we get a lot of rain too, right?

So think about how much you're watering your roses all season long.

And again, if you're gonna water overhead, try to do that more in the morning so that those leaves dry out.

Pruning, people start to freak out about how to prune a rose.

And it's really quite easy.

Do you think we're ready to start pruning our roses right now?

It's kind of nice outside.

We've had a really nice warm winter, haven't we?

Yeah, no, you don't wanna touch those plants yet.

As hard as it is, I wander around my garden almost every day right now.

I touch the canes, looking at 'em, but I know I can't start yet, okay?

A little bit more of chemistry.

As the fall approaches, we have a little less sun.

It's getting cooler temperatures that actually causes changes in the cellular structure of those rose canes, almost like an antifreeze, so that they can withstand some of that freezing and thawing cycling without bursting the cell structure.

Okay?

And that continues to build into December.

So the longer you keep your rose uncovered, the better it is because it can keep generating more of that antifreeze.

Now, after January happens, in January, what?

We start to get longer days again, and we start to get a little bit warmer temperatures, and then the antifreeze dissipates.

So really by middle to end of February, it is all gone.

So when we lose roses because of temperature, as long as we've planted them properly, cared for them properly, it's because of March.

It's not because of December or January; it's because of March.

So we all have to be very patient.

And you know, Mother Nature is running the show here, guys.

So you have to wait 'til Mother Nature tells us it's time to prune our roses.

In my zone five garden for me, that's usually the first couple weeks of April that I begin.

But sometimes, it's been as late as late April or early May.

One indicator plant you may have heard of is the forsythia plants.

So if you see the forsythia blooming in your yard, it probably means it's okay to start pruning.

But be prepared if we get a hard frost after you prune.

When you prune, you're gonna start to stimulate that plant to grow.

You're gonna start to see growth.

Cover it if there's a hard frost.

Use a bucket, use, you know, drop cloths, whatever you got around, right?

Try to keep that plant from having that freeze, that frost on the plant.

Okay, so now we're at the point of pruning, you want to remove all the dead, the diseased, the damaged, all the crossing canes, all the stuff so that when you end, you've got a nice plant that has got outward-facing canes.

Again, you want that water to be able to get throughout the plant, right?

And when you prune it, if you can prune it so that there's an outward-facing bud, you can tell when you look at your rose bush, where the next stem is going to come from.

Again, that will promote that effect that you want.

Which is leaving more room in the middle of the plant so that air can go through the plant.

Of course, during the summer, you're removing all the spent blooms.

You wanna encourage new growth and new flowers.

If you don't do that, you won't get a lot of new flowers.

You'd be amazed at how many new flowers you get if you prune your rose bush.

Even bushes that claim to be self-cleaning.

That's one of the things the breeders are doing as well.

Self-cleaning roses so that you don't have to really touch that rose at all.

But even then, if you start to prune it a little bit, you're gonna see more growth and you're gonna see more bloom on it.

If you think about it, a new cane is gonna form and it's going to always be smaller than what it came from, right?

So if you just prune off the tops, the spent blooms, you're gonna start to get very twiggy growth and smaller blooms.

That is one reason that we've often talked about pruning to a five leaf, is because we're trying to help people easily see how far down you can go on the plant.

But trust me, you can prune it any way you want.

You are not gonna damage the plant by pruning.

And if you have to prune it down to the ground, as long as you've got that bud union under the soil and you've taken care of the plant, it will most likely come back.

So you are not gonna hurt the plant pruning about it.

You also wanna make sure that you clean up after pruning.

Remove the dead, the diseased canes and leaves because black spot can overwinter, okay?

So you wanna get that out of the garden.

Let's talk a little bit about synthetic versus organic fertilizers.

I mentioned before, my crazy rose friends, they all have a different formula for fertilizing their plants.

So trust me, I have a lot of different chemicals at home, and those are called synthetic fertilizers.

The good thing about synthetic fertilizers is they provide instant nutrients, right?

We all are into instant impact these days, but of course they have, you have to repeat them more often because the fertilizer is draining out of the soil.

So if you're using synthetic fertilizers, and I've used a lot of 'em over the years, then you really want to reapply that like every three weeks.

The one thing about the synthetic fertilizers, it's not really improving your soil structure.

It's not feeding all the hundreds of thousands of microorganisms that are in your soil, okay?

And like anything you put on your plant, there is a risk of fertilizer burn.

So always be sure that your plants are well-hydrated.

Now, organic fertilizers, those fertilizers are really feeding the micronutrients in the soil.

They're not necessarily feeding the plant, but they're feeding all those micronutrients, which are then, you know, making those nutrients available to the plant.

So it's gonna break down a lot slower.

It's gonna last longer, however.

And it's really gonna do a better job of improving your soil and your plant health.

I mentioned before, I'm an exhibitor of roses, so I compete.

Gotta have the biggest, gotta have the best.

They have to be perfect.

