Hi Warren,
I hope that HT X HT challenge was a fun one for you! I hope you were on the winning end of that challenge!!
)
Fragrant Cloud is a HT I am in love with, so I guess that is the reason I am particularly in love with PJPII, which has FC in its pedigree. It is the “fragrance factor”. Love that!!!
Hi Michael,
I continue to like Elina. I plan to use its pollen this year on some floribundas.
George very happy with the results so far.
warren
Warren,
I’m in zone 9 with HIGH humidity - a real test garden as it were. I think healthy heat lovers will be as welcome as deep freeze survivors on the market. Both should be readily adaptable from their extremes to the midpoint I’d imagine.
Will we be getting more photos this year?
I’d really like to see a photo of Kabookie showing its red reverse. The HMF photo is too fully open to reveal the reverse.
Thanks,
Chris
George,
Should have posted this earlier. I too was surprised when I looked up the two roses Warren recommended that you cross with a VERY RESISTANT HT and saw they were Teas and not HTs. Like you, I too thought why Teas
After reading his response to your very same question something clicked in my mind. About 6 or more years ago, the Garden Web Rose Forums were very active with a lot of experienced rose gardeners, many from our Deep South in the USA. There the climate is very hot and humid in the long summers and with short mild winters. Black spot is a very big problem. In their recommendations to newbies, many recommended planting the Teas instead of Hybrid Teas. They found they grew more vigorously, were more disease resistant to blackspot and required much less care than Hybrid Teas. I gather your climate is similar. Many teas are drop dead gorgeous ( they use to post pictures). I was living in Richmond, Virginia at the time and they grew only marginally there due to our colder winters so I never attempted teas.
I think Warren gave you excellent advice. Scout around and see how Teas do in your area.
Someone on here once made a comment that the most poplular roses in general do generally well in a large number of places but in each place there may be some not as popular that do VERY well. I believe more and more that gardening is local.
In 1967, we moved to a new house less than a mile from the old one. It was at the top of a hill whereas the previous house was in a low flat area of town. I had been gardening for many years and brought a lot of my plants up to the new house. They had done very well in the previous location but I lost most of them that winter in the new place. I had to relearn gardening all over again and incorporate hardier plants into the landscape…yet the distance was only a mile but it was a whole different climate due to the elevation and wind patterns.
Jim
Jim, that extreme difference can occur within only a few feet of elevation difference. In my old Newhall garden, there was perhaps twenty feet difference between the uppermost point and the asphalted fire road at the bottom. I could grow frost tender bulbs at the top of the slope, but they froze to death at the bottom due to cold pooling. Even though there was only a foot or so greater elevation between the golf course which flanked it at the bottom, then a slope down to the Association pool and clubhouse, enough got trapped to freeze out tender plants. Those more susceptible to freeze drying had to be grown well within the canopy of the bushes through the middle to protect them from the winds and their effects. From one end to the other was roughly two hundred feet by fifty or sixty feet in width, with only those twenty or so feet in elevation difference, but there were definitely at least three “zones” to keep in mind when placing any kind of plants which had definite boundaries regarding heat, sun, cold and wind effects. It was really rather enlightening. Kim
Jim & George - and not just any Teas but two specifically.
Chris
Hi Jim and Sandansun,
The climate I live in is just absolutely rife with BS and PM as well. It is not dry here despite the common view of Australia as hot and dry. This is exactly what Kim is on about regarding microclimates. On the coast where I live, it is relatively humid and fungus abounds here. Mine no doubt is a great climate to weed out roses that are prone to BS as well as to PM, and for that I am very very greatful to live here as an amateur small time “rose breeder”!!
Having said all of that, I have also not been impressed by how many of the teas I have studied at a local heritage rose park actually grow here. I don’t want to be a stick in the mud here, but I don’t share the excitement regarding teas based on these personal findings.
I am sure I have noted a specimen of ‘Marie Van Houtte’ growing in my climate, it was a labelled specimen, and it appeared weak and largely defoliated last summer.
Maybe it was just a bad one off, but I doubt it?!
One of the local “tricks” some nurseries do here is to grow their potted roses in great rose climates inland, where it is dry as a chip and BS is unheard of, then bring them here for sale looking a million dollars. Of course after a few weeks in the local gardens they get all the fungus LOL.
It is fungus heaven here, to be sure.
George,
We will certainly know whether the roses purported to be so are disease resistant or no, won’t we? My biggest difficulty with selection was deciding whose opinion to trust on their evaluation of resistance. That took time. Those that sprayed I ignored, etc.
I sympathize about having a weakness for a weakling.
I love Ebb Tide in all its PM’d tribulations. So far it’s the only rose I’ve grown that is susceptible to PM here. Bully for those recommendations. And no, Ebb Tide wasn’t recommended as d.r. by anyone, I just had to have it.
In my climate, Lorraine Lee (hybrid gigantea/tea) does grow vry very well, though I have not ever used it in breeding.
George, that was a suggestion-the Garden Web Members found teas as a group to do better than the hybrid teas. Certainly if in your local area teas don’t do well, then I would follow that lead. As has been said many times in the literature and Kim and I experienced personally, climate is local.
When I read all the posts and books and literature on finding the perfect disease resistant rose, I always arrive at one conclusion----PLASTIC ! 
And even that will break down in the sun after a few years.
Enjoy the day.
Jim
Too right!!
