Roses: Looking for a True Red, 1 by DonnaMack

DonnaMack wrote:
I think your point about japanese beetles is true. I have three Morden Blush. I love this rose. It\'s lovely and blooms like crazy, but it\'s the one rose on which I find, literally, 90% of my japanese beetles - and it has no scent, but the three are together! I have 41 roses, but that\'s their favorite at my new home. I have a lot of pinks with scent - two pink reblooming bourbons are nearby. I have a bunch of scented pinks all over the yard, and they leave them alone. And interestingly, they didn\'t want my raspberries this year.

I certainly prefer to grow roses with scent, but I am in a zone where cold hardiness really starts to matter. A lot of people don\'t grow roses because of the temperature issue, and they are only familiar with hybrid teas. It\'s such a shame, because their solution was Knockouts, and they aren\'t as easy as people think. They actually require winter protection to do well. I see dead ones in the spring all the time. Of course, that may be that people think they require no care at all. I take care of peoples\' gardens, and I notice that people just stick them in the ground and walk away. No water, no fertilizer and no deadheading. And then they die. What a surprise. I find that they are very productive if you mound their bases with compost in winter, deadhead them promptly, and provide them with at least two gallons of water each week and full sun. Then they thrive, but I can treat Marie Pavie, the beautiful polyantha with almost neglect and it rocks out. It\'s zone four. It has a gorgeous scent. It\'s close to thornless. If I neglect it for a while and there are no flowers on it, I can literally take a hedge saw to the spent bloom and within a week it\'s covered with flowers. It just gets rain water. The third picture shows two of them.
I think it\'s not popular because it\'s white and, being very old and French, no one gets a royalty for it. Bless Joel at Pickering. It was his suggestion. I must have 20 \"Joel\'s Picks\". That man knew his stuff. I suggested it to a dummy who kept losing Knockouts in shade before I moved them and gave them the treatment I described and she turned up her nose and said, \"but it\'s white\".

I put in in hardscaping and had an entrance at which I needed two roses that were cold hardy and bloomed a great deal. And was beautiful. Morden Blush looks like an old garden rose. It LOOK like it should be scented, but it\'s not. But look at this rose. Doesn\'t it LOOK scented?

By the way, have you noticed a new behavior in japanese beetles beetles? I go out every morning with my bowl of soapy water, tap the rose they are on, and a number of them - perhaps one out of three - don\'t drop. They cling to the rose. I actually have to pry them off. First some of them developed resistance to milky spore. Now this. What will they do next? Bite you after they eat the rose flowers? Are they messing with my head by going after unscented flowers?

I didn\'t order Jude - Heirloom Roses sent it my mistake and told me to keep it. It\'s supposed to be zone 5, so I have no idea why it has been such a loser.

And yes, I hear you about pruning roses in late winter. How the heck did I get to 41? There was a time when I did them all at once. Now it\'s taking three days.

Oh, my goodness, I do go on.....