Bump

I planted two roses, rugelda and quadra, last year in mid september and they have come back very strong. I plant very deep, with the first "y" of the branches 6" below ground and make sure it is well watered before freeze up.

If there is winter damage, your fall-planted 1-gals will be smaller next spring than the same plant ordered for next May. And there will probably be winter damage. Small roses that are not tip-hardy in your climate are best left to winter in the producer's greenhouse.

Smilingspring - while you might be able to overwinter them, I think if you have a choice they'd be much happier if you wait till spring. I've had very limited success with planting roses anything after about July in my zone 5, whereas the same roses planted in May from the same places did fine. The very hardy roses like the Quadra that prairie northrose mentions can survive just about anything, and the Kordes roses tend to be fairly hardy as well. Still, why push it and potentially waste the labor and the rose? Use the fall to improve your soil in your intended bed with organic material, layer organic material like leaves and grass clippings on top over the winter to let the worms work it in, and your roses will be off to a roaring start in spring in ideal planting conditions.

Cynthia

I live in Oklahoma, and have had no success in planting in the fall. I agree that given a choice, choose spring.

Sammy

When do you expect to get them in? If it were me I'd plant maybe up to the end of August. After that I'd find a place to winter them over in the pots. An unheated, but insulated, garage is best. Off the floor and remember to water them some each month until you get them back outside.

I've never had a fall planted rose survive for me, even big nursery sale ones let alone one gallon small ones. Seems like they just don't get enough time to get rooted well before winter sets in and they don't make it. I've quit buying them now because of it. I buy in the spring and early summer and after that I wait for next year. I know the sale prices are tempting but if they don't live then you just wasted your money.

I agree with what most folks are saying here - basically, zone 5/6 and colder, Fall planting success rate is low. That said, last year I took a risk, not because I really wanted to but because I had made plans but just ran out of time to get them executed early. I planted a ton of stuff (33), bands and full gallons and even a 2 gallon rose. Bands were covered in mulch, unless known to be very hardy (like my Sunny Knock out band). None were in micro climates. I kept them watered during the warm spells of winter. Only 3 bands did not make it. THAT said, as of this moment, most of the bands planted in the fall are smaller than those planted in mid May this year. The 1-gallon plus plants are already huge though - my 2-gallon Ramblin' Red planted in October never seemed to really go to sleep in winter (only shed leaves in late March) and is well over 12 feet now and going crazy. On the other hand a 2-gallon Strike it Rich I planted at the same time is half the size of a Dick Clark band I planted in mid May.

This year I have 7 bands on my deck that still need to get in the ground. They've been there for a month. Just been busy with life and work. It happens. You do what you can. I'm gonna push to plant them within the next week, hopefully it will buy me 3 months before frost here.

Spring

Thanks all! Going to wait to place my order. Quite a few on my wishlist are oos at this point so it does make sense. Thanks again!!

I must have lucked out. I planted Falstaff in October or November last year (can't remember which) and it came back nicely. I'm in Zone 5a. I did use winter protection and we got a lot of snow cover. It is small, but more because I accidently broke off a few canes on two separate occasions when planting other things in the bed this spring, and I moved it in early July. It is getting ready to bloom again.

Getting back to this topic, why is it that so many other perennials survive when they are tiny plants, planted as late as November in zone 5 and 6 yet band sized roses with lots of roots having iffy survival rates?

I thought to pose this question because I typically do my routine purchasing of left over nursery stock from the mail order guys around end of October at steep discounts. I usually receive them mid-November and plant them. Come spring, I get a 90%+ survival rate. I've planted tiny bare root hardy hibiscus, geraniums, cone flowers, daylillies (tons), lavendar, mints, etc. They mostly all survive without being babied. But the general consensus is that many roses of larger size than these plants won't make it? How come? Has basic cold survival instincts been bred out of roses such that they are only hardy when mature?

I have 5 bands coming next week, and have about 12-15 bands/ gal plants in pots ( I got them 2-6 weeks ago). I will grow them in an unheated basement during the winter months( under a plant light), and will plant them outside in the spring. Last year I planted all my rose bands right in the garden, some of them I planted in the late summer, lost 2 bands, and 3 bands didn't grow this year, stay small as bands, I will dig them up this weekend and grow them in pots until next spring.

The Sunny Knock out band I planted late summer last year stayed small this year too. But I'm not about to disturb its roots by digging it up. It over wintered well last year with no protection.

The bands you lost, did you cover them with mulch over the winter?

I covered them with mulch for winter protection, but they were facing the chilly wind, they were Blossomtime, Awakening.

