If you don't freeze and stay frozen, then there is the distinct possibility of anything mounded around the rose acting as thousands of little sponges holding cold wetness against the canes. So instead of having problems with cold, you have problems with canker. In my climate, which isn't too far from yours, I have yet to find a material that doesn't hold water and cause cane problems. However, I'm still waiting on getting my DH's old, ripped polypropelene running shirts. I also haven't gotten around to building tiny little thatched structures, but if anybody knows of good instructions on how to do that, I may be willing to try. Let's just say that none of the remotely 'normal' materials have worked here.

The materials trick is to find something that can help when it's cold, but not hurt when it's warm and wet. By far the big winner is snow, and if you get reliable snow cover, then it is going to be hard to beat doing nothing.

The freezing/ thawing effect hasn't seemed to hurt these roses much (so far) with no winter protection used.
But, the winter winds get terrible here at times and that's why I was just going to place the burlap around each rose, 12"-18" away from them, thought maybe it would help alittle with the wind?

Is there anyway to keep canes hydrated in the winter? Other then wrapping them up with leaves ect?

JIM

If you had no trouble last winter why do you want to get complicated? The only reason I can think of is that maybe you had a mild winter last year. If last year was normal I would not make more trouble for yourself.

I had baby bands come through a brutal winter just fine last year, with wicked winds and ridiculous lows. As a matter of fact, the only two roses I lost last winter were ones I expected to lose, since they were "reach roses," hybrid teas that I wanted to work out, lol!

LOL... on getting complicated greenhaven. I guess reading articles on overwintering and all that good stuff has made me alittle nervous...LOL

Usually I just water them real well before the ground freezes and let them go at that.

JIM

I wrap my roses with burlap--sometimes I tie them up with jute first if they are big. For small roses I'll pound one or more stakes near the rose and wrap the burlap around everything. I used to fill the burlap with mulch, but have found that they do just as well with just the burlap. The burlap keeps the canes out of the sun--one of the signals plants use to leaf out--I don't want them to leaf out too early--buds that leaf out in mid winter don't make it. It also protects them from drying winter wind.

For tender plants I will mount real soil around the canes--or at least soil with a lot of clay content to protect the roses.

I find winter protection helps--I grow dozens of HTs yet rarely lose a plant to winter in a climate that routine goes down below zero Fahrenheit each winter. I can't get too fancy either--not with 150+ roses.

I totally understand where you are coming from, Jim. I guess the difference bewteen you and me is that I want it to be as easy as possible on me, this journey called rose-growing. If it makes you feel better to protect, then by all means do so.

But, see, zack lau does it because he grows tender roses. If you are growing hardy roses then you have no need to make more work for yourself. If you are not sure, then better to err on the caution side. But me, (just me, now,)I want to grow roses that I don't have to take such pains to protect, so I am of the "If they make it, they make it; if they don't, they don't" mindset. Someday I want to have a bed of more tender roses, specifically for cutting and sharing. I plan to group them together for ease of protection come winter.

This thread is "chilling"...sorry, couldn't resist! Here we are in August, already dreading the long, cold, dreary days of winter! I've been careful to order hardy roses, and am hoping that most will survive with minor help...but Buck roses are beginning to be more and more inviting! I have several already...and, no doubt, will add more with time.

Reading this thread and the one above about leaves for protection I thought about styrofoam. That stuff that is used to pack fragile products and is so hard to get rid of. I started thinking about how to use it for winter protection. Ideal it would seem for insulation and it doesn't hold water! Not the solid stuff but the popcorn type.

But it is light and would easily blow away. Then let's see maybe a wire cage? Begins to get complicated but will think on this some more.

Jim, some of the "styrofoam" is now made of corn or corn starch so that it degrades. I would think that would be a disaster if wet and stuck to the roses. You can tell which you have by wetting it, if it gets sticky, it is probably the degradable kind. Looks like cheese curls without the cheese... Just an FYI.

