The roses have been in boxes for weeks. I'd soak them for a few days minimum to try to hydrate them as much as possible. And keep them in side while they are soaking. If it's that cold outside, you may want to pot them up until it warms up enough. Otherwise they will be damaged by the cold since the have new growth on them.

Buford's advice is exactly what I'd do. I had about 42 bareroots to plant in January of '06, and was really slow at it because I had shingles at the time and was working alone on the planting. I left them in buckets for maybe 6 or 7 days and did not lose even one plant.

Jerome

Jeff, I would recommend that you break off that growth that has begun to sprout.

Jeri

I saw these at my local Costco and considered them but I still have 8 roses I have not yet planted from this past summer so the guilt got the best of me. Are yours grafted or own root?

Thank you all for the advice! I will break off the new growth, soak the plants for a few days inside and pot them up. I checked the plants and they are own-root roses. I have run across posts on this board mentioning success with the Costco J & P Austin bareroot roses, so I decided to give them a try.

Jeff

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone losing a bare root while it's been soaking. In fact, I've had them break dormancy while being soaked.

As long as you change the water every few days and keep them out of the sun, but not in freezing cold weather. I think they like it!

The garage is a nice place to keep them in the meantime. Its interesting to me that roses, which love good drainage can sit around soaking in a bucket of water, and actually like it!! I get the part about their dehydration, and needing to replenish- but days? The bucket must aerate well given its small size with good surface area.

Actually, I have heard of cases where someone forgot roses put to soak, and found them a couple of MONTHS later, growing, still in the tub of water.
I would suggest -- Don't Try This At Home.

Jeri

Jeri,
I once hold two roses from Pickering in water in trash can on my deck over the winter. They were MIP and RdV. I just got them when I had flu and then the ground became frozen and then something else, etc. There were multiple freezes and thaws, our weather is usually like a roller coaster. I got them in November and planted them in March. I never changed water, but I added some. They had plenty of thin feeder roots when I finally had a chance to plant them. Both these roses are still in my garden. They are more then 5 year old, became monsters is size and bloom their heads off for me every spring.
Olga

I once soaked a bunch of bare roots in a huge tub..when I finally got around to dumping the water out 3 months later there was Duc de Guiche on the bottom-it had been completely under water all that time. I planted it anyway and it has thrived. I would not suggest this though.

patricia

An extrapolation of Patricia's drowning 'technique'. You might want to put plastic loosely over the canes, just to keep the humidity up.
And I just planted an Austin from the Pickering sale (last May) that had been soaking since then. (Maybe dog slobber is an additive as the dog also drank out of the bucket.)
Do prune off any already dead canes before you plant.

I think the difference between soaking and being in wet soil is oxygen. I the the roots underground in wet soil don't get enough.

The soaking for days is for this reason. The roses are dormant so they may not absorb any water for awhile. That could be hours or days. As you've heard, soaking for days will not harm the rose, so why not? The longest I've ever done it was 2 weeks. And I've had much more success with bare roots after I started soaking for days rather than 24 hours as the basic instructions usually say.

You raise an interesting question. It is a wonderment that bareroots will smother in wet soil and yet live in a bucket of water for months. I can attest to the fact that they cannot live indefinitely in a bucket of water, especially once they break dormancy.

There are (minimum) two schools of thought regarding this issue.

I plead guilty to have roses soaked in mudded water for days; once they were in water close to 2 weeks. They did OK, no harm done. However, when I talked to Palatine once about their roses having been in water for about a week because it was too cold to plant, they were alarmed and they said that it wasn't a good idea because the roots needed oxygen that they couldnÂt get if were immersed in water for too long.

And then there is my standard technique for dealing with a lot of baby roses in pots during a rainless spell. Put them in a baby pool for the summer, and put some water in it a couple of times a week. I don't know how many times I've read that you can't do that, but since the roses don't know how to read, they obviously don't know that either. The interesting part is that they are usually in the baby pool with several other types of plants - tomatoes, peppers, rosemary, any new purchases that haven't been planted yet - and the roses always are the last to complain if it starts raining and I forget to get things out of the pool. While I've lost roses to forgetting to water, I have yet to lose one to drowning, and believe me I've tried. The current limit pushing is Alain Blanchard in the swamp. The swamp last dried out in the 1960's.