Archive for the 'Roses' Category
These are more pictures of flowers that are blooming in our garden this spring. The first picture is of a Cecil Brunner climbing rose. Each spring, they are filled with hundreds of cute miniature flowers for a few weeks. But they only bloom once a year. The rest of the year they grow profusely. A bit too profusely in my opinion. I stopped watering them two years ago to try to stunt their growth. But it didn’t work. They still grow dozens of new thorny vines every few months during the growing season. Pruning the new growth has only slowed them down a little. I planted them next to the fence, so they might be getting water from the neighbor’s yard. I am probably going to cut them back severely in a few weeks.
The second picture is a purple rhododendron. I have had this bush about 6 years, and it has bloomed reliably every year. I really love of the color of its flowers.
Rhododendrons like shade in warm climates, acidic soil, and lots of water. Ours is planted in partial shade, although our soil is not particularly acidic. I give it azalea/rhododendron fertilizer once a year in the spring and that has be enough to get it to flower.
The last picture is group of lavender bearded irises. These irises were here when I moved into the house. I almost never water or fertilize them, and they have produced very few blooms. This year they have more flowers than they have ever had. In our climate, we get very little rain from May through October. Bearded irises are supposed to be drought tolerant. I am not sure if they don’t bloom much because they are not getting enough water or fertilizer or both.
May 03 2009 | Flowers and Irises and Rhododendron and Roses | 1 Comment »
Our backyard roses are at the peak of their first bloom of the 2009 season. The first bloom of the season is usually the most spectacular, because it is the only time of year when all of our roses have flowers at the same time. We have planted red, pink, white, orange, purple, lavender, and yellow roses around the edge of the backyard lawn. The orange rose in the first picture is a ginger snap, the purple rose in the second picture is an intrigue, and the rose in the third picture is a double delight, which has a nice fragrance. All three are hybrid tea roses.
After our roses finish their first bloom in about 2 weeks, I will apply a slow release all-purpose fertilizer to them to stimulate them to bloom again in the summertime. I have noticed that when I haven’t fertilized our roses after the first bloom in the past, they don’t get as many flowers in the following months. When I have fertilized them, they generated second and third sets of blooms that were as amazing as the first bloom. Last year, I gave our roses 2 or 3 applications of fertilizer, in the spring and summer, and our roses bloomed off and on until early November.
April 26 2009 | Roses | 1 Comment »
I planted this white simplicity rose in our garden about 5 years ago as a bare root rose along with yellow and pink simplicity bare root roses. The pink simplicity roses grew but never bloomed. After about 3 years without a single flower, I pulled them up. The yellow simplicity rose blooms, but it doesn’t impress visually in terms of both its leaves and flowers. It doesn’t get many flowers, and the flowers it does get lose their petals quickly. Its leaves seem to have gotten infected with some kind of fungus. I plan to pull it up this winter and replace it with a different variety.
On the other hand, the white simplicity rose has grown and bloomed beautifully. It produces a lot of flowers, and it’s flowers are nice looking, but the flowers do not have much of a fragrance. It’s blooming now in late November, even though it’s growing in a spot that receives only about 2 hours of direct but filtered sunlight this time of year. This picture was taken last weekend.
I also have two white iceberg rose bushes. Iceberg is another floribunda rose. The flowers of iceberg look very similar to simplicity. However, I prefer simplicity to iceberg, because the simplicity rose’s branches grow upright and are sturdier than iceberg. The iceberg rose grows long weak branches that extend too far outward from the center of the plant.
When rain or sprinkler water hits opened iceberg rose flowers, the branches sag down toward the ground. They often do not perk up after drying off, giving the plant an uncared for look. Iceberg roses tend to need more aggressive pruning to keep them looking manicured. I rarely prune the simplicity rose, and it still looks very well manicured even after a rain.
Also, the leaves of the simplicity rose are much larger and more attractive looking than the leaves of our iceberg roses. The simplicity rose leaves are a healthy dark glossy green color, while the leaves of our iceberg roses are a lighter green color and are much smaller.
November 23 2008 | Roses | No Comments »
The growing seasons is largely over here in Northern California. As of mid-November, our roses are no longer growing new buds, but the buds that developed on our rose bushes in October are continuing to open this month.
This photograph shows a few of the flowers that are open on our Julia Child floribunda rose bush. The flowers of this rose have an eye-catching pale orange color and a mildly sweet candy smell that is very different from the typical rose smell. The flowers resemble an English rose in terms of their shape and petal pattern. Like many other floribunda roses, our Julia Child rose tends to produce many more flowers than a hybrid tea, although its flowers are smaller than the flowers of a hybrid tea rose.
We planted our Julia Child rose bush in our garden about 2 years ago, and it has doubled in size since then. This rose has a bushy growing habit. Rather than growing a few long canes like a hybrid tea rose, it grows lots of short stems and lots of glossy leaves that give the bush a filled-out rounded shape. However, its flowers are not ideal for cutting, because their stems are so short.
November 10 2008 | Roses | No Comments »
Our black magic rose continues to bloom into November. Black magic is one my favorite roses in terms of its looks. Its flowers develop on very long straight stems that are ideal for cutting. Although black magic roses do not have much of a fragrance, they have a near perfect rose shape. And they hold their perfect rose shape for weeks unlike many other roses that open quickly and then drop their petals. For example, the yellow rose that I blogged about a few weeks ago opens and loses its petals in less than a week.
November 08 2008 | Roses | No Comments »
The cooler weather has not stopped our roses from blooming yet. In the past week, yellow, red, white, orange, purple, and peach colored roses have been blooming in our yard. This picture shows a pink Color Magic hybrid tea rose that just started blooming again for the first time in about 2 months.
I just bought this Color Magic rose bush from a local discount home improvement store last spring for about $6.50. When I bought it, it was small, and it only had a few stubby canes. In fact, a woman who was standing next to me in line when I was waiting to purchase it told me that she would not have picked that rose based on how it looked at the time.
But I had a feeling that it had potential. I have found that roses respond well to a little TLC. And for that price, how could I go wrong? I try to buy roses that have a thick stalk and thick canes. I think that the thicker roses are more mature, and therefore more likely to grow quickly once they are transplanted into the yard.
Our Color Magic rose has grown to over 5 feet tall from about 1 foot tall in past 6 months, and its leaves are dark green and healthy looking. It has grown particularly fast since I increased the amount of water it was getting in September. I think I only fertilized it once back in early summer.
November 02 2008 | Roses | No Comments »
A few years ago, my mom and I noticed peach colored roses growing in front of a shopping mall. They had very attractive flowers. We decided that we had to know what kind of rose they were, so we got out of the car and searched for a label. We found a label on one of the bushes. It was a brandy hybrid tea rose. Since then, I have noticed Brandy roses growing in people’s gardens, at a local university, and in many other places.
I finally bought my own Brandy hybrid tea rose bush from a local nursery last summer. Although it looked good when I bought it, at first it seemed to struggle to grow and bloom. It produced a few flowers over the summer, but they were small, and they burned quickly after opening.
Over the summer, I was watering our Brandy rose using a low flow dripper. Since I replaced the dripper with a higher flow bubbler in early September, it has grown significantly. Now it has a flush of large and full blooms for the first time.
I think the unique fading peachy color of the petals is what makes this rose so appealing. The flowers also have a nice fragrance.
October 29 2008 | Roses | 3 Comments »
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