Roses don't do well with a winter blanket of mulch around here. They will get canker from being smothered with wet whatever anytime is gets over freezing. It's roughly the same as perennials that get crown rot when covered.

Don't grow roses, but my general understanding of winter mulch for ornamentals is that it's not so much to keep crowns warmer as to prevent frequent freeze-thaw cycles which can heave the roots, exposing them to drying winds. Mulching before critters (voles, mice, etc.) find other winter homes invites trouble.

What I'm doing this warm fall: waiting until the ground begins to freeze, corralling raked leaves in chicken-wire fences handy for when I do mulch. Ignoring the calendar and paying attention to the conditions.

I agree with solana. I don't do roses, either, but I think it's too warm yet to mulch. Wait until the ground freezes.
Emily

Yes, I have a huge pile of mowed leaves and pine needles that I am holding for mulching roses and several other plants.

It is killing me to not get it down now while it is nice working weather, but I will try to hold off. I bet the ground won't freeze around here til mid or late December.

I have a related question. I have never used tree wrap before, but I got some this year for two teeny new trees I got this spring. The trunks are pencil thin and I would like to protect the bark from sunscald and whatever else may affect them.

I was planning on waiting til it gets colder and the trees are more (?) dormant. But now that I think of it, not sure about that. Is there a best time for tree wrapping?

Wendy, I don't have an answer, as I have never wrapped my young trees. I'm interested, though, beecause I have a lot of them this year, and would really like to give them some help making it through the winter - assuming that we eventually get a winter. I'm especially worried about a ginkgo, several young willow oaks, and some new stewartia, all under 5 feet in height. So, I'll be looking forward to hearing what others say about this.

I've noticed some of the more well-tended gardens here have their roses mulched now with mounded manure around the base. Not in my garden, mind you, but in some of the fancier, professionally groomed places that I drive by on my way to work.

yeah, some of those "professionals" don't have to deal with the mole and vole home's they are making!!!

Regarding the tree wrapping, I got the idea after I was at a pruning demonstration this year at Tower Hill Botanic garden. He showed us an older tree that had bad sunscald damage. It was very unsightly and allowed insects and rot to work its way into the trunk. He cleaned it out so it could continue the healing process. It was very interesting.

I purchased a roll of the standard brown tree wrap, but I did see an ad or a "product watch" in a gardening magazine for a supposedly better product. It was white and possibly like row cover. Not sure I want white tree trunks though.

Re: tree wrap. That can probably go on anytime, a nice- weather project. Some folks (orchards?) paint the trunks white to achieve the same reflection of sun. Think white works better than brown, though more unsightly, but you can take wrap off in the spring.

Beware of early snow fall before the ground has frozen. Go out and stomp it down around treasured trees. I lost a 10 year old specimen crabapple due to mice munching, girdling, the trunk.

DTD said:

"I've noticed some of the more well-tended gardens here have their roses mulched now with mounded manure around the base. Not in my garden, mind you, but in some of the fancier, professionally groomed places that I drive by on my way to work."

Early last spring I noticed that some of the professionally groomed places had their ornamental grasses and winter interest stuff chopped off way before anything was starting to grow. I wondered at the time whether it had more to do with keeping their staff busy in the off-season rather than following appropriate timing.

Claire

well, I'm no professional, but I was thinking of cutting down a couple of mine now. They don't stand up to winter well. They usually are a floppy mess pretty quickly. And then covered by snow in a typical winter. Easier to do it now than later. some of them are situated such that they don't add a lot to my winter landscape. hmmm... maybe they are in the wrong place then???

A friend of mine (who has one of those "professionally groomed" places, but tends to it herself now), cuts her grasses down early because she is on a high windy site and the dead blades get loose and go all over the place.

Thanks for the input!

As far as wrapping trees, I've never done it and have never had a sunscald problem with anything ranging from Z4 Jap Maples in nearly full sun to Chionanthus retusus started from a cutting.

I'm holding off on the mulch but it's ready to go the second I feel the plants can take it.

I do mulch my roses, Mad Gal, because I grow a few that shouldn't survive even in Z6. The grafts are buried deep, but I particularly like to give new base growth a running start in Spring. I mulch very loosely with no soil involved whatsoever, usually semi-composted mulch. For my own-root stuff I let it do it's own thing and though I may loose a few extra inches each year, they grow out wonderfully.

As for professionally grooming, that's what it is. I think it's more for "get it done and make it look nice" than it is to take care of the plants if they're mulching in 55 deg weather.

Martie

It seems we need to back up a bit here. With the exception of notoriously tender hybrid teas like Color Magic, it is extremely rare to find any roses around here that are not *crown hardy* in zone 6. Most everything is crown hardy in zone 5. Where the difficulty comes is that roses are not herbaceous perennials, and don't like being grown as dieback shrubs. So they do considerably better in places they can overwinter most of their canes.

So the useful potential behind winter protection is to preserve live wood through the winter. It is not to keep the rose alive, because the rose is going to live through most anything anyway. However, in places with a lot of moisture available through the winter, like New England anywhere it doesn't freeze and stay frozen, the covering itself kills off the canes.

The proof is in how much live wood you had last spring. If the roses were live pretty much to the tips, the mulching isn't doing any harm. If they died back almost to the ground, that wasn't cold but canker. So the winter protection is killing the roses.

I mulch my roses half-way up the canes for that very reason. Last year I only needed to take off about 6" of cane tops and some scraggly little growth at the base. I found that giving the new cane growth some protection from being heaved out during freeze/thaw produced better canes.

Thanks, though, for the clear explanation. I probably should've noted that I leave things like Rugosas and most of the other own-roots along, and only really mulch the grafted plants. Last year was the first time my hybrid teas came through in good shape :-)

Martie