Anyone know anything about roses?

[lavender mom]

The previous owners of our house moved out not quite two years ago. When they left, they took several rose bushes with them. (It was part of the sales agreement.) In all the places where there had been rose bushes, I have little "rose twigs" growing out of the ground. Are these going to turn into bushes? Can I turn them into bushes? I want rose bushes! :lol In fact, I bought some of the ones they sell at Costco and was going to plant them where the old owners had their bushes until I noticed these old "sprigs" coming up out of the ground and now I'm not sure what to do! :shrug Should I just cut back the sprigs and start fresh with my Costco roses?

[Gretchen]

They probably will turn into bushes, but they may or may not be bushes you want. Where do you live?

Some roses are planted on their own roots (esp. older varieties of roses in colder climates). If that's the case, the roses that come back would be worth keeping.

However, many (most) roses are grafted onto a rootstock, especially Hybrid Teas. Dr. Huey is used frequently in cold climates, and Fortuniata (sp?) and others are used in warmer places. Basically this means that the plant is made up of 2 varieties - one that forms the root system below the ground and the other that grows/blooms above ground. The plants that are common rootstocks are chosen because of their ability to grow a strong root system, resistance to disease, cold hardiness, etc. but generally are pretty non-descript rose plants when they get above the surface.

I live in a colder climate, so I only have experience with Dr. Huey. It's a red flowered, once blooming climber. If it were coming up in my yard, I'd use RoundUp on it and plant something different.

Gretchen

[lavender mom]

Hmmm, here's some more info:

I live in the Pacific Northwest, so I dont think that would be consider a warm place. :shrug

The previous owners only lived here for 3 years and the reason they took the rose bushes with them were that they belonged to her grandmother, so I guess that makes them old. I'm friends with the previous owners, so I could find out what the roses were if that would be helpful.

I am so helpless when it comes to gardening! :rolleyes2 :giggle I guess it might make more sense just to get rid of the sprigs and go with my "sure things" from Costco. I think I might get to real flowers more quickly that way, than from the little sprigs that are coming up out of the ground.

[katiekind]

Do you have room to leave the sprigs AND plant your roses? If you do have room, it might be fun to do that, just to see what happens, maybe you would have a pleasant surprise.

Gretchen, you sound like an experienced rose grower! I am on my fourth or fifth year of being fascinated by roses...my rose obsession started with one rose that I put in when a tree came down in a storm and opened up a small area of full sun in my back yard. In order to learn more about that particular rose variety, I googled it and found a rose growers' forum on the internet. Those people were crazy! But they post pictures all the time of their beautiful roses and that method of persuasion plus my own latent gardening interest nurtured some craziness of my own. Now I have 30 roses of various kinds tucked here and there in my yard--mostly Austin and shrub roses. Shade continues to be a problem for me, we have a lot of trees and our neighbors have huge trees all along the fence line between our two yards. I've convinced my husband to cut down a few trees which has opened up some more full sun, and this year I put a small rose garden in my front yard as well. I'm very excited because a big full sun area opened up along the south side of my house. But now I'm out of gardening money for the time being. But I can still dream about what will go there, and that's at least half the fun.

Last year and this year I am trying my hand at hybrid tea roses.

Here's some pictures of my roses from last year: http://katiekind.wordpress.com/garden/

[lavender mom]

Kathy, your garden looks so cool! That's what I want! I want to be able to walk out into my yard when it's rose season and get a vase full of roses for free!

See, I don't even know enough about roses to know that full sun is important. That's why I was just going to plant these new roses where the old owners had theirs. I figured these places must be good rose places. :giggle I'm not sure if I have room to leave the sprigs or not. :think My yard is pretty big, but it is also pretty shady. We have a ton of evergreen trees everywhere.

[katiekind]

Roses bloom better and resist disease better when they are in full sun, which, for roses, is 6 hours a day of sun. Now, in my yard, very few of my roses are lucky enough to get 6 hours of sun, except maybe in the early spring before the trees leaf out. I think (and hope) that most of my roses get 4 hours of sun.

Another thing to know about roses is that they are "heavy feeders". They will love you to death if you give them plenty of compost and fertilizer. You can buy bags of compost for cheap, by the way. I didn't know that when I first started my rose growing adventures.

When you plant your new roses, dig a deep and wide hole, put back some of the dirt and mix a good amount of compost in with it, then set your rose in, fill the hole back up, water well. Oh, and you can mix some bone meal into the compost/dirt mix too if you want.

PS--tell me what varieties you bought!!!!