)
But, don’t you LOVE that gorgeous shade of turquoise, green silk foliage turns (as stomachs ‘turn’) with only a few days exposure to brilliant sun? I see them peeking over walls all over the place.
George, perhaps the limiting factor regarding Teas in your climate is the length of your growing season? You seem to have the heat and humidity they tolerate beautifully, but your season is too short for them to generate and store the resources they require to perform as reported. You can give them some of what they need, but not long enough.
Where they are WEEDS are climates where they have nine or more months of growing season. Along the southern coasts here, they are perpetual in growth and bloom. In many areas, “hot” is under 80 F, excessive heat only arrives from late August through late October. Spikes during those months can be in the middle to high nineties F, rarely triple digits, but then it cools back to the sixties with less than twenty degrees variance between lows and highs.
To contrast, inland only a few miles, lows can dip to the low thirties, though more often high thirties to low to mid forties is more common. Winter day highs are usually between the low sixties to high seventies. Daily summer swings can often be up to fifty degrees, and in my old Newhall garden, it wasn’t uncommon to have a hundred degree variance between the summer highs and winter lows.
Teas, Chinas, Noisettes, many Hybrid Musks (multifloras) appear to flourish best where there is a much narrower variation between temps, whether it’s between day/night or winter low to summer high. As long as the extremes aren’t too severe for them, and the highest spikes are accompanied by humidity to temper the desiccation effects, they perform nearly continuously and demonstrate excellent health most of the time. Ironically, where Azalea, Camellia and Hydrangea flourish here, those types most often do, also.
Make it too cold for too long, or too arid and hot, too long and they complain like any other type. They seem to tolerate lower cold temps as long as there is sufficient water during the cold, balanced with sufficient heat and humidity during the growing season, but they need extended periods of heat combined with moisture to perform best. Too little heat, too little water, too much cold and they aren’t very good much of the time.
George, yes, growing in hotter areas can be seen as a ‘trick’, but it’s also probably quite a bit cheaper. Two of our larger commercial growers here are located between the Santa Clarita Valley and the coast where everything grows marvelously. It’s also where there is still LAND available, and at significantly lower prices than anything closer to where most of us live. A large number of people live along that corridor, but they tend to be better heeled than the average and are often involved in agricultural pursuits. Of course, even they feel the economic pressure to sell out to development and live off their proceeds.
Nearly all of the growers of all types are gone from this area. The land is just too costly. Most of the family owned nurseries are also gone, or are banished to operating under high power lines, along freeways where no one would want to or be permitted to build. One I know of, is actually watching their plants to determine if the higher electrical and magnetic fields might cause them to sport more often. An interesting and scary thought. Monrovia Growers sold the majority of their local land, from which they took their name, a few years back for that reason. We had hundreds of specialty growers, producing all manner of tropicals and other special interest plants all over Los Angeles and the ‘burbs’ until the Colorado River Project became our water source, replacing local wells. The natural water was very soft. Colorado River water is highly alkaline and quite salty. It killed much of the more tender types, making it impossible for them to be grown. That was also when you could buy a place in these parts for anything resembling “realistic” and when there were still enough people around who had owned the land since it was ‘dirt cheap’, had sufficient resources to actually pursue their interests and continue existing without multiple, high time consuming jobs. Kim
Hi Kim,
Lots of intersting food for thought there, and great background information and perspectives there, thank you for sharing as usual.
Hi George, thank you for explaining more about your climate. When you posted how close to Antarctica you live, I shuddered! I had NO idea. You definitely made me want to go out back and kiss the adobe! What a wonderful place this is, isn’t it? Where so many, from such diverse places can talk about the same thing and share experiences so freely. Dang! I’m glad to be here! Thanks! Kim
The weather here in Sydney can be explained as follows… Today has cold southerly gusts, thunderstorms, some occasional pitter patter of rain, and I am fully rugged up like I would be in winter (our winters are “warm/hot” by North American standards). Of course it is summer here, now. A few weekends ago it was near to 100F.
Confused yet??
That is why most roses here look like crap, regardless of type…they are shocked by the totally haphazard cold/warm/extreme heat/cold temperature cycle. They don’t know what to do…sleep? grow? rest…??? Then the tendency to fungus tops it all off for them, of course.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally love it here, born here prolly will die here, love it…
Having said that, Double Knock Out is prolly the first rose I have ever seen in my garden that can so far put up with this and still be totally spotless…it is inspirational…I hope its performance continues to remain that way!!!
KUDOS to Radler.
Yup, I’m confused and probably wouldn’t know what to do there, either. I’m thrilled Knock Out is so great there as for the most part, it isn’t all that great here. Yes, it IS better than many, but seldom lives up to all the hype about it. No, I’ve never deliberately planted it, but have suggested it for a new client just west of me who wants RED, landscape color with as little maintenance as possible. Kim
Oh really?!..
I think it was the year before last I purchased my first KO, and it was all spotted at the time of purchase…not sure what sort of spotting it was… THAT got me confused… I investigated at the nursery where I purchased it, and realised that those plants were badly pot bound, stressed+++, relatively dehydrated and had really not been looked after. I posted pix of these leaves somewhere here on this forum at the time.
Better quality KO plants purchased later as replacements did not show this trouble…i.e I blame that event on the grower.
I don’t have any KO at the moment, just DKO as I am more a fan of flowers with more petals.