We had a very wet Spring so I have not watered roses at all yet...

But in hot summer I just water when needed so each year is different...

Since here at my new house where works are in progress I do not have many roses yet so I just use my hose with my nozzle set on shower... :-)

...

I water roses in the ground 3x a week for 15 minutes with a sprinkler system. If it gets super hot (over 100F) on a non-watering day, I might have the sprinkler do an extra run. Plants in pots get water 5 min every day via drip. If it’s hot I will get them an extra watering of maybe 1/2 gallon via hose. My sprinkler and drip go off in the wee hours of the morning between 1-6 am.

Interesting, Ben! Your roses are out of competition, and I understand that sprinklers are a super convenient and sometimes the only way to water roses. I recently read that roses love to be watered with a large amount of water at once, rather than with a slow drip. How much water do you think your roses are getting in 15 minutes?

Sure things, Ben! Very convinient and smart way! I am also on overwatering side. Sometimes I am so surprised how fast 2 gal of water disappeared under the rose.

Glad that we never had any water using restrictions, so we have stopped collecting rain water.

I sure wish I understood our drip system and any work we have had done fixing it cost us way more than I’d imagine it was worth . So while it does successfully run for our front lawn the rest is a crapshoot . So I water by hand with a hose , when I’m on top of it it’s about an hour a day in the back and 30 up front. This way I know nothing is being missed. I killed a couple roses assuming the drip was getting it .

But when I get back from visiting family I may up it to twice a day and see if I can get blooms this summer . Once it gets too hot ( now ) the roses shut down . They just stay alive and I end up losing some to my lost enthusiasm. Maybe one day I’ll learn a lesson and stop with the potted roses ! Lol

My rose garden, roses only in it, is 8' X 18', houses 50ish bushes, Drift roses in front to hide the 'naked ankles...heaven's forbid they show,' of the taller roses behind them! Most of my bushes are very vertical, large bloomed, hybrid tea types. I like big blooms. The climbers that I grew along the fence at the bed's back are all gone. It makes it easier for people walking by the fence to see the rose bed, enjoying the roses (such as they are), along with me. So my Lady Ashe's demise/removal from RMV was a blessing in disguise.

My Quicksilver is seeming to cooperate with being a bush instead of a climber. It's stiff canes, even new basal canes, never were easy to train horizontally. A number of times canes cracked from being handled.

Now to watering...since my roses are all in one bed it makes it easy to sit, enjoy the roses and hand water them. The older established bushes get more water, younger, shorter ones get less. All the roses get watered generously, not depending on rainfall which is feast or famine, famine right now. Really, I let the roses tell me how much they need. They get what they need and then some.

My turtle tub residents, Otis and Merle, Reeves turtles (one of the smallest turtle breeds), living right near the rose bed, are hand tame for feeding and love to have their shells scratched. They hold up the rear of their shells on stretched hind legs and wiggle as they're scratched.

The pigeons from my loft, all fancy breeds, not racing homers, are great garden pigeons (a fantail, holle cropper, and 6 pigmy pouters), but letting them out to walk around, bathe in a pan, and sunbathing, which they love to do, is limited because of heavy hawk pressure. A hawk will swoop down and grab a pigeon right at your feet. The Cooper's hawks are the worst.

Obviously, I enjoy my rose garden and its residents. Even the mundane chore of hand watering is part of my pleasure.

When the temps are over 90, I water by sprinklers, ever 2 days. 30 minutes per bed. Otherwise, I water every 3 days, 20 minutes per bed. Yes, the sprinklers get the bush's wet. I spray my bush's with a fungicide every 2 weeks. I can handle a little black spot here and there. I CAN'T handle spider mites. Thus, my bush's get washed.

Moses, how lovely! Do you have pictures to share? I have only ceramic turtle on my front bed.:) How is your rose midges situation?

Elena,

You have 140 roses! Must be a magnificent sight.

I have very minimal tech skills...barely able to access my emails. A flip phone suits me very well. So sending photos, or even taking photos in the first place, I never learned. I see where this is a handicap in this lightning speed tech age, but that's the way it is when you grew up with manual typewriters. Very sorry that I am unable to oblige your request.

Also, right now I am glad to be alive still, fighting advanced metastatic prostate cancer, having recently finished 28 days, weekends off, of radiation therapy. I feel pretty good now, the best I have felt in 4 yrs. Learning a new skill with the computer is not a priority now. Getting up to tempo just living is, and improves every day, PTL. Being a family of one now, and not being able to drive any more presents more pressing problems.

The rose garden and its denizens make my life so much more enjoyable.

Moses

In my last garden I had a well established soaker hose set up for each of the four main beds under my mulch. Usually in the hottest part of summer this entailed running each hose 2-3 times a week at 1 hour each after work and then one day on the weekend at 2 hours each. I got a bad spider mite infestation my second year in that garden and after that added 1-2 overhand watering days as well, less for actually watering the plants and more to hose them off and get them wet, I never had a spider mite issue again after that. This was 50ish roses in an English cottage style garden and being in Seattle our summers are relatively mild compared to much of the rest of the country.

Now in my new garden almost everything has been in pots due to ongoing construction projects so hand watering in the summer is 3-4 times a week or every day if it gets over 80 degrees. In addition I often do a liquid feed during the weekend watering. I’m slowly getting things planted at last this year but with over 120 roses I want to get in the ground it is taking some time. My goal is to at a minimum have soaker hoses set up by next year that I can use for a few years and then switch to drip if I can get to a point where I’m not moving plants constantly 😄 I also have a sprinkler I use in the front for a small lawn and that provides overhead water to the plants there as well. For the rest I continue to spray down by hand to prevent spider mites.

