Unknown rose

mchua

Hi I’ve inherited many things recently in a garden most of which I don’t know because they are not in bloom now, and I can’t tell from foliage. One of many is this rose bush. The main stem at the bottom I sawed off bc it was dead.  But the thinner one is still ok. I scraped back to cambium and it’s still green there. There are only three buds right at the top. All the leaves have disease I think. How best to save this?

Lizzie27

@mchua, the leaves don't matter this time of year and will fall off soon anyway.

If you don't know the variety of rose, you have two choices, you can either tie the remaining stem to a support and see what it does next year or you can prune it hard down to 1-2 feet in the winter - Dec/Jan/Feb time depending on where you are. This should stimulate new growth from the base in the spring which should flower next year.

In the spring, give it a good mulch of well-rotted manure (bagged from a GC will do) and feed it in early June with a good specialist rose fertiliser. Keep it well watered then.

fidgetbones

It looks like that stem is coming from the rootstock.  Unless it is not a grafted plant, ie grown from a cutting, It is probably time to scrap it and start again.

Marlorena

No, not rootstock on this occasion.... do what Lizzie says if you want to keep it, but ask yourself if it's giving you great garden value... there are better things to grow there that don't cost much.. 

mchua

Lizzie27 said:

@mchua, the leaves don't matter this time of year and will fall off soon anyway.

If you don't know the variety of rose, you have two choices, you can either tie the remaining stem to a support and see what it does next year or you can prune it hard down to 1-2 feet in the winter - Dec/Jan/Feb time depending on where you are. This should stimulate new growth from the base in the spring which should flower next year.

In the spring, give it a good mulch of well-rotted manure (bagged from a GC will do) and feed it in early June with a good specialist rose fertiliser. Keep it well watered then.

Thank you very much for the sound advice. I’m tempted to stake it and see what it does next year. I’m not sure how to treat roses. Do I deadhead those three buds at the top and prune back to some lower ones, or just leave them be?  If it blooms next year I’ll take pic to see if anyone can identify it. 

Lizzie27

I'd leave them be for the time being. They may still flower if the weather is kind. I've had the odd rose in bloom in late November.

If it doesn't bloom, I would be inclined to prune it back to at least the height of the top of the fence to give it some protection from the wind. 

mchua

Hi again, I decided to leave it to see what it did.  I’m guessing it falls into Hybrid Tea category since the flower is large.

It breaks my heart to not see any other buds, at all.  Nothing happened at the top.


  But hopefully someone can identify the variety for me.  I will definitely prune it when the time comes as long as I know what I’m doing. 

Thank you so much  

WAMS

I sympathise. I have a similar, badly-tended, decades-old rose (definitely from the 50s), just dreadful in every way, even taking up a good spot by the shed that gets about 6 hours of sun a day... but it has a pretty pink bloom when it blooms. 

Maybe next year will be the year I can bring myself to trash it... until then, I will enjoy the few pink blooms I can only see from my second-storey bedroom!

mchua

I think I’ll give it one more try this year and prune it down to a foot as suggested and see what happens, as I know that by leaving it alone, this is the current result.