I'm glad u asked this question because I want to know too. I hope someone here could help us out. I just bought a DA Falstaff rose - and I can see several new shoots appearing...in the middle of winter. would those shoots be damaged?
I'm from Australia - and the weather gets very cold at night - temperature dropped down to 6 degree Celsius. We don't have snow or frost here.

It's probably something below zero - I would probably guess around -5 to -10 degrees Fahrenheit to be a fairly typically tender rose if we're talking about cold injury alone. I believe it's been studied over the years, and you could probably answer the question at least in part by scanning through some old ARS articles. One problem with trying to answer the question is we rarely see the injury clearly until after the winter ends and spring warmth has begun. Another problem is, at least where I grew up, we need to winter protect before the ground freezes or snow flies or we won't be able to manipulate the material of choice (earth, mulch, leaves) or want to be outside doing it.

From a northerner's point of view: It takes more sustained cold temperatures to cause winter damage, rather than the occasional dip to 18 or so once in a while.

Many winters we don't go below 0 here, but have many nights in the 10s. The problem is it doesn't warm up much during the day. This can last for sometimes 2 weeks. Then there could be wind chill to factor in.

Like stefanb says, you rarely see the injury until after winter ends and the rose comes out of dormancy. And sometimes canes that appeared undamaged early in the spring end up dying later as they can't support new growth due to winter damage.

Stefan, are you positive that there wouldn't be damage above 0 degrees F. ? There's a point where both the cellular structures burst and a lot of the small growth is frizzled. I guess as a practical matter it rarely happens. Physics probably doesn't allow many dips to -5 and then daytime temps back up in the 50's for several days running. I've experienced many days with 50 degree temperature swings, but at a certain point, entire weather systems shift to a more consistent pattern.

I agree that variables are really the problem. A dip in temps is nothing compared to days with sustained lows and no high above freezing, drying winds or see saw highs and lows with no snow cover.

Cass,

Our warmest one or two winters were around 16 F. There was damage to half-hardened wood and late basals of HTs.

When our winters were zone 6, hardened wood was injured down to the winter protection, and occasionally a tender HT would die. At this time I was planting the graft flush with the surface and mounding, maybe 5" of mound left by spring. I didn't expect any healthy stubs over 8" or so.

Lately our minimums have been around +5. There is heavy cane damage to the tenderer HTs, some cane damage to the hardier ones. I don't find any general tendencies for floribundas to be hardier than HTs.

So I'd say tip-hardy at 18 degrees, cane-hardy at between zero and ten.

When are these temperatures supposed to be occuring? I tend to start seeing damage if winter lows are below around zero. However, that would be single digit temperatures after the roses are as dormant as they are going to get. Also, around here people tend to avoid the notoriously tender HTs.

BTW, over the years I've seen extremely high correlations between that low winter temperature number and the amount of cane damage on roses. Even after the notoriously unusual winters like this past one that has held true.

Yes, I agree with M_G that the minimum temperature is about the most important thing. There should be a specific temperature that would defeat the roses' antifreeze system for whatever degree of dormancy it has arrived at. Holding for two weeks just above that temperature wouldn't do it. Complications would include drying (not a factor here) and uncertain dormancy in variable climates.

jumbojimmy,

New shoots would be injured at -2 or -3 Celsius for most modern roses.

I was really talking about acute death of reasonably mature and somewhat cold-acclimated wood during short periods of cold without any other variables, much like what would happen during a laboratory cold hardiness test, or perhaps during a one-night swing to a fairly low temperature. When we start throwing in things like lack of dormancy, water relations, cold duration, wind effects, etc. some of that same damage can also occur at somewhat higher temperatures, of course. I consider loss of tender, new growth to be a given, and frankly pretty trivial, and generally this would occur far too high on the plant for a northerner's winter protection to have any effect anyway. We don't protect to save the shrub's entire structure in almost any case, but rather to minimize total cane loss or even prevent plant death.

Much new fall growth, as I've observed, is usually fairly tolerant of short periods of cold even through the low teens and upper single digits Fahrenheit. Roses are often one of the last deciduous plants to remain fresh and green late in the year (which also makes them major deer targets in that season, incidentally). However, during extended dips into such cold territory, the new growth will blacken and die, followed shortly by most other foliage. Roses also tend to go from being unharmed to having massive damage over a period of just a few degrees without taking any other variables into account, varying with the individual cold tolerance of any given variety. Adding variables complicates the results and makes it hard to predict much of anything when it comes to getting a rose that isn't fully hardy through the winter.