...you will be picking those things up for months afterwards if the wind gets ahold of them! Used to use them in the bottom of my containers years ago, but not anymore!
Judith

The winters are milder here than they were years ago.
I remember Temps of -10 to -15 degrees for 2-3 weeks straight years ago. Schools had to close/ pipes freezing.
Now, we mainly stay above 10 degrees, with some days dipping lower.

I can understand that using the wrong type of winter protection could cause more harm then good in some locations. Speaking of cane fungus, from using the wrong material. Overwintering to early and a mole or mouse makes a nest in the protection material and feeds on our roses...LOL
I've heard all the horror stories...LOL

Your right, this is August, we should enjoy the rest of our summer and warmer weather, then worry about the cold freezing temps later...LOL

JIM

Am being contrary. I disagree that it's too early to be planning winter protection. The time to start planning for it is when you plant your rose. August is not too soon to think about it, especially in colder zones and if one grows mostly tender varieties.
When I grew mostly hybrid teas I built Styrofoam boxes and poly houses over my beds. I raised the roof on my garage so I had room to store all the Styrofoam and wooden stakes needed to support the sides and keep the tops from breaking under a snow load. My car didn't know what the inside of the garage looked like because there was no room for it.
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After 8 years I still have hundreds of bungie cords I used to hold the tops down in winter winds.
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I'd begin building the frame for the polyhouse in August then cover it in late September so I could do it while the weather was better.
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and I'd use a karosene heater in the polyhouse when temps dropped into the minus teens and twenties just to make sure the roses were protected. As a plus, I pruned in there in mid February and had roses blooming 6 weeks before anyone else.

Because I had no trees, I'd pick up and haul leaves all fall, then shred them in my chipper shredder and store them until it was time to apply them to the roses.

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I'd put the leaves around the roses in the Styrofoam boxes to make sure they would make it.

All this required planning. Had I not begun to plan in mid summer, I'd not be ready come late fall.
(Taken from "Confessions of an overly obsessed, crazy mad, but happy and content, Rose Nut.")

I may use "less" protection than I originally thought i would use initially. I have 7 potted roses now that I have to protect well and I may have to come up with an alternative plan when it gets really cold in Ohio, but I'm planning on using tall chicken wire and putting it around the potted roses then wrapping the roses in burlap. Then I am going to place the roses next to each other with the smallest Heirloom bands next to the house, then the much larger High Country bands, then the larger gallon roses from the nursery out farthest. Either way, all the potted roses will be in a wind protected area with the farthest being no more than 8ft from the side of the house. After fencing them in chicken wire, I am going to let the oak leaves from my oak tree dry out and stuff them in where the potted roses are and try to provide some top shelter so the moist snow doesn't make the leaves moist. I might buy some cheap tubing and have it stick out of the top of the leaves so I can occasionally water the pots through the winter. All of my climbers and other roses are in their 1st year, so I might just mound them over with some soil and other little knick knacks as even if they die back to the ground over the winter, they will have a larger root system then when I originally planted them and will be able to send out much more productive and larger canes anyways.

You can be as contrary as you want Karl! I love seeing pics and hearing ideas on overwintering and anything about roses.
You have alot of roses to take of. Wow!

JIM

Karl, what type of leaves do you use for winter protection???

JIM

Oak Leaves. My old home was located near a sand ridge that ran along US route 6, through NW Indiana That sand ridge was full of oak trees. People living on the ridge had tons of leaves out on the curb all fall. Burning was not allowed in the towns along that ridge so all the leaves were bagged and put on the curb. I had all I could use plus some.
I'd bring home hundreds of bags of leaves, all oak.
The home I live in now is on glacial moraine and the area is filled with oak trees. The sand is so deep, in this area it's difficult to estimate it's depth. I don't have to get leaves now. I have my own oak trees.
In fall, I take the mulching plate off the mower deck and aim the discharge chute at the rose beds. as I run over the leaves they get shredded and blown into the beds. By winter the beds are filled and Mom Nature helps on windy day. Rosebushes as as leaf traps.
In spring the leaves are raked onto the lawn and run over many times with the mulching mower. The tiny pieces of leaves filter down into the grass and are turned into the soil by worms. When I'm finished you can't tell there were any leaves there. My lawn is nice and thick and dark green all summer.

