I have not had luck planting roses in the fall, so I don’t try it anymore. I always order my roses in the winter and plant them in the spring. In the Midwest, fall is usually time to put the rosebushes to bed. The manner most used is to cut the canes to about a foot high, mound up soil around them, cover with cones, and hope for the best. The trick with all this is to not uncover the roses too fast or too soon in the spring.
All that is a tremendous amount of work, but that is the traditional way to handle rosebeds here in Ohio. For the hardier shrub roses all is left alone til spring, when the old canes are cut away.
This year my William Baffin shrub rose did not thrive well. It didn’t ever truly recover from the overly wet conditions of 2004 spring. I am going to trim it down quite hard, cultivate and mulch around it for wintertime, and look for revival in the spring. Doesn’t that have a great sound to it? Revival in the Spring!
I could make that my personal motto.
Anyway, what I have done for the autumn is to rework my rose pages in the garden site of my webpage, Ilona’s Reflecting Pool. Long, long overdue, and if you would like to see the results I have two growing pages: Roses 1 and Roses 2. There is a collection of quotes and poetry in the Rosepoems page.
I also have an Autumn Garden tips page.
Enjoy!