So I was dumping a lot of synthetic fertilizer on my roses.

And a couple years ago, a friend of mine said, "You know, you really need to stop that."

And he happens to be one of the best exhibitors in the country.

And he said, "I don't use that stuff anymore.

I just put a lot of compost on my roses in the springtime."

He feeds them with some nitrogen about every month.

Okay?

Similar to a synthetic that you can buy in the market.

And my roses are like, they look better than they've ever looked, right?

So understand your soil, what you really need to add to your soil.

But consider, organic material is really gonna improve your soil much more than just continuing to dump synthetics into the soil.

Okay, a little bit more about fertilizing.

We talked a little bit about the pH.

Oh, I guess we also talked about feeding the soil, adding compost, and I like to add a slow-release fertilizer to my garden every year.

And I actually add it twice because with the one watering, if you're doing that properly, you'll see that your slow-release fertilizer will kind of dissipate by July.

And so I add it again.

You would wanna stop fertilizing your roses about the end of August because then you just want them to start to slow down and get ready for winter, right?

So if you're using synthetics, you'll wanna take care, stop fertilizing at the end of August in our zone five climates.

So here's the slide on the bugs that everybody thinks are just so awful for our roses.

We'll start with black spot at the top.

We've talked a bit about black spot, okay.

Buy disease-resistant plants.

The new plants that are on the market today are disease-resistant.

They're black spot resistant.

There's 13 types of black spot.

And they are testing chromosomes to even see how many of those, you know, those races is what they're called, are on the chromosomes.

You can buy plants today that will absolutely not get black spot.

Aphids is another insect that bothers a lot of people.

It doesn't really bother me 'cause I don't see it doing much plant damage for me.

You know, you can just take your hands and just kind of smooth it over the cane and squish 'em all.

Right?

Some of you might wanna put a glove on until you do it enough and then you go, "I don't really care."

Or you can just take soapy dish water and put that on your plant.

Just throw some on there and that soap will coat the membrane.

And so then they will die.

No chemical.

I have a lot of sawfly larvae damage in my garden at this point.

I live on somewhat of a woods.

And so in the springtime, the sawfly will eat those holes in the leaves.

So you might have seen this on your roses as well.

And if you look underneath the leaf, you're gonna see tiny green worms.

And if you have a plant or two, you just pick 'em off and smush 'em again, right?

It's not a big deal.

Early in my rose career, I'd get a little stick to try to get 'em off and slam 'em with a rock.

I don't know, you know?

But now I'm back to my fingers, okay?

But in my garden, if I do not take care of that, I will-- They'll defoliate my entire garden.

And so if that happens to you and you see a lot of them not just on your roses, you'll need to use an insecticide to really control it.

And then of course we have our favorite, Japanese beetles, right?

Everybody loves those.

How many of you have Japanese beetles in your garden?

Oh, my gosh, everybody's raising their hands.

Yes, I have Japanese beetles too.

And to control Japanese beetles, you really have to interrupt their lifecycle.

And the best way to do that is to start to apply a grub product to your soil and to your lawn.

I track when I see the first Japanese beetle in my garden, and it varies between, like, June 27 and July 4.

I'm wondering if, you know, it'll be a little earlier this year because we've had such a nice warm winter so far.

I don't know, but I'll apply that product a couple weeks before I think the beetles are going to come, and it'll feed on the beetles.

The grubs will feed on it and it will help to kill the grubs before they reach out of the soil.

And those products are well-tested.

Like, they won't damage your earthworms, they won't damage a lot of other things.

So they're relatively safe products to use.

How many of you use Japanese beetle bags?

Wow, only a couple.

That's just great.

Japanese beetle bags will attract Japanese beetles, right?

So everybody says if you're gonna use Japanese bags, then put 'em on your neighbor's property so that all the beetles go over there, right?

Do not use Japanese beetle bags.

Do not.

Will Radler did a test.

And he has absolutely beautiful gardens, right?

He lives actually in over by, in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee.

And he had some Japanese beetle bags.

He wanted to see how this really worked.

And yes, they were full all the time, right?

But was more interesting was the next spring because when he lifted up the sod, it was all full of larvae.

So even though you think you're getting rid of all those beetles, you're also creating, having more for the next season into your garden, right?

Now, if you have to get, you should try to get rid of them, right?

Because they're awful on your plants.

And just by dropping them into soapy water, that will kill them, right?

You don't have to use a chemical.

It's not worth using a chemical for.

And you can pick 'em off.

Or like me, sometimes I'll have a bloom with 10, 15 of 'em on there.

It's just gross, right?

And you just kind of shake 'em off into that bucket.

I do that twice a day in my garden in the summer.

And also, again, I'm a competitor.

So if I'm trying to keep 'em off of certain blooms, I actually use paint strainer bags, which I turn upside down and they're kind of like a cloth.

And they've got elastic on the bottom so I can put them right over my bloom.

And I put little sticks on it to keep it off the bloom.

