As a rule snowcover is a good insulator for the roses. I have had 5' drifts over mine and this year we have had a lot of snow. My plants are fine. The early freezes killed the tops to the mulch line. But under that everything is ok.
I use wood mulch I get from a tree company. I've been using it for years, and I have none to very little winter kill. The plants that did die were weak anyway!
I always say: if a plant is healthy going into winter it will come out of winter healthy.

Some people have wooden 'A' frames over particularly vulnerable plants. Typically these are evergreens under house eaves. There is a specific place on the lee side of my garage where a large snow drift often occurs. Anything shrubby there invariably gets a lot of damage during a snowy winter. In that particular case, the easy solution is to just remember to only plant perennials there.

Strictly speaking, it isn't the snow that's the problem. The snow melts, refreezes into ice, and the ice does the damage. So shovelling light, fluffy snow off vulnerable plants is a solution. Serious mechanical protection, like the plywood 'A' frames is a solution. Biting the bullet and cutting out the damage and hoping it doesn't happen too often may be your solution.

This isn't a problem we particularly see with roses since they don't grow that big. I've lost a small outer cane here and there. Quadra lost a big cane in January, but it can afford it.

Thanks Dan and MadGallica:

I fear it may be true that his roses were not the strongest. But I am not ready to give up on them. I promised too keep caring for them until they don't produce anything and they have been good little bloomers over the past couple of years.

I'm going to ponder the 'A' frame solution. I'm almost afraid to see what is left of these roses after the snow finishes melting:( Maybe a wooden frame as you suggest MGallica or perhaps another small tomato cage.

Kate

We are in the same boat as you, except we're still under heavy snowcover..it melted a teeny bit the other day only to be followed by a snowstorm last night, and its all back. I haven't seen my backyard since about the end of January. I have only lost the thin tops of the canes, which I would have pruned anyways, and I think that was from a rabbit jumping right on it and possibly trying to have some lunch(the footprints showed it went on a bit of a run through the yard...leaving little "presents" RIGHT on top of my Tamora). Where my rose is situated, there is no drifting snow, it was evenly distributed around it so I think thats why there hasn't been a problem.

I don't worry much about cane breakage. Most the roses will be pruned to the ground in the spring anyway. The snow has actually been good insulation for the roses since I decided not to winter protect this year. But right now I can't tell what damage there might be as we still have about a foot or two of snow on the ground.

Same here - I don't usually have to worry about cane breakage because my spring pruning is regularly quite severe. OTOH, with the large hardy roses like the Explorers I may occasionally loose a cane to weight of drifting snow and/or ice, but not too often and certainly not often enough to warrant wooden tee pees for them. But I can imagine that in California, your roses grow so much bigger than ours that an odd heavy wet snow could smash some of them down. I guess you could do the A-frame over the top, or stake and tie them, or just bundle the canes together with twine which would keep most of them from being pulled over too far and being torn away.

Then again, I'm also imagining that with the length of your growing season out there, any breakage could easily be regenerated by a healthy rose. I'll bet with good care your DH's favorite roses will soon be full and blooming again. Things happen in nature; we can't protect our gardens from it all so don't feel guilty about these roses. Even roses pruned to the ground will grow again and bloom. Really - I have proof every year!

Thanks artsygirl, athenainwi and anne. You are right. I'm probably having a meltdown unnecessarily. Maybe it's because where we are roses don't die back to the ground so that is uncharted territory for us.

For sure I will take steps next year. I like the sound of tying canes together to keep them more secure and/or staking. My question is how come my least favorite rose which is Blaze didn't get slapped around by Mother Nature this winter instead?:)

Kate

Kate, I kept thinking you would send some snow :-)
We will probably have ours in April. I hope to see some pictures of your roses soon.

Carla

I can understand your worry, Kate. Your not used to starting from scratch each year like we are, but don't despair, they really do grow right back.

I use the stake and tie method for any of my taller roses that will have canes that go above the mulching. Alot of those are in pots anyway so I put a stake in the center and corral all the canes with twine and secure it to the stake. I did do a few of the ground roses this way also, like the Austins that get tall here quickly. Besides preotecting them from snow weight it also helps protect from wind damage.

Thank goodness I no longer have to deal with Sierra cement. Even the sloppy snow we get in early fall and late spring doesn't compare to it. Just thinking about the stuff makes me glad I didn't have many roses when I lived in Tahoe. I didn't tie them back then but would today. I just shoveled snow around and underneath the first few snowfalls to provide some kind of support. The first few snowfalls were usually the ones that broke canes. That sticky cement would stick to foliage and flatten everything. Makes me appreciate the powder we usually get here in Montana :)

Thanks everyone.

Carla you are ever so welcome to some of ours! Stop by the house this weekend and by all means miss bring your ice chest with you. Plenty of snow to go around:)

Seil I like your method. Never year I will be emulating you. Appreciate that.

Dave you feel my pain! When the snow first began to melt I went out with a good pair of gloves with the thought of pulling back snow and seeing the damage to those roses. Could not budge it. I did not want to make the breakage problem worse by getting in there with a shovel so I simply had to wait. It is exactly like cement.

Alright I feel more prepared for next year now. Thank you folks.

Kate

I laughed at the oldtimers that called it Sierra cement.... it only took about half a winter to realize why they called it that :) LOL, it even gets stronger the longer it 'cures'.

Before I lost the use of my left arm I tied the canes together on all my roses exposed to snow and ice. The resulting bunch of canes formed a very strong bundle that wouldn't bend unless a car was driven over it. Another thing to do is to cut the very long canes back in the fall to a stiffer, thicker portion, in my case that was usually 3 feet or so. It's usually the longer flexible canes that are most likely to get damaged

Thank you Dave and Karl.

Karl may I just use the green twine that I use in the garden for everything else? In my experience that can make it through one winter without falling apart.

Kate

I used to use carpenter's stringline to tie up the roses. It is small diameter and wears into the canes. I figured it wasn't a problem since the canes were always dead that high and get pruned off. You know it is coming... we had a mild winter and canes were alive above the tie point. I had to prune down to where the canes had been tied. I've used three-sixteenths rope since then. I have a lot of that around from work. Smaller diameter than that would work. Just don't use something as small as stringline. It will chafe the canes.

Thank you Dave!

Kate

A picture from this weekend of one of the roses I was sniveling about being so ravaged by last winter.

I'm thinking now that maybe I initially showed our Digger (Dave) a tricky picture of these roses leading to the identification of them being 'Perfect Moments'. I learned recently that these roses were propagated by a neighbor from years back and given to lots of people around town. I'm still not sure but they are pretty. Anyway for those who said be patient, it will grow back, you were right:)

Thanks.

Kate

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