Roses also tend to go from being unharmed to having massive damage over a period of just a few degrees

This is why we invented the idea of the Hybrid Tea Line. This really does seem to be an extremely small temperature change. It also makes it quite hard to extrapolate hardiness in roses at temperatures you have never personally seen because there is no way to tell just how close to that line you really are. It is also personally frustrating because most of the roses commercially described as hardy to zone 5 seem to really be cane hardy to somewhere slightly below -10F. In an area where summer regrowth can be problematic, so cane hardiness is quite important, this translates into large performance differences between -10°F, the higher end of zone 5, and -15°F, the middle.

When it comes to other variables, most of them aren't issues east of the Appalachians. It's usually safe to say that wind isn't really an issue, and water is, um, plentiful.

But I've grown some HTs here for about 30 years, and they aren't cane hardy to -10 F. Most of the exposed wood is injured at +5 or zero. Maybe roses here are less dormant because of mild spells.

I've never seen one iota of damage with plenty of nights with lows at 18 degrees but the temps have never dipped below that. Yet Michael sees damage to HT's at 16 degrees. Our low temps are never accompanied by wind chill. Wind, if anything, makes it warmer because our lows are a result of sinking cold air. So I think it's safe to speculate that most rose are hardy to 18 degrees in mid-winter.

Tender spring growth is a separate issue. I've seen only minor damage during a hard freeze, say 27 to 28 degrees. How low were the lows during the Great Easter Freeze of '07?

Cane hardiness has to vary by variety. I would expect my rugosas to have never suffer damage and my Teas to be the first to suffer damage. But I'm looking for more generic info - - for a generic tender rose, not a hardy rose.

mad gallica is the only one in my zone who has weighed in so far. For the last several years, we have gone to 0 or a little below, but we had a winter back in the 70's where it was -18 for several days running. -20 would be a worst case scenario for my zone, but bad for almost any rose. When I throw out those numbers, usually that is the low, and it warms up in the daytime, but sometimes not much. Factor in wind chill which they always give now in the weather forecast.

I don't know what I am going to do. Probably do a little to protect my favorite ones and most difficult to replace and let the others sink or swim; i.e, nothing. My new climbers which would be well nigh impossible to replace now, Hettie, a Paul Barden, I don't know how to protect but I will try something, doubt if I will lay the canes down. If I have to take canes down and cover them to protect a rose, I don't want it. And mine are all new but a struggling Harison who got though the first winter last year, I did cover it with some leaves but they blew off.

Growing up, I guess we only had a Peace rose, maybe a couple other HT's. My parents did cover them with leaves, the Peace lasted many years, and our winters were almost always more severe then (40's, 50's early 60's). Another huge climbing rose on the south we did nothing, and it was always fine, tried to ID it, but just can't remember enough about it, will never know now, it's gone.

If I were going to protect a shrub rose or a climber, my inclination would be to make a circular cage out of chicken wire, stake it in the ground with 3 pieces of rebar and fill it with leaves.

Besides buying rose cones, what else is there?

"What is the estimated temperature at which unprotected tender roses suffer serious damage if you're heading toward winter and roses are going dormant?"

... wow talk about asking a hard two pronger. For one your in the acclimation period for a rose (the slippery slope of oops!! that was too cold relative to where I am in the shutting down process) of the roses hardening off for winter ... and what's serious damage ? -9C kills new growth and buds but old wood no problem.

I think it depends on whether you're asking about damage to foliage or canes. I continually wonder about canker, but it is not evident on all roses, just certain ones.
After everything leeafed out here and we had the hard freeze, there was actually very little damage on my roses. Just some fried leaves that got shedded. And I waterd a lot.
I cannot tell you about very cold winters because lately we have very warm winters. I don't know if this helps you Hoov.
I am certainly puzzled about your drastic winter temps. with no damage.

