Regional Growing Guide: Upper South
Hot, hazy and humid describes much of the year in this region, where roses commence their first peak of bloom by Mother's Day, then continue budding out and blooming through December. While most of the rain comes during winter and early spring, fierce afternoon thunderstorms, nor-easters and even hurricanes may blow through during summer months. The soil may be acidic or sandy: amending with lime helps balance the pH, while compost provides nutrients and improves drainage. The best roses are heat tolerant and resist black spot: new roses often offer improved repeat blooming as well.
Select a season: Spring Early Summer Late Summer Fall Winter
Carefree Roses
A frequent request from gardeners is for a shrub that is low-maintenance, not too tall, and blooms all summer. One response: shrub roses. It may come as a surprise, but there are a number of shrub roses that do indeed offer continuous color and require no more care than any other shrub.
Whether you're thinking about adding a hedge, expanding the shrub border, or including some shrubs among the perennials and annuals, consider steering yourself away from lilacs and weigelas and over to shrub roses. Depending on your choice of rose, you'll be rewarded, either with continual blooms from May until frost or with a shrub that handily competes with other once-blooming shrubs.
Choosing a Rose Shrub
Due to the demand for long-blooming, easy-care plants, rose companies are developing more and more shrub-type roses. The resulting array is becoming almost as dizzying as the number of hybrid teas and grandifloras. Basically, the shrub class of roses is a wide-ranging mixture of forms, from small bush to enormous climber. Not all have the same hardiness or disease resistance. Some roses that have shrub-like qualities have their own distinct classification, most notably the rugosa and the kordesii hybrids.
Go Carefree
The Carefree Series is one that won't disappoint as the members are particularly hardy, disease resistant, and free flowering all season long. Carefree Wonder makes a compact shrub 3 feet wide and as tall, with medium-pink blooms with a paler reverse and 18 to 24 petals. Carefree Delight and the recent Carefree Spirit were bred in France by Meilland and introduced in 1996 and 2009.
Carefree Delight's small pink flowers have 5 to 10 petals. Carefree Spirit produces deep red blossoms with white twinkles in their eyes; the blooms finish pink as they bask in the sun. All of these bear lots of rose hips for winter landscape interest.
Late Season Bouquets
June's rose blooms don't compare to the roses in late summer and fall. The rose plants have had a whole season with lots of water, nutrition and tender loving care. The bugs and blights have come and gone, and what I have left is picture-perfect rose bushes with glossy green foliage and spotless flowers, perfect for enjoying in arrangements.
Cutting Roses
Don't hesitate to cut roses for indoor enjoyment; it does the plant no harm, and multiplies your enjoyment. Cut flowers in the morning or early evening. Put stems in a pail of lukewarm water as you cut them, and keep the cut roses in water in a cool, dark place until you are ready to arrange them. However, avoid cutting roses after October first; every cut on a rose bush encourages new growth, which could get nipped by a fall cold snap. So cut all the roses you want up until then, and let the plants gear down for winter starting in October.
Drying Roses
Cut roses can be enjoyed in a vase for a week or so or dried to be enjoyed for years. Dried roses make stunning Christmas wreaths and decorations. To dry them gather up some borax, yellow or white cornmeal, and an airtight plastic container. Mix up the borax and cornmeal in a ratio of 1 part borax to 4 parts cornmeal in the bottom of your plastic container. Make a little hollow in the mixture to gently nest the rose. Pour more borax mixture over the rose slowly and gently, making sure it filters between and under each petal. Petals need a little support from underneath so they can dry in the exact form you see today.
Seal the container, label it with the date, and set it right side up where it won't be disturbed for at least 2 weeks. At the end of that time, carefully unearth the rose. If it isn't thoroughly dried, place it back into the borax for another week. Experience will teach you which roses dry best, and how long to leave them to dry. Dried roses take on a color of their own. Red roses usually dry to an almost black, shaded with dark red. White roses dry to a cream color, and yellow and pink roses dry pretty much true to their original color. Once dried, attach them to wreaths and flat arrangements with a glue gun for holiday decorations.