I'll have to locate some oak leaves. I think my mom has oak trees at her house.
I'll have to start checking on that. Thanks!

JIM

This subject is frought with advice for what works for some folks and doesn't for others. I personally don't use any protection as I only plant roses hardy enough for my climate. But after last winter I may have to change what I do.

MG mentiioend snow cover as best. I'm a bit confused by that although it is conventional wisdom among rose growers. Why? Well snow is frozen water so what could be wetter around the canes in any thawing weather?

But she is right that most available materials such as leaves hold water. I have no oak trees and not about to wrestle with the problem of getting them from somewhere else. I do have a row of pine trees on the road but doubt if they would suppply enough needles.

I'm thinking more and more about the use of popcorn styrofoam, yes I'll avoid the degradable kind! And use a mesh basket to keep them put. And I don't have that kind of time to protect everybody so I'll have to learn from experience who needs it who doesn't.

And then there is the problem of sthetics. A lot of little white mounds all over?

The advice about snow assumes you have adequate drainage, so the water drains away from the roses. I'm in the process of putting together a wooden frame made out of 2x10"x10's to hold soil for our next 4x20 ft rose bed next to the garage--raising the bed should improve drainage, even though the garage is known to flood.

The air spaces between the snow crystals in a blanket of loosely packed snow serve as insulation for the ground below. While a deep snow layer may have its upper surface drop to extremely cold temperatures, the ground temperature beneath may remain around freezing.
Ice is water that has frozen when the temperature drops to 32 degrees. It may vary a liitle but the temperature of the ice stays close to the freezing point so it actually keeps plants from severe cold damage if air temperatures drop lower. The major damage from ice is due to its weight if it builds up too thick.
That's the reason they spray water on citrus trees when frost or a freeze is forcast in Florida. The ice formed by the freezing water protects the trees.
The water itself contains heat. I see this in winter on bitter cold days if I water inside my greenhouse. Upon entering to shut the water off and drain the lines so they don't freeze, the air inside the greenhouse is warm and humid, not cold like one would think.

I could read your posts all day Karl! Very well said.

Ok, so here's another related question - I don't want to hijack Jim's thread, but seemed better to post here as we've got a head of steam going on this topic and it will help if someone searches later.

As some of you may have read here, we (are privileged to) have a mountain getaway here in SoCal that isn't too far (1.5hr) and which we love greatly to get away since we never take vacations due to a number of reasons. AND the doggies think it's a dog park we got just for them ;-)

I inherited a dozen roses from the original owner that were only watered and trimmed the previous two years by the second owner's dogs. Most are 'bushy' looking with some long canes, I keep meaning to post on the ID forum becaue they are lovely. And there area a couple HTs. All have come through each winter like champs except for one late chill we had this spring which caused some tip damage. Ditto for several Austins and HTs in the pot ghetto that either had no place to go or problems with mildew (it is very dry there) and have since been moved up there the last two years.

In any case, it is z8a and this will be our 4th winter. Winter isn't very long, Nov-ish through March-ish for possible snow, although we don't prune roses until around Mother's Day just in case of a freeze. I've never used any 'winter' protection because of our zone and because I figured if the last owners didn't kill them, I wouldn't either. Snow *on average* when we (hopefully) get it comes in less than 1ft waves and won't last too long. However, every winter we have been there so far, we have (thankfully) gotten one or two dumps of 3-4ft at a time, which is what I'm writing about...

WHAT ABOUT WINTER SNOW SUPPORT???