Carla

I've read a lot of the old ARS annual articles and there is a problem with the years when the studies were done. Those were the years when Rose Mosaic Viruses were rampant in the rose industry and (from my garden) rampant RMV (when symptoms show the second year they are in the ground) really makes HTs much more susceptible to cold temps than relatively healthy HTs.
My ideal study would identify the age of the canes that got winter damage (and would differentiate between previous spring/most recent fall canes).
We have gone from believing winter protection is a necessity to only protecting Susan Louise. Our garden includes almost every class of roses. Teas, chinas, noisettes all can handle temps in the teens (F) and even lower if fall was fairly dry. Our greatest winter damage followed a wet summer and fall and winter temps didn't get lower than teens (F).
I do live (Cass' words) "in a climate where roses can suffer winter damage." But my conditions are marginal and each year is a little different. In my area, people who winter protect often have horrific spring canker losses; others who push fall growth may also loose all that growth over winter.
And the late spring dip to 18F for three nights this past Easter killed HTs all across TN (more in Exhibitors' gardens than in mine).
I would go out and winter protect if temps below -5F were forecast to last. (The roses survived my wimpy refusal this past decade to go out and cover when it got down to -5 for one night.)

Michael, the -10°F reference was to so-called hardy shrubs like Bonica and most Kordes roses. Where I see HT damage is around zero.

At one point, I was considering collecting euphemisms for the eastern point where HT damage is expected since most of the classic older books have their own way of putting it. Perhaps the most interesting of those was the idea that sustained highs in the 20's are cold enough to cause damage. Since normal day/night swings seem to be about 25°, that puts the lows around zero.

My Easter Freeze was also 18 F. All new growth on all repeating roses was damaged. No old wood was damaged. I covered the HTs and Fl for two nights.

I refreshed my memory by looking around this morning. After a winter low of +6, the only roses that had to be pruned right to the ground were the virused Elina and the Irish Hopes, which were cankered. The apparently unvirused Elina was pruned to 4-6". (I no longer apply winter protection except to one HT that has its graft partly exposed.) The other fifteen or so HTs and Fls were pruned to 6-12". The only one that had 18" of undamaged canes across the plant was Frederic Mistral, which I pruned to 12" anyway. So there was some damage at +6, but nothing crippling for roses that want to grow in this climate. Being pruned to 6" is crippling for some roses here.

My list of past freeze victims is Royal Highness, Helen Traubel, Pascali, Sutter's Gold, Honor, Evening Star, Mister Lincoln, and Mme Butterfly. All had their grafts covered. A couple of these were in zone 5 winters, Mme Butterfly in a zone 8 winter.

I was especially fond of Helen Traubel, Sutter's Gold, Evening Star, and Mme Butterfly. Boo-hoo.

If the rose were a marginal plant or one that was pruned to knee height and three canes and then started growing lushly, I suppose 18 degrees F in late spring could kill an unprotected and severely pushed budded plant. We simply never have temperatures that cold that late in the season. At worst we see hard freezes in March, which don't amount to a hill of beans for roses.

I'm curious how warm the soils are in that part of the country at that time of year. Our soils heat more slowly, I know for a fact. I can't push growth in April. It either happens genetically for the variety or I can't help it along in the ground. Last part of April is when I start to see a lot of growth. In truth, my spring flush occurs and then much more rapid growth occurs afterwards because soils really heat in June.

Let me repeat: my garden had two bouts of lows between 17 and 18 degrees F, about 4 days each, one in December , one in January. None of my roses suffered any damage, including small newly rooted ownroot roses in pots out of about 400 varieties. So Riku's read is roughly the same as mine - - he said -9 C or roughly 16 degrees F.

I'd still like to hear from anyone whose roses were damaged at 16-18 degrees mid winter, not after spring growth had started.

One thing I'm trying to get at is whether there are other climatic, georgraphic or cultural factors that might explain some winter damage. We know about wind chill. We know that many gardeners engage in fall pruning, for example. This I know about freeze: after every hard freeze, all over the area, inexperienced gardeners immediately go out and assure the death of their cold-damaged plants by cutting off the cold-damaged growth. The nursery industry must pay the mow and blow guys to kill all those plants that would come back from the roots if only they were left to leaf out 4 or 5 months later, undisturbed.

And for the spring freeze, I wonder if someone on the edge of the Big Deep Freeze could report on lows that caused damage but acceptable damage, i.e. burned foliage from which roses recovered acceptably.