Yes, most people seem to want repeating roses that bloom all season--so the roses don't shut down for winter. If you spray the typical HT all season so it doesn't get fungal diseases, it will have nice green foliage right up to the hard killing frosts. There are some varieties, such as polyanthas, that will drop their leaves in preparation for winter. A popular variety is The Fairy--it is easily propagated by cuttings--small plants of the Fairy will survive winter in Z6.

Knock outs for instance bloom non-stop, don't shut down either until the hard frosts, but winter over just fine like most other perennials. Just seems to me like perhaps the gene selection process in rose breeding has just about bred out the ability of immature roses to winter over successfully.

Bill Radler, the hybridizer of Knockouts, went back to species roses to get hardy roses that would repeat. Kordes did something similar decades ago--they abandoned their breedling lines and started over when they realized that they needed roses that could be grown without pesticides in Germany.

Radler went back to species? Are you sure? Knock out was a cross of Razzle Dazzle and Carefree Beauty, neither of which are species roses. The other knock outs have different lineages but I don't think any of them came from species roses.

http://www.pallensmith.com/articles/william-radler-on-knock-out-roses

What parent roses did you use?

I took the best of the old, or wild, roses, and I crossed them with
modern roses, hoping to get the traits of the two combined. And after
that, it seems to be relatively easy to produce these roses.

This is the sort of story I recall reading a decade ago--perhaps the media got it wrong back then?

In any case, some research will yield lines of roses grown for traits other than just beauty, such as Buck Roses and the Canadian Explorer series.

One way to get the "real story" is to go to ARS conventions where you may be able to talk to to hybridizers and clear up any confusion.

Well those have to be the words of Radler, perhaps he just gave a simplified version of the history of the ancestors and parents of his roses. Razzle Dazzle, one of Knock Out's parents, is a Floribunda. The other parent, Carefree Beauty, according to its breeder Buck, has a complex parentage using a bunch of unpatented and unknown seedlings so maybe those were species roses.

It occurs to me that the soil of leftover nursery stock is quite likely to be infected with BS and other diseases--you may want to discard the soil if you buy heavily discounted plants that didn't sell all year.

Zack, I bought 2 bargain rose trees at Lowe's for $10 each, they had really bad BS, I just sprayed them without changing the soil, they are still in the same pots until today. it's hard to change soil. How do you change the soil without harming the growth?

You will have to wait until they go dormant. It is a good idea to keep them away from the other roses.

I'm still not convinced on if we are certain on how BS spreads via the soil. I have two Livin' Easy bands I planted in the spring in side by side beds, one gets BS badly and completely defoliated (bouncing back and leafing out now) and the other has not had even a spec of BS on it all season! Makes no sense, I don't get it.

I wouldn't worry about removing soil, to me no one can say for sure that there is BS in there and also, I just consider such a practice to be on the extreme end of things I'm willing to do as a gardener (I add "root pruning" plants in the ground to that list). I picked up two grafted Dick Clarks in 2 gallon containers from Home Depot for $2 each over a month ago, they both had BS like crazy, I pulled off all the leaves and the new leaves that have since come out are clean and BS free.

braverichard,

Roses are woody plants that store a lot of their energy in the canes. When we plant them further north than they are supposed to be, the canes are killed over winter, depleting the energy store. But herbaceous perennials are designed to be killed down by winter and to regrow from energy stored in the crown and roots.

So tender roses are not well-suited to survive below zone 8a or 7b unless they have grown to good size and built up some mass underground--not true of 1-gal. or band roses planted late in the season..

If you look at wild species roses, they grow only in places where their canes are fully winter-hardy. There are no hybrid teas growing in the woods hereabouts.

michaelg,

On the money! The mass underground is an important point because roses store sugars in their roots right? Isn't that what allows roses killed to the ground to still bounce back in spring? Every living creature wants to survive and will do all it can to keep living and growing - this principle must explain how I've had so much success with planting bands late in the season even as they die back all the way to their roots.

I had two Julia Childs and one Pink Knockout planted last fall, in MA northwest of Boston. I didn't do anything special in the way of winter protection, though the area is shielded by trees on one side and the house on the other, and the bark mulch throughout the garden is about 2-3 inches thick.
The Julias died down to the crown, but came back in mid-to-late spring, and have done very well. The Pink Knockout did better in terms of surviving the winter, got eaten by some insect in mid-spring, recovered, bloomed later than I expected, but is also doing very well.

Michael explained it perfectly. I'll add that most modern roses just aren't bred to have the greatest winter hardiness. They are bred for the beauty of those repeat blooms and little else. Mr. Radler worked on getting that hardiness in the Knock Out roses. Also a lot of the Griffith Buck roses were bred with hardiness in mind. Unless the breeder is in a cold climate, or testing in one, and selects with hardiness as a criteria the roses that come to market won't necessarily be hardy in zones 6 and lower.