Bareroot roses are dormant plants sold without soil. Because roses are deciduous plants, they can be successfully field grown and harvested. This efficient method of mass producing roses allows the grower to produce high quality stock at much lower costs than container grown stock. Roses are harvested delivered and sold "bareroot" or without soil only during the winter season.

The proper tool for most pruning is a sharp clean set of bypass pruners. Anvil pruners should not be used for roses as they crush the stem being cut. A saw or lopping shears may be used to cut very large canes (1/2 inch diameter or greater) All pruning cuts on canes greater than 1/4 inch diameter should be sealed with nail polish or glue to prevent cane borers from entering. Proper pruning will help keep a rose bush healthy.

We send most plants bareroot, packed with the roots blanketed in moist sphagnum moss and wrapped in bundles with aluminum foil. We spray the leaves with an anti-transpirant to protect plants from weather changes during shipment. This product does not affect photosynthesis. To minimize your shipping costs we ship plants bareroot, a method we have used successfully for 15 years.

Answer: Almost all of the Rugosa roses are very fragrant -- and they're easy to grow. In addition to the Rugosa's the following roses are also fragrant: Cuthbert Grant and Rosa mundi. For more information about using the roses we offer, visit our online catalog. Answer: We have our favorites, of course, which biases this answer, but here's our suggested list for Zone 4: This list can be expanded, depending on your preference and favorites.

Answer: We get this question alot! I guess it's important to those of you giving roses as gifts -- you don't want it to send the wrong message! As far as we can determine, this is what the following rose colors signify: For more information on rose color, especially the names used to describe the color, visit the American Rose Society Web site.

It depends on where you live, and just how cold it gets there. In mild winter areas we generally recommend pruning back in the winter in January or February. In colder climates light pruning may be necessary to prepare you plants for cold weather insulation but the final pruning is done in the Spring after the danger of hard frost has past.

One of the most frequently asked and difficult questions to answer is how often and how much do I water my roses? On average roses need 1 to 2 inches of water every 7 to 10 days. That being said the best way to water is to develop a schedule for the specific conditions in your garden. Quantity and frequency are determined by soil texture, season, climate, exposure and the growth stage of your plants. Light (sandy) soils will need more water and frequent watering than heavy (clay) soils.

Definitely, fertilizer toxicity can have an adverse effect on your plants directly or may cause environmental damage. Major nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and sulfur in excess will cause marginal leaf burn. Excessive levels of phosphorus, calcium and iron will interfere with the availability of other nutrients. Minor nutrients like zinc, copper, and boron will cause leaf drop if over applied.

Deadheading is cutting off flowers as they wither or don't look as good. Old blooms left on the plant may have been pollinated and may begin to form seed pods (hips). The formation of hips requires a lot of energy from the plant and slows flower production. By preventing the formation of hips, deadheading encourages the rose bush to grow new flowers.

Though highly sought after, no blue roses exist yet. Some roses are advertised as blue, but they are actually lavender or something. Most lavender roses are difficult to grow and are quite susceptible to disease. Some of the bluer roses are Blue Girl, Blue Jay(HT), and Reine des Violettes(HP). A couple of true purple roses are Cardinal de Richelieu and Veilchenblau. The genetics are just not there for producing a true blue color in roses.

No true black roses exist. Some roses sold as black roses are actually dark red or maroon. The petals of many of these dark red roses tend to sunburn easily. To see that a rose is not truly black, hold it up next to a piece of black construction paper. To make a dark red rose appear blacker, put its stem in water that has black ink in it. Below is an incomplete list of some roses that have been mentioned when black roses are discussed.

There are two primary ways to propagate roses. Asexual reproduction is usually used to produce a duplicate of the parent plant. Sexual reproduction, i.e. growing roses from seed, is primarily used to create new varieties of roses. Common methods of asexual propagation of roses are softwood rooting, hardwood rooting, and bud grafting. Limited space permits only a brief description of softwood rooting.

Many Hybrid Musks and some Albas can tolerate partial shade. A few other varieties including the Floribunda "Gruss An Aachen" can be planted in partial shade. Some other roses that may grow in partial shade are the Rugosas, Iceberg(FB), Zephirine Drouhin (Bourbon), Souvenir du Docteur Jamain(HP) and Madame Plantier.

By putting them into the soil. Roses tend to prefer soil that is on the heavy side and soil that is not full of limestone or chalk. If you live in a place with less than a foot of rich soil on top of limestone or chalk, the roses will not do well. If you live where the soil is full of peat, David Austin advises chucking it and buying rose-growing soil. If you live in a place with poor, sandy soil then ammend it with 30% to 40% compost or rotted manure.