What were the temperatures at Easter that killed so many roses in the Midwest?

My hardier repeating roses had all their new growth injured at Easter at 18 degrees but came back to bloom very well, just a bit late. Once blooming roses in full growth suffered slight injury but managed to bloom, slightly sub-par. Some shoots were blind.

Modern bush roses start growing out here in early to mid-March. The first growth buds get killed back once and there may be six inches of growth from the second try when I prune around April 1, or maybe that growth just recently got burnt. This is not correct according to the books that say you prune when roses are just breaking dormancy, but it's what my mentor advised long ago, and it's correct for here. Since there are nutrient resources in the canes, I'd rather have buds breaking up on the winter-damaged canes than down at the base. At Easter, most of my HTs had very little new growth-- little white spurs if anything-- because they were pruned eight days before. With this timing, by the time pruning-forced growth develops, it is reasonably safe from 27-degree freezes. In March, we have a lot of sunny days in the 60s, and the occasional blizzard.

I think you are about right with that 16-degree threshhold.

Once upon a time, I thought I had heard pretty much every bizarre rose culture suggestion out there. Then I was doing an education table with a guy from North Carolina. He seriously suggested running a hose from the hot water tank to the garden to 'warm things up and get them going'. The only thing I could do was stand there with my mouth hanging open.

When we had our disasterous spring freeze a few years sago (low 20°s in early May) it didn't outright kill anything. What happened here was that it set the HTs back far enough that they couldn't recover enough to get through the next winter satisfactorily. I put them out of their misery the next spring, when it looked like the winter/summer growth equilibrium had become something I wasn't willing to put up with.

So what you describe as a spring freeze is just what I think it is: it's a hard freeze and it doesn't have to be in the teens to do major damage because it's affecting tender new growth. It's as much a cascade of factors as the damage itself. Couple damage with cool temperatures afterwards and a lot of rain and I see how disease problems could multiply in the aftermath. In a short growing season region, with the added insult of Japanese beetles (don't they have to be some factor in damaging roses?!), that might do in a weak plant. A trigger happy pruner or a galloping pathogen can really make headway on damaged canes.

Carla, if you meant me and my winter lows, we have temps in the high teens at least every 10 years. It has happened once a decade for 4 decades, always in December. This year we double-dipped and had another low in January. We have lows in the low 20's every year. Low temps are unusual here, so if it hits 18 for a nanosecond, it's the same as 12 hours of 18 degrees in the record books. That's probably another factor.

I wish I had kept records during the great Easter freeze--I'm fuzzy now on details. What I remember is a very mild winter. Don't remember now when I did my spring pruning, but there was nothing very unusual about it. What I do remember is the roses growing great guns when Easter arrived. Then we had several weeks of very cold weather--the coldest we had had all winter, and I do remember many nights in the 18 degree range. After that, the roses refused to grow and many damaged canes were apparent. At that point I used the "white pith" test--prune back a couple inches at a time until I found clear white centers. On a lot of my roses, that was waaaaay back. On a few, it was within several inches of the ground. The roses then started growing again--healthy growth. The few canes I didn't prune back still wouldn't do anything, so several weeks later I checked them out--yup--beige centers. Like the others, when they were pruned back to clear white pith, they started growing.

The roses that had to be severely pruned (few inches from the ground) were all HTs and grandifloras--if I remember correctly. The others--like some of the Austins, for instance, had to be pruned back to about 1-2 ft on the average. Those Austins are supposedly medium size (3-4 ft?) under usual circumstances.

Don't know if that helps with the above discussion or not. Pruning seemed to be the "cure" but it sounds like some of the above posters don't think I should have pruned? I'm confused now.

Kate

Kate, I think berndoodle was talking about pruning off fall and early winter damage before the worst of winter has passed.

On the topic of fall pruning, I was reading about people in Colorado "topping" their plants in fall, and I figured why look at all that yardage of thorny brown stuff all winter, so I went out and cut two or three feet off the tender roses, then in early dormancy. Botrytis cankers developed in every pruning cut and ran a foot or two down the canes. My two conclusions were:

(a) dormant roses aren't able to heal and protect themselves and
(b) North Carolina isn't Colorado.

