Oh Nik I am so sorry, but it is amazing how resilient roses can be. I bet they just bounce back.
At least you know they won't be short of water for a while.
I have experienced storms like that, in other parts of Crete, but not so far on my own garden.
The worst and most damaging weather, here, so far, are the strong, southerly gales out of Libya, North Africa. They are hot and strong and full of rubbish. So we nicknamed them Gaddafis. Even though he is no longer around, the name has stuck.
Daisy

So sorry. I hate when that happens. My roses haven't flushed yet, but we had a bad storm last week and two of my climbers were knocked down off their wire and are basically laying on the ground. I'll probably just let them bloom like that and then cut them back after the first flush.

Not enough rain, too much rain, it's always something.

I can't even imagine 5 inches of rain in an hour when here it's more like what it rained all year. I'm sorry about that happening now, Nik, but hopefully that much rain will encourage your roses to grow and bloom a lot sooner than expected. I was immensely thrilled when we had about a quarter of an inch two days ago (or maybe less) because it did perk up everything. Of course in a few days they're predicting 92 degrees so that will desiccate everything again. Darn weather!

Ingrid

When I lived in S.E.Florida, we had rain like that 2 or 3 times a week during the summer. To me it was part of growing roses. Look at it like this. At least you are going to have some roses soon. I had a late hard freeze and it just about wiped out all of my spring flush. Out of 60+ roses, I might have 5 or 6 that will bloom in a couple of weeks. The rest will have to wait until June or July.

We didn't have 5 inches of rain, we had about one. But this came in these short bursts which reached a rate of 5"/hour according to the weather station which is a short distance from were I live. Many blooming canes have been destroyed by the weight of the water, my garden is covered in rose petals and I'm sure many of the fatter buds will ball and fail to open. But I shouldn't complain when I saw in the news that in places the whole olive production was destroyed by hale that this same storm brought as olive trees are blooming around here and there also has been significant damage to grapevines. People try to make a living out of these and in an hour or so everything went..
Nik

It is discouraging when that kind of thing happens. I remember one year in the U.S. when we got a rain like that. I was driving on the interstate at the time and the rain came down so hard you couldn't see the lines on the road. It destroyed the entire spring flush, which, since, a good portion of the roses were once bloomers, meant most of mine were done for the year. I didn't get much roses to speak of until fall.
The last two years we've lost the crop of our massive, productive cherry tree to hail, and most of the other fruit as well. This year disease is rampant from all the rain, with the non-winter possibly helping.
Spring is still beautiful, however. I hope you have lots of pretty things to look at until the next flush comes along.
Melissa

Nik, I am new to the forum. I live in the USA on the Central Oregon Coast. Last week end we went to Portland. We heard about hail in the suburbs of Portland...and hoped the hail did not reach the beach where we live. Upon our return home last night, I saw piles of hail that remained on the ground. Our rose leaves really look shredded. Some of the newest leaves look like mush. We get some hail here occasionally, but I have not seen leaf damage like this. One rose bush had our first flower of the season and it was tucked down in the bush. It looks good. I had just planted a one gallon Austin, Mary Rose, with a bud just opening, and that flower did not have any damage at all. We were fortunate, our roses are still in mostly tight bud stage and seem to be fine. I am so sorry you had so much damage.

This post was edited by barbjo on Tue, Apr 29, 14 at 3:46