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how deep is too deep for own-root?

17 years ago

Okay, this is weird. I planted about twenty own-root roses last Feb-Apr (depending on the source). All were planted at the same depth in the same mixture of compost and dirt. Recently I discovered a couple of these plants (ie. exactly two) have sunk about a foot. I'm assuming this is because I was planting in beds where I had removed twenty-year old roses along with the attendant dirt... per the David Austin website and for whatever reason the underlying dirt in the two spots was unstable. Anyhow, I now have two baby bushes growing from considerable holes. One plant is Abe Darby (planted in Feb), the other supposedly Will Shakespeare 2000 planted in May since the first plant I received had white blossoms and High Country roses had to replace. My inclination is to fill in the holes with compost since I have no graft to worry about, but I do worry about somehow smothering my babies. The AD has three or four shoots of about three feet, the WS2000 has one shoot of about two feet and then a bunch of short twiggy things. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Comments (17)

  • 17 years ago

    A main concern is smothering the roots. Oxygen has to be able to move through the soil to enable the roots to breathe and adding a foot of soil, however porous, is going to make this more difficult. There is also the fact that buried stems will tend to develop their own root system and you might eventually end up with multiple plants in the same hole. I don't know how things are in Sunset 23, but here in Michigan, moving first year own-root plants is exceptionally easy and I would just lift the plants with a shovel and replant in a soil mixed with a more mature compost.

  • 17 years ago

    I was actually considering the whole lifting thing. Thanks for giving me the confidence.

  • 17 years ago

    Agree with Mike. It may be that your initial compost amount was so much that the soil settled considerably. Long term that can also happen. Too much compost can be counter productive on many levels. The easiest way to lift them up is take a shovel and dig under the root ball, lever it up, then back fill under the shovel with native soil. Go around the plant as much as needed to elevate it above grade slightly. I always plant my roses a bit above grade, so they have gravity drainage (may be overkill admittedly).

  • 17 years ago

    About that native soil... I still have heaps I removed from the beds last winter. After a year planted in buckwheat and fenugreek do you think it has lost whatever made it iffy for my new roses?

  • 17 years ago

    Ronke, I assume your concern about the soil removed from your rose beds derives from information at the Austin site. The reference is more or less to "rose replant syndrome" and it may be something to worry about in England but the general consensus of Forum people has been that it's of little or no concern in the US. When I replant, I just amend the old soil with 10% compost and get on with it.

  • 17 years ago

    Oh, that's fantastic! Thanks, Mike

  • 17 years ago

    ronke, in your zone, you don't have to plant that deep. I aways leave the root base and even the top roots above the soil, then cover with mulch. I usually wind up putting more mulch or amendments on top of the exposed roots, and that's easier than digging up a rose planted too deep.

  • 17 years ago

    Hmm, now I think I'm a little confused. While I agree just adding mulch around my sunken bushes would be a lot easier, Mike indicated that it would probably encourage rooting of the buried sprouts and leave me with more than one bush in the hole. While several of my older (grafted) roses seem to have self-rooted themselves over the years with no ill-effect, they tended to do it some distance from the original roots whereas my problem plants are just 1-year old own-root babies (though it is hard to call Abe Darby a baby when he is waving his massive shoots around). Seeing as I'm in LA where keeping plants moist is more of a problem than drainage, I don't mind my roots being covered by quite a bit of mulch, but we're talking over a foot here! Of course after a week of rain and mist -- when moving would have been less fraught -- we're now having hot dry windy weather so I'll probably hold off a little bit in any case (in the event someone else wants to weigh in!) I am so grateful for this forum and the knowledgeable people willing to share their experience. Thanks to you all.

  • 17 years ago

    My main concern would echo yours of suffocating the roots if you covered them deeply. Drainage is a second one long term- but maybe not be an issue with your particular soil, etc. The "elevating" of the root ball can be done anytime of year, especially with such young plants. I agree with Mike about using the old soil.

  • 17 years ago

    On a related note:

    Well before I found all the Rose Buds here, I bought several roses grafted on who knows what. Now I know, thanks to you all, that I should be using only Fortuniana or growing own root in very good soils.

    My question is this; I have a very few bourbons and and HPs that are limping along. Can I raise the level of the soil in their pots up to ( and maybe above) the cane bases without killing them. I am hoping that they will transmorgrify into own-root.

    I did have a Heirloom seem to completely die only to have a cane root itself and send up a new shoot from below the soil level.

    Thanks for everything.

    ThonotoRose

  • 17 years ago

    ronke, I didn't mean to confuse you. When I said I added mulch, I meant to the roses that I had planted somewhat shallow, not that you should add mulch to your already deep buried roses.

    Hope that makes sense.

  • 17 years ago

    Yup. Got it now. Thanks, Buford and everybody. Merry Christmas!

  • 17 years ago

    When I ordered roses from Roy Hennessey, many, many years ago, he recommended planting them with the graft at soil level. When I wrote back that I was planning to bury the graft a couple of inches to give it winter protection, he suggested tilting the whole bush (with the top towards the north) so the roots wouldn't be buried too deeply and would have access to air. I've followed that advice since, especially where the rose has a 'long neck.' that is when there is a length of understock between the graft and the root system. Roy's concern was to keep the roots from suffocating - the same concern should be the deciding factor in lifting your roses and replanting.
    You can save yourself some work in the future by remembering that newly tilled ground sinks and if you can't wait for it to settle, the you should plant the roses high.

  • 17 years ago

    Alas, you are right. The holes were dug and filled in January and the roses not planted until March or so, but I guess that wasn't long enough. Live and learn.

  • 17 years ago

    What I do when planting a bare root is put some lumps of hard clay (which I fortunatley have in abundance after digging a hole in my yard) or rocks directly under the main stem. This serves two purposes, it keeps the plant balanced while I fill in the rest of the dirt (I usually walk away and observe the planting from a distance to see if I have the 'right' side forward) and I believe it keeps the plant from sinking into soft or wet soil.

    As I said, sometimes I wind up with exposed roots at the top, so I just add more soil and mulch afterwards.

    The first time I did plant a bunch of bare roots and it rained a lot afterwards, the plants sank in the wet clay/mud, so I learned my lesson (I had to run out in the middle of the rain and pull them out and try to replant in clay/mud, YUCK).

  • 17 years ago

    Assuming you don't have a problem with heavily compacted soil or poor drainage, I've found that it's best to dig the planting hole for a container grown own root rose only as deep and wide as required to accommodate the root ball. Back fill with lightly amended soil, tamping it in firmly as you go, then top dress liberally with compost and let the worms work it in.

    My roses stabilize more quickly when planted that way and "take off" a lot faster than they ever did back in the days when I routinely planted them in deeply amended beds. The fine sandy loam in my yard takes a long, long time to restabilize once it has been disturbed. While I never had too much of a problem with sinking plants, my baby roses would suffer a setback every time a heavy rain softened the amended soil around them enough to allow wind and gravity to yank their tops around and destabilize their crowns. That doesn't happen anymore.

  • 17 years ago

    What we have here is basically adobe clay that has been amended somewhat over the 20 or so years I've been gardening. Because I was misled by the Austin site (as Mike noted above) I removed all the old soil in a 50' long bed and replaced with other soil plus a lot of compost. So even though -- just as you suggested -- I was only digging out holes big enough for the own-root containers, the whole bed was pretty unstable. On the plus side, I had pulled all the leaves and pruned before the really big winds hit (102 mph in places), so they didn't cause any more problems. Even with the two sunken plants newly up on the surface. Whew.

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