Kate, don't interpret my comments as criticism of your pruning to removed disease wood. In mild climates, cold damage is attacked and promptly removed well before the plant has a chance to recover and decide if it's going to grow again. Often, cold-damaged growth will actually (a) recover and grow because mild climate gardeners never saw the plant dormant before, and/or (b) protect the plant from a future freeze that might be around the corner. Combined cold damage and disease is a different thing altogether. We can't say everything in these posts, so no wonder you're confused. But thanks for describing what happened during the freeze. It sounds like you confirmed that your roses were in full-bore spring growth mode when the freeze hit.

Michael, I've topped my roses and I've not topped my roses. I don't have to worry about winter protection, so the only reason I do it (usually too late and after-the-fact) is to reduce the mass subject to gale-force winds. But if I lived in a windy and cold climate, I'd be faced with a dilemna.

Is it confusing to distinguish winter protection from protection of lush, fresh spring growth from spring freezes? Am I the only one who notices a huge difference between the two?

The difference is so massive as to leave us wondering what we'd do next year that might work. Once the roses chose to break dormancy, .......what could we do? By the time the freeze hit, everybody had taken winter protection off and some people in zone 7 do winter protect...the winter protection that sat on through the heat and moisture of January and March. And the canker that resulted. But the canes were alive through winter so, short of massive cutting back and burial in fall, what could we do short of digging the roses up and storing them in a huge refrigerator.
And although my Easter damage was bad, I know folks nearby who had much worse damage with major HT losses.

Kate, if you'll go to WeatherUnderground, and enter your zipcode, you'll have access to multiple personal weather stations in your area. Choose one that is both close and has several months of weather history archived. Enter the days around Easter and see how cold your neighbors got and how long their temps were below freezing. Weather underground has personal weather data on an hour by hour record.

Cass, there's zone 9 and zone 9. Yours is much colder than mine. Most winters here we rarely dip into the 20's. In fact, many of my roses don't go dormant in the winter. If we did get ever the temperatures on the teens you describe, I wonder what kind of damage it would do to Marie Pavie in full bloom?

Rosefolly

Rosefolly, it wouldn't seriously hurt your polyanthas if that were to happen. I threw a sheet over Marie Pavie when it was 18 in April and some of the new growth was OK, some was injured, including all the flower buds, the most exposed part of a polyantha. So far I haven't heard of anything being killed at Easter except hybrid teas.

Rosefolly, as you know, my garden is on a latitude of Gregg's but more inland. Our roses get many, many more hours of chill in the winter and are more accordingly much more dormant. There's Zone 9a and 9b. We're in the colder one (9a I think). Temperatures really don't work the way you describe often but rather rachet their way down, forcing dormancy. Plants adapt to that unless they are hopelessly tropical.

As to Marie Pavie, I suspect it would be fine unless you had new, fresh, spring-spurred growth all over the plant. That's one point of this revelation: all fresh growth is hurt well above 18 degrees: it's damaged by a hard freeze. But a dormant rose of the most tender varieties can take cold temperatures well below freezing. Tender roses aren't like lantana or bouganvillea.

Guess I'll chime in on this one, since it has been a subject of primary interest to me sinced I moved to zone 4b from zone 8 in 2001.

I know from my experience in British Columbia, that during one extremely cold winter about 10 years ago all of the 100+ roses that I grew, Austins, Climbers, Hybrid Musks and other miscellaneous, weathered 2 weeks of temperatures as low as -18C (4F) without any winter damage. This cold snap occurred in February and the roses were hardened off and dormant. This included roses such as Gloire de Dijon, Souvenir de la Malmaison, Sombreuil, Buff Beauty and Celine Forrestier, all of which have died even with major coddling here in Ontario.

Winter 04/05 here was brutal with a three week period of lows near -30C (-18F) and highs of near -25C (-10F) in January and February. That winter, I lost about 20 roses even with my usual winter protection, mostly Austin varieties and even one Morden. I grow mainly Austins, Bucks and Ag Canada Roses here.

In the winter of 05/06, with temperatures in January in the -20 to -27C ( 0 to -14F ) at night I had a number of the hardier Austins, Lilian Austin, Redoute, Winchester Cathedral come through with live canes to the snow line without protection. One plant of St. Cecelia came through that winter hardy to the tips.

