Marcia, I've always been told to wait until the ground freezes to wrap up your roses. They say if the ground isn't frozen then mice may make a nice home in the leaves and use the rose bush for some mid-winter nibbling! I usually don't cover my roses until the middle of November, or later if the weather is still nice.

I'd also use the drier leaves. The wet ones may promote mold to grow? Just a thought.

And let's hope for some of that Indian summer to happen yet anyway. ;^)

Laurie

Thanks, Laurie! Definitely fingers crossed for some better weather. It's supposed to rain next week so maybe it will melt the snow. It would be nice to have some dry weather for a few days to dry out the leaves i've raked. I only have four bags of leaves this year - one of my "sources" didn't come through!

You've still got snow? How much did you get? Here, we only ended up getting a skiff of snow and it melted shortly after. But it's been cold. They're calling for -9 tonight. Yuck!!

We got a few inches. It's pretty wet and the temperature has been staying at around 0°. Tomorrow it's supposed to be +4° so maybe it will melt. It had better melt! LOL

Btw, i meant to ask you - i put that cactus pad you sent in a container for the summer. Should i sink it into the ground now? I don't know where to put it for good yet.

Most of my roses went dormant when I moved them in Sept. - so I raked leaves and covered them last weekend. Just loosely with leaves and burlap to hold the leaves down so far - I also have two flax bales that will be going on in a few weeks. Another comment I have for own-root roses - if you ever need to move them, they transplant a LOT better than grafted roses. My Sexy Rexy didn't even flinch when I dug it up, and kept blooming for a couple of weeks.

BTW I'm no longer worried that the new owners of my old house will say anything about my digging up the roses... DH saw the old neighbour the other day and he said they took out my raised beds and threw them in the back lane. Obviously not gardeners. Huh. He's going to see if he can get them for me.

What a shame, Gil. I guess you probably could have taken a lot more then, eh?

I'm pretty sure my Morden Sunrise is own-root (it would be, wouldn't it?), but she sulked like crazy after being moved. The White Kosters that i was worried about transplanted without a wilted leaf. I never did move Hansa - i knew darn well dh wouldn't get around to digging up that area this year!

Don't worry Marcia, I didn't leave them much ;0) It would have been nice to bring Harison's Yellow with me - but it would have taken a backhoe to remove it. Oh well.

Marcia, I hope all that snow is gone by now! As for the cactus, I would think you could sink the pot any time now and it would be fine. I'm glad it's growing for you.

Oh, Gillian, that's got to be heart-breaking to know that all your hard work has been trashed and thrown into the back lane! That's one reason why I can't see myself ever moving. I just couldn't bare the thought of my gardens being ripped out by someone :(
(Hmmm, is it healthy to be that emotionally attached to something?!LOL)

Laurie, i feel the same way. You put so much into your garden that you'd just hate to see it all ruined. I suppose, though, that if i ever did have to move, i'd try to bring as much as i could with me.

Gil, maybe you could have taken a cutting of the Harison's?

Marcia, it's a difficult one to root cuttings of. Even to dig up a sucker, you have to follow it way back to get roots... it makes a mess. I didn't want to make a mess when the house was on the market, then everything was too hectic while I was moving.

Laurie, I don't know if it's emotionally healthy but I have really been trying not to think of my house & garden being lived in by strangers. It's pretty awful. The garden box thing is sad but heck it's understandable, it's not something that most people would want. But I don't have to use my imagination much to figure out what would have happened to my roses if I left them... they would not exactly have been on Gardenweb asking when and how to wrap them.

The WORST thing is all the beautiful manure and compost the boxes were full of! Sob! I'm going to have to start from scratch with the soil... if I even decide to do veggies next spring.

Well, if you want to call it wrapping, then I just finished doing mine. I had made some burlap "fences" in Sept, but the last time we were in Winnipeg I picked up a couple of those styrofoam rose cones. I figured I could use all the extra insulation from the foam as opposed to cardboard.
I cut the tops off of them so they were open and I placed them over the tops of the bushes leaving the canes poking thru the top. I then took some of the bark mulch I had saved and filled the tops of the cones as much as I could. I used about 1/2 a bag in each cone....I then put the rest of the bag of mulch around the outside of the cone to help hold it down a bit. This should do the trick, once the snow gets here....although we still have most of the snow from Thanksgiving weekend.

I'll be doing mine pretty soon too. The forecast calls for more of the same and the ground is starting to freeze. However, today is nice and tomorrow and Friday are supposed to be too. Maybe i'll be postponing this for another week, who knows?