In addition to the rose sites listed in the links page there are a number of excellent books on roses. Some of them are listed below. Many of these references can be purchased on-line through Barnes & Noble at a substantial discount off of list price, but some are out of print and only available through the mail-order sources.

You can buy roses at a local garden center. Even Home Depot will have bare root roses at about the time of year when they can be planted in your area. The advantage to buying roses at a garden center is that you can determine exactly what color the foliage is. And if the rose is in bloom you can discover both the flower color and its fragrance.

Roses produce flowers that deer find completely irresistable. Those little bags of deer repellant - which work splendidly at keeping deer from eating a lot of things they don't care much for anyway - when hung six inches from a flower on rose Olympiad have proven to be of absolutely no use in preventing deer from eating the flowers once the petals have fully opened. Every single rose gets eaten just as it fully opens.

There are roses in literature but they do not smell as sweet. Here are some examples - although we seem to be having some trouble with our quotation references and can't get the attributions quite right.

Roman emperors had a fondness for rose petals. Nero, in his mile-long palace had rose petals dropped upon his dinner guests as they ate and reclined after dinner. There is even an apocryphal story about smothering them to death with rose petals. He was one of history's most notoriously bad rulers but he certainly had a flare for the dramatic.

The Wars of the Roses was fought between the years of 1455 to 1487 between the House of York and Lancaster. The name is derived from the badges utilized by the two sides: The red rose signifying the House of Lancaster, and the white rose signified the House of York. The conflict arose from the following points:

Bareroot seedlings are one- to three-year-old trees grown in outdoor nursery beds, gently lifted from the soil and root pruned when fully dormant, and delivered in bulk with their roots moist and healthy but mostly bare of soil. Plug or containerized seedlings are typically grown for one year, with all or part of that year in a greenhouse. The tree is grown in a block or tray containing multiple cells filled with soil.

Answer: Determining which colors go well with others can become a science if you let it. We've all seen the familiar "color wheel" that shows complementary and contrasting colors. Reviewing the fundamentals behind complementary and contrasting colors can help you choose which colors to select. But other factors also affect our sense of color. This includes: color brightness, color area (how big/small), color saturation, proximity of colors to one another, light and how we feel about colors.

No. Patented roses are the same as non patented roses only newer. When rose hybridizers develop a new rose it can be patented the same as one would patent a promising invention. Plant patents last for 17 years and during that time the patent owner is entitled to royalties off every offspring from their plant. By law all patented plants must be labeled with the patent number stamped on a tag attached to the plant.

In 1969, English Roses, often called David Austin Roses, were introduced by the English rose hybridizer David Austin. David Austin tried to create roses that combine the best elements of Old Roses (roses varieties from before 1867) and Modern Roses (such as Hybrid Teas, Floribundas and Grandifloras). Most English Roses have flowers resembling Old Rose flowers, cupped and rosette-shaped old-fashioned flowers, usually with many petals.

Answer: If they're healthy and well-watered, you don't have to do anything if the rose is hardy in your Zone. If you're growing tender roses, you may have to give them complete protection to get them through the winter. All roses will benefit from a shovel-full or two of well-rotted manure or compost placed over the crown of the plant. Apply this material after the first hard frost, so it doesn't prompt the plant to put on new growth.

Answer: There are about as many special recipes for rose fertilizer and techniques for feeding roses as there are rose growers. All you need to know is that for a rose to produce a good show of blossoms, it needs to be fed. That food may come in the form of compost or well-aged manure, or come in a bag or bottle of ready-to-use fertilizer. We prefer a mix of both. We apply a shovel-full of compost per rose in early spring and late fall.

Yes we will. If you live in Santa Barbara, CA and the immediate area we have a professional application crew available to serve you. (see our questionnaire for Custom Spraying) See out Ten Safety Rules: Print this useful safety page and post in your greenhouse, garage or potting shed. See our helpful Measuring Tables for Mixing Pesticide: You can print these useful conversion charts to refer to when mixing.

For mild winter areas hybrid teas and grandifloras have a much greater range for pruning height than those grown in cold winter climates. In most cases these plants can be cut back as low as 18" or as high as 4 ft. In either case select four or five healthy evenly spaced canes and prune those down to a bud at the desired height facing the exterior of the bush. This will cause the new canes to develop outwardly producing an open more desirable shape.