This last winter was very warm early on followed by normal or slightly colder than normal temperatures in late January and February. I recall that on January 14th, it was plus 14C, and minus 15C for a high two days later. Many of my roses had more damage than the winter before, both protected and not protected. I lost my plant of Lilian Gibson which had weathered the ver cold winter of 04/05 with zero damage unprotected. This could only be due to the fact that she had not hardened off and was badly shocked by the quick drop in temperature over a two day period, followed by sustained cold. She tried to leaf out on a couple of canes and a few new shoots from the crown, but then gave up. Lilian Gibson is normally hardy to zone 3.

So, after 5 winters in zone 4b, it is my observation that many of the shrub roses and climbers that we cold zoners class as tender have a kill point of between -20 and -25C (0 and -10F), if hardened off. A select few of the Austin roses and Buck roses are cane hardy to slightly colder temperatures than this.

I would not try to grow most modern roses without winter protection if winters often have lows below -20C (0F). Of course as alluded to above, if there are sudden freezes when roses are growing, or if the roses are not hardened off when cold temperatures arrive, the whole equasion changes.

I have found Mad Gallica's experience with tender roses particularly interesting over the past 5 years. From what she writes, it sounds like there are far greater temperature fluctuations in Central New York State than here, similar hardiness zone, but I'm several hundred kilometers further north. With the exception of last winter, it gets cold here by late November and generally remains frozen hard until early March. So the roses harden off and stay frozen until spring. There are very few thaw days in December, January and February. So I have found that it appears that I can grow tender roses with winter protection easier than people gardening in a zone 5 climate further south. I have also noted that people such as John W and Anne Cecelia who grow roses in zone 4 Minnesota seem to have similar experiences to me with respect to growing conditions and winter survivial.

So perversely, and annecdotaly, it would seem that it is a little easier to grow tender roses successfully in the more northern areas of zone 5 and in 4b because of the more stable freeze - thaw cycle.

My thoughts for what they are worth.

Cheers,

Rideau Rose Lad

I'll agree with Rideau Rose Lad about that, as someone who grew roses in zone 4 Minnesota. Winter protection itself can be the enemy if the temperatures aren't just so. Sometimes the trick is in keeping them cold.

Zone ratings hardly begin to describe the severity of weather and climate, but unfortunately, our climate is too unstable to really begin describing a fuller set of circumstances in each region - even to the extent that the Swedes do with their zone system. One year on this continent might be nearly the opposite of the next in terms of which plants get damaged, and why. What you do is heap on the winter protection when the temperature starts to drop in October or November, and say a little prayer as you take it off in April. Which isn't very helpful in answering Cass's question, I suppose!

michael, we had temps in eastern Iowa -17 or -18 lows several nights running. I didn't have any roses that mattered in the ground at that time except a baby Harison which I covered with a pot and double plastic bags, maybe would have been ok without, it's tough. I covered a lot of things, pots, clear plastic sheeting, kept me scrambling, but all were saved except for my two newly planted cherry trees which I replaced.

Since I'm a newbie, maybe I'd better rethink my not wanting to winter protect. There's much talk of do you, when, when not, but only one poster mentioned material of choice, soil, mulch, leaves.

Wouldn't any of those get wet during thaw cycles and damage canes? How deep do you cover how much of the rose (do you cut it back?). I'm concluding that cutting back in my zone in the fall may be asking for more trouble.

Same question for the canes of climbers. One I'm inclined not to protect, but Awakening it says you should protect it. I guess I should take heed. I know you lay the canes on the ground. Cover them with what and how deep? I was thinking leaves, plenty of those, topping with chicken wire and weighting it down, will look real nice. Not. But worth it to lessen the chance of having a dead rose.

My sister lives in Minnesota, about 50 mi west of Minneapolis and she told me something I never heard of, I thought it sounded crazy. Some dig their roses partway up and tip them on their sides, can't remember what, if or how she said they covered them. She specifically mentioned her Peace rose and even though she gave it the above treatment, it finally died. It still doesn't make sense. Wouldn't they be better with all the roots left in the ground and then covered with something? Nobody here does that, and our frost-free line is pretty deep, you have to know when digging post holes, think they said 36 inches to get sufficiently below the frost line, not sure how deep the ground freezes, maybe 18 inches in bad winters.