It’s a lot and I am looking forward to getting a system in place to handle the core watering at least. I’ll probably always walk around and overhead water as a way to visit my plants but it’s more fun when you don’t have the stress of also making sure they are getting enough water too😊

Elina,

Midge reared its ugly head again this year, and early. I was too sick to do spring pruning until late April, at which time i pruned last year's growth to the usual heights, but the tips of them had new, this year's growth 6-8" long with buds for spring flush. All cut off. Essentially, I pruned away my first flush because the growth was at the ends of 5-6 ft. canes of last year's growth.

Well the canes kicked in with dormant buds leafing out, and they were diligently sprayed from then until today. Midge is under control now. The roses blooming right now are in a way the second flush, the first flush gone as described above. Small flowers, short stems, but I have flowers and very little to none midged shoots.

At this point, I am not as obsessed by midge as I have been for over the last 4 years as I watched my roses suffer a midge massacre with many bushes growing backwards. Hopefully the tides have turned.

Adding some new bushes gave my spirits a lift, too. Also, my pigeon loft was down to three residents as old age claimed one after the other. What to do? Got 5 new birds, all 2023 hatch, and all hens....which are the friendliest, sweetest, easiest to handle, compared to the cock pigeons who can be super aggressive to crazy, panic stricken nuts, rarely calm and collected.

Sorry for my rambles!

Moses

Heather,

You have your work cut out for you! When you're finished, I bet it will be a sight for the soothing of awestruck eyes. When should I contact Better Homes and Gardens to pay you a visit?

Moses

Moses, I did not know you were battling such health concerns. My thoughts are with you As always.

Best wishes to you, Moses.

Best wishes to you too, Moses. I know two people who have had stage 4 cancer and are long term survivors. My BIL still has to get scanned every year and he has had a few operations to remove tumors but he is going strong about 15 or 20 years after first diagnosed. Was not easy going through all that. Do turtles have nerves in their shells?

That's neat you have pet turtles.

I have between 350 and 400 roses...I quit counting. The old ones don't get watered. I hand water newly planted ones and pots. I spend a lot of time watering. We did get good rain this spring but it has dried up for the most part. Most of my soil is not water retentive. The big old roses I don't water usually don't seem to suffer much damage. Last year I think it was 6 months we didn't have rain, or not much. Not much damage.

The rain was good enough this spring that my Teasing Georgia is having a nice second flush right now.

Moses, thank you for your kind words, it helps right now when the projects seem never ending. Best of wishes to your health as well, its wonderful you have your garden companions to join you in enjoying your roses.

Thank you all for your encouraging words. They mean more to me than you know. God bless you all and all you loved ones.

Moses

Moses my thoughts and prayers are with you for continued management of the cancer issues. I'm glad that you've been able to get past radiation and feel better and every day is a victory gained. You have a gift for sharing joy with all of us so I hope you give yourself the same gift as often as you are able. Please accept our gratitude for the joy you bring us on this forum. It's good to hear your roses are a source of joy for you and the turtles.

Turtles like having their shells scratched? I didn't realize they have sensation in their shells! I would have thought behind the ear or neck scratches would be more preferred, so I've learned something!

As for watering, if I had to rely on underground technology I might not grow roses. LilyFinch's input sends shivers of horror down my spine at trying to interpret mysterious technology glitches in watering systems. I have about an acre or so in my suburban yard, planted with roses wherever I can squeeze them in. I use old fashioned overhead sprinklers with the biggest path Ace Hardware sells, and I can water all the beds, pots, and lawns in three passes (one sprinkler each for back beds vs. side/front beds). I've got a system for placement that has almost no runoff on sidewalks etc. If it hasn't rained substantially I do an hour per pass in a week, but this spring I've only had to water periodically when the temperature has stayed over 90F. I may do a little spot watering for roses that tell me they're suffering but that's most of it. Watching the gardens of friends I am convinced that ample water makes a huge difference in bloom volume and may be why my spring flush had been "meh" for years before Rosemageddon two years ago. Now that roses are returning to my garden, I'm judiciously trying to balance watering with being a good steward of resources (water and bills). We'll see.

Cynthia

Moses, glad to hear your midge problem is under control! I wanted to mention that blue sticky sheets can work wonders for managing them. For some reason, these sheets attract only thrips and midges! I've placed them at ground level and so far avoiding the nightmare I experienced last year when they were new to me.

Eleanor, from where do you buy the blue sticky sheets or do you make them yourself somehow?

We have had 100F weather this last month . We have fast draining sandy soil . My Irrigation runs twice a week , 15 to 30 min per zone .I watered by hand on the other days , washing the whole bush to prevent spider mites .

overall the rose bushes were doing well , but the blooms were all burnt up . Now this last week , rain has started coming every other day and the temps are down to 90's , suddenly roses have perked up and the blooms are looking better .

Vapovac, I have bought blue sheets here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCGY2RWP?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

initially I have placed blue cups with oil, but this year they did not catch anything.Decided to go with sheets and voilà!

Also wanted to chime in on underground watering. I know some people who have installations and their yards and lawns seem to look fine. But for me , I need to be able to see where and how that water is coming out and that it’s hitting my plants properly. Automatic watering is an ongoing maintenance job, stuff gets clogged, broken, or otherwise needs adjustment,. Even for my drip irrigation I use the little stakes that squirt out water in a small umbrella patter. Underground watering makes my uneasy and queasy, too.