Roses on September 1

Yesterday afternoon, in between rain showers, the light was perfect for me to take my camera outside and capture images of some of the roses.  Come on ... let's take a look.  (Highlighted names under the photos are links to further information about that rose on Help Me Find, the best site on the web for roses.)

'Champneys' Pink Cluster' and a little friend.

"Sacramento Cemetery Musk Seedling"  aka, "Jim Henley"

'Laurent Carle'

It's been a while since I did any photography with something other than my iPhone 6s.  My phone takes decent photos, but my trusty, ancient Nikon D70 is much better at accurately capturing close-up images in the garden.

"Bryan Freidel Pink Tea" and a tiny spider

'Perle d'Or'

'Lyon Rose'

It's been a hard summer in the garden.  Weather was the main culprit.  It wasn't as hot as usual, but June and July were incredibly dry.  Japanese Beetles arrived on schedule in early June, in lower numbers than last year, but they stayed around for a few weeks longer then normal.  (There are still a few stragglers out there.)  Curly Rose Slugs are a big pest right now.  I pick them off when I see them, but it's a challenge.

'Maria Stern'

"Zalud House Shingled Raspberry"

Through it all, the garden persists.  Some roses are struggling ... others shake off the challenges and soldier on.  One of the best of the latter is my Yellow Seedling, which I grew in 2009 from a seed in an open-pollinated hip on 'Peace'.  This rose blooms and grows, despite heat and drought, almost immune to blackspot.  It's a star!

Unregistered yellow seedling.

Unregistered yellow seedling.

It's delightful to wander the property to see the roses that are already putting on a lovely show for fall.  As I was finishing up in the front yard, the battery on my camera died.  I will have to wait for another day to show you the rest of the garden.  (The English Roses and Noisettes in the Barn Garden are particularly nice.)  

Flowers on Friday ... Blooming in the Basement

Three of the baby roses growing under lights in my basement workshop are plants of my Yellow Seedling.  One of these developed a bud, which I was technically supposed to have popped off when I first noticed it.  This would be to allow the plant to put its energy into growing leaves and roots (instead of a flower), but I didn't have the heart to do it.  This is a strong healthy plant, and I reasoned that it could stand the strain of flowering.  A few days ago, the bud opened and this was the result:

If you follow Hartwood Roses on Facebook, you have already seen this photo.

In a few weeks, I will send two of the three plants to friends in different parts of the country.  This is the next step in my goal to eventually make this rose commercially available ... gotta see if it performs as well in other places as it does in my garden here.  The third plant will stay here as a back up copy, in case something happens to the original.

It has been almost a month since I transplanted the baby roses out of their propagation containers and into small pots of their own.  (click the link to see a post from when I did this).

Happy Friday, Everyone!  

Blue Sky Day

After a dreary, rainy morning today, the sun came out at lunchtime and the sky cleared and it is absolutely a perfect fall day!  While I was outside playing with the dogs, I brought along my camera to capture a few of the things that caught my eye.
 
This is a view of our future studio/guesthouse/workshop building that I don't think I have shown you before.  I have such plans for this wonderful little building ... but I must wait till I get a few more things off my plate before I can even think of scheming its renovation.  In the meantime, it's great for storage.

 

 

Crepuscule is really showing off today!  I like this rose a lot, with its fragrant clusters of apricot-colored flowers.

 

 

 

We have already discussed my love affair with 'Mutabilis' many times.  It seems that the little flower bees concur ... they love it, too.

 

 

 

My "Yellow Seedling" keeps getting better and better.  It is four years old now, and about 4 feet high ... blooms all the time and is completely free of blackspot.  I have cuttings of it in my workshop propagation window, and I hope it will root so I have plants to share and test next spring. 

 

 

 

Not everything in the garden is sunshine and roses, though.  As I looked up from taking the photo of the Yellow Seedling, an errant patch of red growth caught my eye ... Rose Rosette Disease has come again this year.

 

It is perfectly normal for many roses to have bright red new growth.  Growth like this, which is rampant and abnormal for the variety, is a sign of a problem.  In this case, the problem is Rose Rosette Disease.

 

 

This is a cane on 'Marie Nabonnand'.  I also found disease symptoms on 'Alba Meideland', 'Climbing Pinkie' and "Puerto Rico".  Though I could remove the symptomatic canes and wait till next spring to see if the disease manifests itself on other parts of the affected plants, I won't do that in this case.  The roses that are affected are relatively common, and I will not risk any chance of transmission from them to the rest of the garden.

 

In 2011, I wrote about Rose Rosette Disease HERE.  The best online reference resource is Ann Peck's e-book, found HERE.  If you grow roses, read it and get educated.

 

Finding four roses in the garden in such dire straits put a definite damper on my fine fall mood.  I'm trying to be positive about this ... at least the affected roses aren't my rare ones.  I have to keep telling myself, RRD may mean the death of the infected rose, but it will not prevent me from growing and enjoying my roses.

 

 

My Yellow Seedling

Four years ago, I plucked a rose hip from my neighbor's 'Peace' rose.  One of the roses that I grew from the seeds in that hip has turned out to be a superstar in the garden. 

Who would have guessed that a child of 'Peace' would be extremely resistant to disease and bloom profusely throughout the season?  The flowers are three inches across.  They are a soft medium yellow when they open, and they fade only slightly as they age.  I can even detect a bit of fragrance!

Now that this bush has some size (it's about 3 feet high and 4 feet wide) I am going to make a concerted effort to root cuttings this summer to test its performance in other gardens.  If all goes well, it will be so cool to have a rose on the market that I actually bred myself!

Look out, Knock Out ... the yellow seedling is breathing down your neck.

A Superb Yellow Seedling

Three or four years ago, I pocketed a couple of ripe rose hips from a rose in the vineyard at Hartwood Winery next door ... I think the rose was Peace, but I'm not positive.  Most of the seeds in those hips sprouted and grew into puny, spindly reject roses.  One of them grew well, and continues to do VERY well in the garden.

This rose never fails to attract attention from garden visitors.  Its flowers are medium butter-yellow, and they don't fade much as they age.

The brown petals on these two buds are the only damage this rose shows in response to a whole week of damp, rainy weather that we have had.

The best characteristic of this rose is its foliage ... large, dark green leaves that are incredibly disease resistant.  I took this photo of the bush yesterday afternoon (and all the rest of the ones in this post, too), and you see leaves clear to the bottom of the plant, with almost no blackspot in sight.

This rose provides a perfect example of why it's important to evaluate promising roses for a number of years before making a decision on them.  Its first year in the garden, this one was out-performed by another seedling planted beside it and I almost dug it out in favor of the other seedling.  Now, three years later, this rose has become a star ... and the other one is gone.

Next week, I will be taking cuttings from this rose, to propagate plants to give to other gardeners ... so they can grow this rose and see if it does as well in their gardens as it does for me.  If it continues to do so well, expect to find it named and registered and available for sale in two years or so.

A shrubby rose with yellow flowers and disease-resistant foliage?  There was a time in rose breeding when this was seen as the impossible dream.  It's hard to believe that I may have achieved it by growing open-pollinated seeds from a hip that I snapped from one of my neighbor's roses.

I see that a few of you are planning to follow along and grow rose seeds with me this winter.  If you missed the first installment of this soon-to-be series on how to grow roses from seed, scroll down to the post right before this one to get started.