I know that even with warmer winters lately, we are going to see temps of zero and slightly below with bad wind chill at times. Most winters we at least had 10 below for several days running, and one bad winter 18 below, but that is very unusual.

Sorry I'm so full of questions again.

Minnesota tip, it's called. Google Minnesota tip rose. I have a friend who tips her roses into her vegetable garden.

The problem for roses isn't freezing. The ground reaches a temperature no lower than approximately 29 degrees, if I remember correctly. So even though the area of frozen soil goes deeper as the winter is colder and longer, the rose still thinks it's in a technical zone 9b. Of course, you get nearly the same benefit by planting deeply and mounding mulch or soil over the base - even under the worst circumstances, it's still only likely to die down to the ground. This works better in midwestern states because the amputated roses get more heat in spring and rebound faster.

berndoodle, thanks for the enlightening link; if the UM Extension Service advocates it, I guess it's all right then. What a lot of extra work! With your friend, at least the vegetable garden already has tilled soil to dig a trench. They are covering deep, but I can see why, been up there in the winter, so cold and huge piles of snow (used to that somewhat here). Maybe if I want to try a z6 rose, I might do it as an experiment.

stefanb, so it sounds like you do cut the canes back. I wonder when to do it, sounds like it should be soon enough for a callus to form. We don't always know when we are going to get our first hard freeze. I am going to have to fight with myself to do that. Maybe it will even help the roses that didn't do so well.

Mulch over the base sounds like the easiest option and most practical option, I can just spread it out in the spring and will need to replenish mulch anyway.

Thank you for the good info and advice!

No, only if you're going to tip or bury the whole thing would you even consider cutting the canes back (in order to fit the hole). Otherwise, moderate winter injury tends to start at the top and work its way down; the shorter you cut, the quicker the damage will work its way toward the crown.

Sometimes people in the northeast have trouble covering their roses with mulch. Because of the frequency and severity of freezing/thawing during the winter there, a lot of water turns becomes liquid and this liquid moisture helps to compost the canes or create canker problems under the mulch. This happens even in Minnesota (I suspect during late winter/early spring), and is no better - and probably worse - than watching the canes succumb to cold injury. Overall though, the benefits of mounding there tend to outweigh the problems by a fair margin. You may not find that to be the case in your garden.

Thanks, stephan, what I expect is that we have many warm winter days when the sun is out, my front yard garden faces south, and there is no interference from leaves on trees throwing shade. Therefore, there is a lot of freezing thawing in my front yard (my snow tends to melt the fastest in the block, corner lot, lots of sun). When the sun is out, it thaws even below freezing sometimes.

Plus the roses line the sidewalk and that's where I threw the snow when I shovelled; with my snowblower, maybe I can throw it over those areas, it isn't throwing like it should.

So I won't cut any canes back and will wait for spring to prune out damaged ones. Mulch and soil will stay wetter longer than leaves. What to do? What to do? Probably lightly mound and whatever happens, happens. Thought about making circular chickenwire cages, secure them with rebar posts and fill with leaves, too much work and an eyesore.

Anybody use rose cones? Those are an eyesore, too. Before I started all this, people warned me about planting there and some of the difficulties.

I'll think about it, glad this came up now. There are people down the block who grow roses sited similarly to mine vis a vis the sun. Maybe I'll check out what they do. They aren't OGR's, or Austins, look like HT's or modern roses to me, they've been there for a few years now.

Aliska,

I'm not zone 5, but I have some experience with mounding. Where there is concern for canker, put the protection on late and take it off early. Most of your roses, Austins and things, are cane hardy to zero or below (Stefan suggested -5). You can put it on when zero threatens and take it off when zero is only a remote possibility. In that interval, canker is not so likely to develop. There is not much biological activity when temps are below 40, and remember, it stays colder under the mound than at the surface. When I used to mound HTs I was uncertain about when to remove the mound. I had less canker when I did so at crocus time, but if I left it on until pruning time, it would protect some basal shoots, and maybe the canes are injured already anyway. Now that I don't mound anymore, I don't get those early basals, but I get less canker. And you learn that some varieties canker while others in the same conditions do not, so you can treat them differently.