Japanese beetles cannot fly up.

So it's protecting my roses from the beetles.

Now I would tell you, I probably have about 80 bags at home.

It's really nice 'cause you can wash 'em at the end of the season, okay?

But now Amazon keeps sending me stuff.

They think I'm a professional painter.

[audience laughing] I'm not.

In fact, my husband doesn't want me to paint anything in the house, but I do have a lot of paint strainer bags, which are just great to use.

And then finally, deer.

Anybody having deer problems in their yard?

Yes, yeah.

You know, I don't have a great solution there.

This picture of the deer is actually in my garden in winter time.

We have about three acres in the Kettle Moraine.

So you know, we have a yard part, but most of it's wooded.

And you know, I can see 10, 14 deer at a time in my yard.

But I will tell you, this is my strategy the last couple of years, which has been successful and have kept the deer out of my garden.

I use a smelly product that you can find on the market.

I happen to use Liquid Fence.

There are others out there, but I spray every single week.

I do not spray my roses.

I don't like putting that kind of stuff on my roses.

But I spray the entire perimeter of my yard.

And so I'll spray shrubs and trees and all sorts of things, right?

Not my roses, but I'm trying to keep 'em out of the yard.

Now, most of those products say you do it a couple times in the spring, and then you just do it once a month.

Uh-uh, you gotta do it every week religiously.

So I buy the premixed stuff 'cause it's easier.

I have big sprayers and things like that, but it's just easier.

I just know I have to do it.

It stinks really bad.

But after it dries, you really can't smell it.

People can't smell it, right?

Now, a friend in Iowa told me that he uses mosquito zappers.

That was kind of interesting.

But he said, "Gee, I put these mosquito zappers up "to get rid of the mosquitoes.

And I got rid of the deer!"

And I thought, "Really?

Okay."

So I also have two mosquitoes zappers in my garden.

And I'm not really sure that they work, frankly.

But if I just have my spraying and I don't have my zappers, I still get some deer in the yard.

So maybe they work in concert; I don't know.

But the last two years are the first time that I have not had deer eating all my roses down.

So that's what I use.

Winter protection, again, depends on your planting zone.

I'm in a zone five, you're probably in a zone five.

So we need to protect or we don't need to protect; I don't protect my roses.

They do just fine.

But plant them properly, take care of them properly, and select the right rose bush that is going to be disease-resistant and hardy, right?

Healthy plants overwinter better.

Why?

Because healthy plants are generating that antifreeze that we talked about earlier.

If you grow roses in containers, and I grow roses in containers 'cause frankly, I keep buying roses and I don't have room for 'em anymore, you gotta do something with them for the winter.

And the best approach is really either stick 'em in your garage, that's kind of easy, or else you should bury the plant or bury the root part of it.

So take it out of the container and bury it.

I have friends that bury 200, 300 rose bushes.

They create these big pits.

I got my husband to do it once for 25 roses.

And he said, "Never again, Diane.

Never."

So I put them in the garage now, and if you do that, give them about a cup of water every three to four weeks.

That's all it needs.

If you have more questions on that, you can ask, you know, a consulting rosarian in your area.

I've got a picture here of a simple way to winter protect roses if you'd like.

I will put twine around my rose canes, because otherwise the canes are flipping around in some of the winds we get in the winter.

And it could crack all the way down into the grafting point.

So I'll tie them with twine.

I don't really do any cutting in the fall.

I'm a lazy gardener.

I'd rather just do it once, not twice.

And then I staple newspaper together.

I create a newspaper collar and I fill it with leaves.

I am fortunate, I have a lot of oak leaves where I live, so it's very easy for me to fill those up.

And that's enough to help protect the base of the plant from freezing and thawing.

And of course for all of us, snow is a great protector for your roses.

You know, back in January, we got that, you know, huge snow storm.

I actually had 20 inches of snow added to my garden.

And then we got those really cold temperatures.

I was not worried at all.

Those plants were so insulated from all that snow.

I was so happy that the snow came before the cold temperatures and not the other way around.

There's always opportunity to learn more about roses.

We do have the American Rose Society YouTube channel.

We have a lot of videos on there.

We have magazines, our bimonthly, a lot of opportunities for our members to grow and share information on roses.

In the back of the room, as I said, there are some handbooks available.

There's also a catalog for Edmunds' Roses.

They were kind enough to drop some off.

Anybody heard of Edmunds' Roses before?

A few of you, a few of you.

Do you know that that's really Jung Nursery that owns those Edmund catalogs and those roses, right?

So there's somebody that's in our neighborhood that sells really nice quality bare root roses.

So you can buy them bare root in the winter time, or even still now.

Or once you go to your garden center, they're not gonna have bare root roses there.

Then you're gonna buy them in the containers.

And you can always contact us at rose.org.

Happy to help you with information and questions about roses.

So that's what I have for you today.

I wanna thank you all very much, and now we'll open up for some Q&A.

[audience applauding]