Last winter some canes got flattened, not a big deal, but a couple broke halfway down due to the weight of the accumulating snow. Most are along a chain link fence so that helps, I can tie them up. What is causing me some concern tho' for this winter are my Vintage bands. GramHat from my spring shipment is already 3' and a couple of others are not far behind. Because of their size, or location as some are out in the open, I wondered about some support. The only thing I've thought of is stakes and ties, but wonder if the ties will fall down the stakes and the babies will get squashed or worse still, break anyway.

What do you guys think?

3-4ft of snow, i'll have to think about that one...LOL
Can't think of anything offhand that would hold that much snow weight.

JIM

Water/ice stays close to 32 degrees because a lot of energy has to be removed to make the change. But, once the water has changed to ice, it can easily change temperature, compared to soil. Soil has a much lower themal conductivity than ice, which has a thermal conductivity of 2.2W/mK. Thus, while soil is a good insulator, a pool of ice is considerably worse. A bigger problem for roses is the expansion of water--I think this damages good rose canes, which usually don't have a protective layer of bark in our climate.

Here is a link that might be useful: soil conductivity experimental data

@Jim
It's not so much 'holding the weight'. Rather, I just want to keep them upright as the snow (hopefully) builds up around them. Once they are prostrate for a long enough time, the canes kind of stay that way. I guess I could have tried to train them up again, but I didn't as I got new vertical canes so I didn't bother. My poor, beautiful rosemary that were in the open lost their shape permanently and I had to start over with them.

Meanwhile, looks like we're getting an El Nino, so we're flipping a coin on mostly rain instead of snow this winter...

Wrapping roses with burlap also prevents the canes from breaking. I suspect that merely tying the canes together with jute would help--by moving the stress point on the canes away from the crown.

If you tie them up, then they get stuck in that position. It's interesting what other people may do, that once you've dealt with it personally, you have absolutely no desire to do yourself.

It sounds like a similar problem to what I see in the beds behind the garage. The wind blows in such a manner that if we get more than a foot of loose snow, there is a serious snowdrift there. When we warm up towards freezing, this snowdrift forms a heavy ice cap, which then settles down on top of whatever is underneath as the snow melts. The usual recommendation is to get the snow off the underlying plants when it's still fresh and soft. I do that in other parts of the yard, but this drift can be 5-6 ft high, and the plants in question are pretty far down. The real solution is to just move everything shrubby out of there since it's a fairly small space. However, if you are really dealing with ice caps, I don't think much of anything is going to work other than walking out there and digging out the roses. It's possible that the situation is very different. Years ago, we were wandering around in the snow around Flagstaff - very weird stuff because the snow wasn't melting but evaporating right into the air.

I'd tie the canes together and stick a topless rose cone over the bush allowing the canes to stick out the top. Those protected this way seemed to survive numerous deep snows very well. Those boxes I built over my beds also were very sturdy using two inch extruded Styrofoam for the tops and sides. They survived very heavy deep snowloads.
A corner bed was covered with deep packed snow all winter due to snowplows and the box had to survive the force of the snow being trown at it by the plow. Along my driveway, the box was covered with snow thrown off my driveway often to a depth of 4 feet or more. The other side was the house so I couldn't direct it that way.
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This was after a little snowfall. Most were much deeper.

Karl.... I had to recheck your web page, I smelled an engineer in all the stuff you've done!!! ;-) Takes one to know one, my dad was one and I'm also an M.E. besides my original (and still) microbiology career. I also smelled a little project management. If I ever get back to my relatives in Kankakee, Il. I would sure love to look you up!

Ok, you guys are the best and all your ideas together, I think have given me the solution, at least for the little guys. Karl, I've lived a sheltered life in SoCal, so I've never seen the rose cones before. I think that's a great start, but the unique problem with our mountain area is that unlike colder midwest areas, we can have extended daytime highs in the 60s and cold weather comes and goes. As such, in my mind, I wouldn't really call the roses dormant and in fact they will still bloom, although less in Dec-Feb.