Mike_Rivers grows Austins in zone 5 MI with no protection and with the expectation that he will prune to the ground. Saving 6" stubs helps the plant start a little faster, but it's not a big deal.

michael, you are a wonderful help. We don't dip to zero until around Christmas or January, sometimes later, Feb can be awful. So if I do any covering, will probably do it mid Dec. I don't care for the idea of putting it on and taking it off again, especially too early although it is warmer to work then. Remember, mine WILL be covered with snow, too, and not from clearing the walk, and we could have ice storms. Again. Don't know how they affect roses, tend to think not as bad as sitting under wet stuff half the winter.

Maybe I'll do like Mike_Rivers. Let Darwin's law decide.

When does he prune to the ground (or save canes that are salvageable), no sense in pruning further that you have to, spring I assume? Maybe the rose will grow shaplier if I prune all to the same level. Even if we have snow after that (it sometimes happens in late spring, usually melts off fast then) and even with that Easter freeze, it's just gotten in the teens. I think I made much ado about nothing covering and uncovering, etc., like I did with other new plants, not roses. Don't see anything dead around here. I think I saved my bleeding heart, that's about it.

So we've gone through the pro's and con's, and in the end, maybe I'll just let Darwin's law take over and start worrying about something else. I don't like throwing money away for nothing, but rather than fuss so much to where it's no longer enjoyable, easier to replace a couple roses. I don't think I'm going to like a couple of them anyway.

Oh, I will give Awakening TLC though. I thought I wasn't going to like it when I saw the first bloom, but then the next one and photos, I see great potential in having two of those.

I'm preoccupied because I bought a tiller, and wonder if I've bit off more than I can chew. We shall see.

As long as your protective material of choice is in a thawed and/or dry state, you should be fine putting it on late - of course, I'm not quite sure what happens if you end up having to mulch over the top of snow.

I've found that plain old soil mounded over the base of the plant is far superior to mulch in terms of avoiding canker - and it doesn't seem to matter much if it gets wet. Perhaps there are beneficial microbes there that help keep the canker-causing organisms in check. I do know that no case of canker has ever extended below the natural soil line for any rose I've ever personally grown or seen.

Pruning is generally done when there is enough bud swelling and growth going on to really tell what wood is dead or damaged beyond functionality. Don't worry about pruning evenly unless you have the luxury of quite a bit of live wood all over the place - otherwise you're going to end up with nothing but nubbins for roses each spring, and winter protection is quite unnecessary to achieve a mediocre result like that. For roses that bloom on old wood, this would be especially devastating; you should find yourself generally inclined to leave most of what survives on a once-bloomer or any rose that blooms best on old wood. I would usually leave most of what survives on any rose, and if it ends up lop-sided, gently encourage it to fill itself back in with fertilizer and whispered words of love.

if your worried and not sure what I would do, but being a beginner it may or may not work, make a rose tent with fencing and burlap, and when you think it might get to cold put it on overnight, and take off during the heating of the day just place it over it remove it, if you don't tie it down or hammer it done with stakes or something it only takes a second.

I am guessing since your zone 9 you need not worry to much, if some of the canes die, your plant itself will survive, it is better to protect as needed then to permanently protect or bury or whatever and risk overheating and serious fungal diseases as a result when the days are warm and nights cool and the rose is covered.

UNless you are trying to get tall climbers and have a very tender variety, most of the cane dieback will be minimal.

most climbers and floribundas, not sure about ht, are pretty tough up to zone 7 I believe with minimal protection, and some protection 6 and 5 and serious protection zone 4 and lower.

the only way to know for sure is experiement with the varieties you have and see what happens. I have several climbing varieties that the canes I didn't protect, the plant survived but the canes didn't, but we had an extra cold winter where we were 20 below zero wind chill which in my area is unusual.

in fact up the street at the post office there is a butterfly bush that survived many years and bloomed beautifully for many years without any protection but because of the unusual cold it died.

I was looking at it this year and it didn't even have a leaf and I felt bad since it was so pretty and the butterflies loved it.

So as you can see there are not hard and fast rules. it is best to overprotect in norther zones and southern zones use caution as covering roses and it gets warmish during the day you get disease big time. by the way, correct me if I am wrong, if your soil never freezes you probably dont' need to protect anything except the most tender varieties.

hopes this helps.

RR