My Tiffany Hybrid has produced lovely full pink blooms each of the 4 years I've had it...until this year. Now I have pink roses with 2-3 red roses thrown in the mix. Anyone familiar with this happening to their rose bush(es)?
Confused Rose Bush?
all the time in my yard. I am guessing that it has to do with naturalization. Perhaps toomany birds,bees...etc. My pure yellow rose started to have splashes of pink on it.Go figure.
Whew....glad to hear someone else's is having "issues" LOL
It's the rootstock trying to take over. Your rootstock is the variety Dr Huey, hence the red blooms. You need to get the sucker(s) off or your grafted variety Tiffany will eventually die.
I had Huey pop up several times this spring as well. One rose was completely Huey by the time I realized it, but I saved the rest of them. I just noticed it on my Tropicana yesterday, looks like several canes are Huey :(
Diana
Diana,
How do you tell the difference? Just look for the branches producing red blooms?
That's usually what alerts me, but Huey is a once bloomer, spring only. It's also a climber so there should be a difference in the way the canes look, and the foliage will be slightly different as well. Canes will be thinner and usually longer than the hybrid tea canes. You can see it's blooming in a cluster somewhat, whereas Tiffany has single blooms. The easiest way to tell is to look at the base of the rose where the bud union is located. That will be a gnarly knotty looking place where Tiffany was budded onto the Huey rootstock. Any canes coming out of the knot or from above the knot is Tiffany, any canes coming from BELOW that knot is a rootstock sucker and needs to be removed. This is assuming you don't have the bud union buried, and can see where the canes are originating from. Use a really good pair of gloves, get a good grip on those huey canes and twist them off at the base. For some reason twisitng them off reduces the instances of recurrance more than cutting them off. Keep your eye out on that rose and when you see it happening again, twist the offending suckers off before they get big. I have an Austin, A Shropshire Lad, that I've had to keep removing Huey from every single year. The recurrences are getting less and the rose is maturing into a nice bush now, but I guarantee that if I ever stop pulling Huey off, he'll take over and the bud union will die. Good luck with your Tiff, she's a wonderful fragrant rose and one of my favorites :)
Diana
Diana,
You're a life...umm, rose saver...thank you so much! That will be priority one this weekend!!! It's not that I mind red roses...it's just that I have a color scheme sorta going on and I picked the Tiffany for color, scent, and shape!
I will follow your wonderful guidelines - thank you again!!
Chantell
You're very welcome Chantell, it's my one area of knowledge and I am happy to share LOL
I had a time getting Huey off my Tropicana today. There were four canes right in the middle of that rose that turned out to be rootstock. I had to prune the canes back and since I bury my bud unions I had to get the little shovel and dig far enough to be able to twist those canes off. It took a bit of effort since Huey had developed his own crown but I got it off. A lot of rosarians would have shovel pruned the whole rose since Tropicana is an old variety and a thorny bugger as well, plus I do have another, but I like this rose :)
Diana
