Are Rose Bushes Like Vintage
Wine?
by Clarence Rhodes
What am I trying to say with the question, “Are rose bushes like vintage wine? Any winemaker will tell you that his vines may yield different qualities of grapes from year to year, thus the annual vintages vary in quality. With the number of rose bushes purchased each year in the millions, the country should be covered with roses. I have been growing roses for more than thirty years and probably have purchased more than 1000 rose bushes. I am still purchasing some each year and have only about 250 bushes in my rose garden. In my experience I believe there is some evidence of this variation in the quality of rose bushes.
For the past six years I have been growing my roses in a relatively controlled condition, growing them in plastic containers in a soilless medium. At the present time I have approximately 140 bushes growing in ten and twenty gallon plastic containers. I started with five containers because I wanted to grow some roses in a certain location but did not want to winter them over in that location. With the plants in containers, I could move them to wherever I wanted them. The results the first year were so encouraging that it fostered my interest in growing roses in plastic containers in earnest. I had four or five bushes growing in soil in wooden containers for about a dozen years before and they did not grow any better and sometimes grew worse than the bushes growing in the ground.
In the year 2000 I planted about forty bushes in ten-gallon containers. All of the roses came from different West Coast sources. Some were bare root, some were potted. All of the bare root ones did not have a break or look like they were going to have any breaks. Keep in mind that these were the 1999 harvested bushes. That Spring I huddled all the containers together, covered them completely with mulch, thoroughly watered and covered them with three or four layers of clear plastic. Twelve days later I removed the plastic and the mulch and saw hundreds of breaks from one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch long. All the bushes grew very well that year and continue to grow well. I thought, now I know how to do this. I also planted several in twenty-gallon containers. In one container I planted two bare root St. Patrick bushes from the same source. One bush grew to over six feet tall, the other one grew about fifteen inches tall. Being in the same container, both got the same treatment. In 2001, I removed the short plant and put it into a ten-gallon container. It is growing, struggling along, and the other one grew six feet tall again with some canes three-quarter of an inch in diameter.
In 2001 I planted forty or more bushes which were purchased from the same source, some in pots and some bare root. These were bushes harvested in 2000. I gave them the same treatment as the bushes planted in 2000 and when I uncovered them they had very few breaks and most of them did not grow very well this year. This along with my past experience generated the question, ARE ROSES LIKE VINTAGE WINE?
This leads to more questions and statements
about growing roses. Some years the new bushes seem to grow better than others.
Some of the things I have read and learned over the years: “plant your bushes
in a pot for a year to see if they grow well”; “first-year bush, not growing
well, see how it will do next year”; “third year growing, will shovel prune
if it does no better this year”; “give your bush a couple of years to get
started”; and the list goes on.
My experience here in the Northeast has been that I have seen very few bushes that have not grown well the first year improve the next year. I believe that any additional damage to the bud union or canes the first winter, either from the cold or drying out, does not help a poor bush and it is downhill after that. The question is, ARE ROSE BUSHES LIKE VINTAGE WINE, and if so, what are the reasons?
What is the vintage of this rose?