Hi Jim, looks like your roses are coming along pretty well. I just have to ask though, did you cut your roses back from last season or are they new roses that you purchased for this year?

Things are way behind last year here too.
This was taken last month on the 19th

I noticed how slow things are this year as well. Easily a full month behind last year. I probably won't see blooms until the 2nd week of June here in Ohio. Last year we had them the 1st week of May.

lol, Jim, I still think they look GREAT! You have the healthiest, ideal organics roses so I have full confidence they are gonna get HUGE! Everyone, I've seen Jim's roses from start to finish last year. Yes, he has to prune lots because of winter kill, but by the end of the year the roses get big and fat with not a speck of BS. Seil, I'm soooo jealous! I can't get my climbers to climb in my zone 5. I'm jealous of you too Jeffcat, hahaha! with getting climbers to do their job of having remaining climber canes after the winter does its damage. I realize mine are own-root and I have to get off my lumpy lopsided butt and get those climbers winter-protected. But at least I can whine, whine, and whiiiiiiiine! for now, haha! I've only got three on their way to climbing- Jules, Viking Queen,and Cornelia. The rest of my climbers were severely hacked. Cornelia is also driving me berserk. It's going gangbusters with buds but refuses to release them. It's been 8 weeks already of buds that won't open!!! How maddening is THAT! For heaven's sake, buds are supposed to open within 5 weeks' max sheesh!

ramblinrosez7b,

Winterkill on the canes was not kind to Platinum, Livin Easy, or Mr Lincoln. Had to prune those almost to the ground.
Outta the Blue had the least winterkill.
We have 2 Sunrise at Heirlooms, those are new.
And we have one "Easy Does it" which is new.

Wow that Blue Violet is so awesome. I joined up just to give it props!!

Is that rose still available? Did you get it online?

This is an interesting post. It seems like we have had more cool weather later in the spring months this year then most. But when mid May hits the temperature historically starts to skyrocket. This year has been no exception. We had close to freezing (33) here last Monday, today, a week later it was over 90. I like seeing the difference in your growth patterns for last year and this. I wish I had thought of that idea for my own records. thanks for posting...Maryl

Your roses look so healthy.

Wow that Blue Violet is so awesome. I joined up just to give it props!!
Is that rose still available? Did you get it online?
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You mean "Outta the Blue"??? This ones online from Heirloom Roses.

Things are very slow here as well :-/ I love your summer pics, wow! May I ask where you bought that edging? I am looking for something similar...

Platinum and Mr Lincoln are too roses that will make any garden sparkle. They are gorgeous. Your gardens are very beautiful indeed! I can only learn from you.

I think cool and long spring makes the roses more beautiful (at least in my garden). Of course I understand the suspense and impatience for you but I am sure your patience will be rewarded by exceptional flushes of roses!

@Serena, i saw Cornelia in the shop, it loos so appealing and beautiful, I love the color of the rose. Hopefully you will see it blooming for you in your garden as you expect.

lovemysheltie,

That's not my edging pics. Seil posted those pics, you will have to ask them where they got the edging. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful...

I love the pictures showing the roses in bloom and the way they look right now---nice comparison

Interesting post------

Florence

Thanks Everyone!
Here's our Viburnum "Doublefile" in bloom.
I spread some flower seeds into the soil 2 weeks ago, they are just now sprouting.

Lincoln is heavenly, great smell ,great color.
But on the climate thing; here in europe this are far ahead, roses that normaly bloom a month later are blooming now ,great for the roses :D but where will it end.

Great for you aswhad! Glad to hear your roses are blooming early! Jim

Beautiful viburnum, Jim!

Well, it looks like a baby band from Heirloom Roses (Easy Does It) will be the first to bloom here. It was planted 4/29 of this year.

Very cute Jim! looks like it should bloom after 2 days...Getting baby bands from warmer zone'd nurseries always helps brighten our zone 5 gardens, lol and makes the waiting a little easier, lol! I was drooling all over Ferdinand Pichard's bloom and later Maggie bloomed on me from Long Ago Roses.

My guess is when I get my Roses Unlimited order this week, it will probably have blooms on it...the first of the year. We had some tornadoes make landfall not too far away from my mother's house(where all my old roses are now planted) and more rain. Charles Darwin, Abe Darby, Paul Neyron, and Golden Celebration have some low lying solitary canes with fat buds on them, so maybe by the end of the week, I might get a bloom. Unfortunately, the excessive rain is starting to flood the roses and browning quite a few buds, but I don't think it should be too big of an issue with the mass effect of the 1st flush.

