Hard winter on roses.

13 years ago

I have been growing roses for about 15 years. This spring was the worst I have ever seen. There are over 100 roses here in my little yard. ( Been here almost 7 years.) I think I may have completely lost at least 4 roses. I will give them another week or two before I pull them out of the ground.

Is it just me or have others noticed that it was a particularly hard winter on roses and why? My only thought is that there might not have been enough rain for the roses last fall as the canes that I am cutting off are blackened and withered. I do not spray my roses or winter protect, usually only buy hardy roses. We had an average amount of snow and a bit longer than usual cold spell but not without snow cover.

I have filled 20 yard bags with dead wood from my roses. I would like to hear how the winter was on your roses.

Valerie

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Comments (3)

jim1961 Central Pennsylvania Zone 6a
13 years ago
Even our dogwood bushes I've had for 13 years are behind leafing out this year.
Roses have been slow too and we had some Spring freeze damage...
We just got 2 nights of frosts down into the mid to upper 20's on May 11th & 12th...
seil zone 6b MI
13 years ago
And for me I think my roses did great this winter. I did lose 2 in the ground but they were very small to begin with and the fact that the rabbis chewed them up didn't help. And a couple of the seedlings didn't make it either but otherwise everything looks really healthy.

Valerie, did you have a lot of wind this winter? From your description of the canes it sound like they were dehydrated from wind and not from freezing temps.

Things were slow to leaf out here too but that was because it was a really long, cold, cloudy spring. We really didn't get any sunshine and decent weather here until the last couple of weeks. Since then things have just jumped out and I have buds forming everywhere. I've even had a couple of blooms!
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opheliathornvt zone 5
13 years ago
I lost at least 2, probably 3 roses this year, plus some well-established clematis plants (one at least 6 or 7 years old). At least one of the roses was also well established. Several of my other roses, although not dead, really took a hit this winter. It was not extraordinarily cold, but we didn't have much snow, so I wondered if it was too dry for them. Normally, I might expect this if we'd had a really cold spell or two with no snow for insulation, but nothing like that happened, so I'm glad to hear that someone else had an unusual winter (although I'm not glad that you had a bad time, just that maybe it wasn't only me). I also would like to know the cause.