Roundup comes to mind.... ;-)

flamethrower?

If you apply 3X concentrated urine with 1 tbs. of table salt added to the bottom 1/4 of the bush (1/5 if it's a very large bush), you will no longer have any problems with suckers.

Sounds like too much trouble to keep in bounds. I would get rid of it (not by sharing). Even after digging up you will probably still have an occasional sucker sprout up so be vigilant.

Does it have any other desirable chaacteristics besides being fragrant? Is it otherwise worth keeping??

Rugosa Alba suckers like your rose so I finally dug a trench around it and put in a circle of that plastic stuff that is supposed to keep grass out of flower beds. It is about 6" wide and seems to be able to block suckers as it has stopped Alba from spreading.

I've seen posted a few times that urine cures many things by krazee4rozez. How exactly does it work....I understand the fertilizing characteristics (nitrogen), but how does it prevent suckers? Just curious, and truth be told skeptical.

I will tell you - when you provide roses with the optimal nutrition and the goodness mother Earth intended, roses no longer do things like sucker out, succumb to illnesses, halt blooming, drop their petals, attract pests or discolor.

It's as simple as that!

There is also something call a root barrier that helps keep trees from breaking you driveway etc. It is available in panels or rolls, 18 or 24 inches deep. Sometimes big stores have it, but I found mine at a landscape supply. If the roses are well established and you like them, I would keep them.

Why would you work so hard unless you have a burning desire to keep this rose? I would be rid of it the easiest way possible. I have a neighbour with a honey suckle that suckers every where and I like the flame thrower idea very much. Alas, all I can do is destroy the suckers in my yard. Sigh

I agree I would only go to the trouble if I really wanted to keep it.

After much internal debate, and considering all your comments, I have decided to only keep one of the them.
ok... maybe two lol

The original reason I liked them is because they are disease resistant and when I was a beginning gardener I didn't have much luck with roses. I did not realize my mistake until it was too late.
Luckily, the suckers I have already shared with other gardeners did not survive the transplant process.
However, in my yard I managed to transplant several--- so now I have my work cut out for me.

I will be hacking out roses along with creeping bellflower forever-- or until I move to get away from them lol
thanks for listening.

THIS creeping bellflower???

Oh, you poor thing!! (I have it, too! There are some azaleas at the front of my townhouse I'm dying to move somewhere shadier so they actually become worthwhile shrubs (they're Mothers Day, a dynamite azalea!), but I can't because that dratted weed is all intermingled with them. If I move them anywhere else on the property I'll just spread that cursed hyper-aggressive weed with the deceptively pretty flowers!)

Make sure you add a dependable barrier to contain future runners. One of the unfortunate things about roses is that they really are brambles. Growing an aggressive one is not unlike growing mint in your garden. :-)

I did a double take on that advice, too. All "synthetic" fertilizers are salts, but some salts are useful and others are not. Table salt (sodium chloride) is NOT helpful to plants. In the ground the sodium and chlorine atoms separate from each other and plant roots take up that sodium in preference to what they actually need - potassium.

The more table salt you add to the ground around a plant the less able it becomes to take up the potassium it actually requires to grow well.

(Last I knew no one had ever found a physiological function in a plant where the plant used sodium. If that's still true that's one of the big differences between plants and animals. Many mammals at least have a true physiological need for at least some sodium, but apparently plants, or garden plants and crops anyway, have no need for it.)

Long ago while watching the movie Patton I noted that in a scene where General Patton was visiting the ruins of Carthage he commented that the Romans, the Carthaginians' bitter enemies, after finally conquering the city proceeded to "salt" the Carthaginians' fields so that they could no longer grow any crops. (Apparently the Romans' goal was to destroy and depopulate the city altogether.)

Increasing concentrations of salt are also probably the greatest challenge to growing crops in a desert soil. As you steadily water the crops, the quantities of salt in the soil and irrigation water gradually increase until it becomes impossible to grow anything.

No, adding sodium chloride to the ground around a plant is not a good idea.

1-Super Soaker water gun
1-1/2 gallon of gasoline
1-popsicle stick
1-cotton ball soaked in kerosene

Attach the cotton ball over the popsickle stick, light it, fill water gun with petrol, point and aim at desired target. :)

makeshift flamethrower

Unless the petrol melts the gun first!

LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!

That's what I was thinking.. until the heat of the fire melts the gun and I end up with third degree burns from the melting plastic on my hands LOL.

OR I'd set the whole garden on fire and the fire department would need to come and put it out and I'd lose everything BUT the darn rose/bellflower I MEANT to kill.
(however I do confess to trying my husbands little torch he uses on cars--- I keep meaning to find an accelerant first, but I'm kinda concerned about burning my house down lol)

Yes, York THAT bellflower. I despise it. Words can not express how much.
The funny thing is I saw a flower vendor today at the local Farmers Market selling them in a cut flower arrangement.
I read somewhere that the entire plant is edible and delicious but I'm afraid to try it. I am convinced that someday one of them is going to say "feed me" (like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors) and that's the day I'm putting my house on the market. lol but I'd be afraid to take any of my plants in fear that I'd take just one of the seeds with me.
Its a shame that its such a pretty plant--- such cute little blossoms. It just shows you that you can't judge a book by its cover or a plant by its blooms.

if you need me I'll be in the garden with a machette' tomorrow...happy hacking :)

It's a rose. It's a bramble. They sucker to varying degrees according to the species (or to the hybrid's genetic inheritance from species).

Adding salt just slows it down because you've damaged the soil, and if the gardener is contending with Rosa rugosa the salt probably won't make any difference to its suckering at all.

That rose suckers in beach sand just a little above the high tide mark!

I've considered table salt where the creeping bellflower is... but the only salt I would ever use in the rest of my garden has the word Epsom in front of it.

Table salt is reserved for my fresh tomatoes.

I've seen posted a few times that urine cures many things by krazee4rozez. How exactly does it work....I understand the fertilizing characteristics (nitrogen), but how does it prevent suckers? Just curious, and truth be told skeptical.

njrose - it doesn't. What exactly is wrong with suckers? Nothing at all except that we don't like them. However, they are completely natural and many plants produce them as a way to spread. In fact, some raspberry growers want them and the plants are known as having good or bad suckers. So stating that putting urine on the rose will prevent suckers is a little like saying that it will make the rose face your house so you can see it easier, or will change it to the kind of pink that you prefer. In other words, somehow it will discern your personal preferences and accommodate itself to them.

Moreover, if the regimen suggested by Krazee were correct, logic would tell us that you'd end up with MORE suckers rather than fewer because after all, they are completely natural and beneficial to the plant and you've boosted it's vigor. So clearly he or she has no idea.

And anybody who tells you to put salt in the soil is not playing with a full deck. When Agamemnon was tying to get Odysseus to come fight in Troy, Odysseus tried to act crazy (Krazee?) by hitching up his ox to plow his field and sowing salt, which of course destroys the fertility of the soil.

When the Romans wanted to be sure that their enemies would never rise again, they salted their fields after burning the crops.

When the Russians retreated from Napoleon, they salted the fields so that the French could find no food.