Jeff, I noticed that pale colored roses have real bad problems with rain, but never the dark colored roses. We had blasting hail, a street sign blew in front of James' car. My Crescendo roses are now leaning over so I need to get off my bu** and get them straightened out. But Lincoln with its 5" blooms never blinked an eye with that and actually expanded into 6" roses. There is a reason why I call Lincoln the King Leonidas rose, lol! Jeff, the roses which get messed up in my garden are Crepuscule and Compassion. They just don't look their best with rain. Light-colored Cornelia gets completely disheveled but like you said the "mass effect" at a distance still camouflages the up-close frustration of the balling, lol! I am beginning to regret getting light colored roses in my garden. Deep colored roses also stay pristine from any bug attacks too, isn't this strange? I know honeybees can't see red, but with other insects this also seems to be the case perhaps. Plus the deep colors don't fade. No more light colored roses for me, lol!Finally as terrible as shade is for roses, I also noticed that I get very little insect problems on shade blooms. Trees also provide protection and my light-colored, shade-grooming roses don't ball either! Another very odd quirk...

I don't seem to notice anything one way or the other. Colors haven't been too dependent. I have had some blind shoots, and some of the roses are having buds die out before they mature into a larger size. This is normal to extent, but with so much rain it's noticeable....not a huge deal though. Evelyn has maybe 2-3 dead buds that were killed off during development, but not a big deal. Some of the cuttings I took don't have any blooms, but on the plus side I see new basal canes starting to come out from the base, so that's always nice. One of my WS2000 cuttings is putting out rather bizarre growth with far larger leaves and no blooms...yet at least, so I'm keeping an eye on that one. It's planted close to the parent plant that I got the cutting off that is doing fine. Could just be the weather, an oddity, or possibly a sport, but I'm keeping an eye on any traces of any kind of disease and/or virus just in case....seems fine though...just rather odd. I just dug up my Pat Austin cutting that I planted last year and seemingly wintered over fine and was putting out a lot of new growth then just died for inexplicably no reason whatsoever...this was the case for all of my Pat Austins, so I currently have no more of PA. :( I dug it up and the root systems was very dense and looked awesome...yet they still all died...clueless there. Everything else looks great though minus all the rain. I do have some yellowing leaves from all the water and some interior low lying blackspot since some of the roses are pretty dense right now, but it's nothing significant and I will thin them out somewhat after the 1st flush. Probably another week until I see a bloom, but I still expect a good show for the roses 1st flush inside the ground out of their pots...even my little Graham Thomas cutting in the ground has a bud on it so he seems to enjoy his environment next to his parent Graham Thomas which I didn't think would survive the winter after transplanting him into the ground later last September with a rather cut down root system. Big Graham Thomas is only about 2.5' tall right now, but looks awesome...still has those meaty canes from it's former self in Columbus, so I expect it to recover quite quickly and probably near it's former self by the end of the year.

How's it going Jeffcat? Glad to see you writing...

Lol, well Jim and Jeff I'm getting a bit frustrated with Compassion. Yeahhhh, I hate to say Off to a Brown Start, haha!

The edges keep turning brown and crinkly. As for Crepuscule it must have gotten scared, I was seriously thinking about replacing her because of my climate stresses. So all of a sudden, her crinkliness opened further into a very charming apricot ruffled petticoat so at least I just may wait a little longer before asking Linda for a different apricot climber. Linda warned me that Crepuscule is not a fragrant rose and neither did she particularly recommend it (HMF rates it as Strong-Sweet), but I was stubborn because another rose friend in England loves his, but yeesh, no fragrance and balling in rain means an SP'd rose. Like you we are getting so much rain it's driving me a bit cuckoo, but it's still better than 2010. 2010 we had 14-16 days of straight rain with no rest in between but now at least we get 5 days rain and 2 daytimes' worth of sun, lol! At least in 2011, I can remember what sun looks like. Not so in 2010.

I don't ever have buds die out, but the outer edges in the rain get dingy which does not make me happy.

Thank God I have a rose like Lincoln. Never balls, gorgeous glowy colors, makes fantastic rose jelly, and smells divine.

Compassion has been quite the disappointment because it attracts a lot of thrips and cucumber beetles which mar its loveliness.

On the other hand, Cornelia is really beautiful in the rain. At Peter Beales I've howled and complained so much about her taking 8 weeks to bloom from bud-to-flower, now I feel embarrassed, lol! Cornelia is basically telling me to shut up and Cool it, lol!

Heirloom Roses Baby Band "Easy Does It" trying to open...

That's going to be such a pretty bloom Jim! I am looking forward to its second photo shoot of it fully open.