So, here's what I'm thinking. I've already got of few of the little un's under tomato cages to protect them from one of the doggies that likes to run back and forth with the neighbor dog (hence the new 'rose fence' to come). In any case, I'm thinking of turning the tomato cages upside down, like the cones, and cutting off the bottom stake part. I have some shade cloth that I can cut and hot glue around the cages. Viola, a cone that will still provide sunlight to the only semi-dormant roses and yet protect from snow-squash. I can bend a U on the cut off stakes to make U-stakes so they won't blow away (although wind is not that big a concern for us at least at ground level).

For the big kids, I guess a coulple of stakes around to tie them up would be the best. There really aren't too many away from the fence. Probably a good point about them keeping form if you tie all the canes vertically. (Anybody else have deja-vu hearing your mom say if you keep making that face it will freeze that way?)

Thanks everybody, and let's keep this going - ideas make ideas!!!

I was just wondering about snow. I just planted 2 hardy roses (Catherine Guelda and Double KO) next to the driveway. So I'm worried that when it does snow, and we have to shovel the driveway, someone is going to dump snow all over the Catherine Guelda, which has skinny canes.
???

lagomorphmom
Was not aware engineers smelled any different than other folks, unless they are sanitation engineers.
Sorry, I was a production supervisor for Ford Motor Co. at the Chicago Assembly Plant and worked in all areas of the assenbly process. I have no engineering training but have always been able to figure out ways to do things. I designed many processes and tools to make my employee's work simpler, less complicated, and more efficient. It was just part of my job! I also didn't like to hear "It can't be done," or "That would cost too much." If said, I'd go out of my way to prove the "engineers" wrong and did so more times than not. When a new piece of automation was in the works, I'd often be sent to the vendor to give ideas and suggestions to make the finished product worker friendly and more efficient. I'm a hillbilly rigging engineer.
Being rose obsessed, I'm continuously thinking of easier and time saving ways to do things in my rose garden. That's one reason I garden well even though I'm handicapped. I make a lot of my own garden tools or figure out ways to use thingsin my garden that are designed for the kitchen or other places. You'd be surprised of the many uses in the garden for a long pair of kitchen tongs or a 12 inch pair of tweezers.
Maybe I should have been an engineer but when I graduated high school, my brain sort of dropped down to another area of my body which resulted in me getting married at 19.
Not complaining, understand, just stating the facts.
But, I was able to make a good living anyway and am enjoying a pretty good retirement.

Yesterday I was using a bit of fiberglass for something. Looking at I wondered why it was never suggested as a replacement for burlap in wrapping roses?

Why not!

jim w ny
Have you ever left one of those pieces of fiberglass insulation out in the rain? It'd probably work but using it to protect a lot of roses can get expensive. After one winter, it'll be a heavy soggy mess, falling apart as you try to remove it. You'll only get one season out of it.
A better product is those rolls of foil backed plastic bubble wrap insulation. They work well and can be easily removed and stored. The flexible foam wrap is good too.

karl

Thanks for the response. No I never tried fiber glass in the rain. So dump that idea.

Bubble wrap sounds good. Although why would the foil backed be better? Isn't it somewhat stiff? Might not the unbacked stick to the thorns and help hold it in place?

Just the other day I had a piece of the stuff I wanted to put in the garbage but it is so bulky it sat there for awhile until I got the idea to lay it in front of the workshop door so as I came and went slowly all the bubbles got popped!

Actualy the product I'm thinking of is used in Canada as a winter protection blanket. A park director spoke on its use at an ARS convention in Houston. I believe it's a couple of inches thick. The foil backed product is sold as an attic insulation to be stapled to the roof rafters or laid on top of existing insulation. The foil refects heat back into the house or out side depending on where and how it's applied.