Mr. Higgin's Folly

Yes, ProfessorRoush has not blogged for quite some time.  January has frankly been dismal here in the Flint Hills, and I've been leery of planning the return of green and glorious landscapes lest I awaken the wrath of the Winter Gods and precipitate another late April snowstorm.

I was rudely roused, however, from my winter slumber this morning when my local paper printed the January 29th column of the esteemed Washington Post garden columnist, Mr. Adrian Higgins.  Mr. Higgins, normally a sensible and knowledgeable garden writer, titled that column Prune Rosebushes in Winter, a bland and partly inaccurate title that led the reader on to eventually crash blindly into the shores of poor rose advice.  Thankfully, Mr. Higgins rambled over the first half of the article, presumably filling column space, before he got to rose care, else the damage done to Washington's roses could have been much worse.

In his last few paragraphs, Adrian opens the rose-related conversation by stating that "roses are inherently sickly, but the vigor of modern hybrids far outpaces their woes."  Apparently, Mr. Higgins is only acquainted with the inbred, over-pampered, disease-susceptible Hybrid Teas and Floribundas of the 1960's-90's, a time when monstrosities such as 'Tropicana' and 'Chrysler Imperial' ruled the rose world, commercialized and hyped to the point of nausea.  He never mentions the hardier roses that our forefathers grew, nor the disease-resistant, sustainable rose shrubs created over the last two decades by breeding programs such as that of the late Professor Griffth Buck, or test programs such as the Earth-Kind® program of Texas A&M University.

Adrian doubles down on his rose ignorance by recommending the annual pruning of all roses to a "goblet of five or six canes...cut back to 18 inches," making no exceptions for once-blooming Old Garden roses, nor for leaving many modern Hybrid Tea and Floribunda cultivars taller or bushier.  My local newspaper compounded the omission by also deleting the last two paragraphs of the original column, where Mr. Higgins briefly mentions pruning exceptions for  "utilitarian landscape roses" such as Knock Out and larger Ramblers.  I appreciate Adrian's demeaning characterization of Knock Out, but his description of appropriate pruning for these ubiquitous blights will only perpetuate the attempts of home landscapers to turn these shrubs into flowering topiary such as elephants with flowering ears.

Adrian, you did well with your recommendations of pruning for once flowering shrubs, shade trees, and hydrangeas, but please, leave rose-pruning advice to those with a broader view of the rose world.  I retire now, left to cope with my resultant nightmares of hacked down 'Madame Hardy' and 'Variegata di Bologna', butchered in their prime in the refined neighborhoods of Washington D. C. because of your need to fill column inches.  Oh, the horror.

Buck Rose Blackspot Review

Now that I've seen others state on the Web that it has been a bad blackspot year for their roses, I feel confident enough to come out of the fungal-shame closet and agree that I've been entertaining the same thought.  I don't know if it was the early March warmth or the cool nights of recent weeks, but blackspot has been a struggle at the K-State rose garden at this early date. In my own non-spray garden, I also believed that the roses were a little "fungus-ier" than normal.

So I resolved to note down the degree of blackspot damage on all my roses and did exactly that this morning.  And, you know what?  I think that maybe it is not quite as bad as I thought.  I seem to have been misled by an early defoliation of one of my 'Prairie Harvest' (normally quite resistant), and the damage on my 2-year old Paul Barden rose, 'Jeri Jennings'.  'Jeri Jennings' definitely got  the black spots aplenty, but 'Prairie Harvest' just seemed to turn yellow and defoliate all but the top leaves. I'm still not sure if that was blackspot-induced or drought-induced.  She seems to be coming back.   The rest of my roses are mostly doing quite well, in contrast to my undocumented impression, with exceptionally bad disease only on floribunda 'Rhapsody in Blue', English Rose 'Golden Celebration', and pink floribunda 'Gene Boerner'. 

For reference's sake in this modern era of gigabyte data and online searchs, I will report the blackspot tendencies of three of my rose groups, the Griffith Buck roses, the Canadians, and the Old Garden roses, today and over the next two Mondays.  Today, we'll tackle the Buck roses, at least those roses who are at or beyond their second season with me.   The first number is the estimated percentage of leaves with blackspot and the second number the estimated percent defoliation.  The list, of course, begins with Carefree Beauty, an Earth-Kind® decorated rose and often a resistant control rose in disease plot-tests.

Carefree Beauty 0%-0%
Country Dancer 0%-0%
Freckles 0%-0%
April Moon 0%-0%
Griff's Red 0%-0%
Wild Ginger 0%-5%
Hawkeye Belle 10%-20%
Prairie Harvest 0%-80%  or 0%-0%  (one defoliated, the other perfectly healthy)
Prairie Star 80%-20%
Winter Sunset <5%-0%
Earth Song <5%-0%
Quietness 20%-0%
Polonaise 0%-0%
Pearlie Mae 10%-0%
Golden Princess <5%-0%
Queen Bee 10%-10%
Honey Sweet 0%-0%
Folk Singer 0%-0%
Bright Melody 0%-0%
Iobelle 0%-0%
Golden Unicorn 0%-0%
El Catala <5%-0%

I noted roses with "<5%" above when I found a leaf or two with some blackspot, but generally the rest of the rose was unaffected.  The health of most of these roses are not surprising, or should not be surprising for the Buck-bred roses, since Dr. Buck bred and raised his roses under a no-spray policy in a similar climate to mine.  'Prairie Star', 'Quietness', 'Pearlie Mae' and 'Queen Bee' seem to be the only ones that I grow currently with some degree of blackspot present.  Other, that is, than the quandary that 'Prairie Harvest' is presenting me with.  I have one bush almost defoliated and the other unaffected.  I don't know if this year is a quirk from a rose that I've grown for at least 10 years and whose foliage is normally very blackspot-resistant, or whether the rose got damaged from something else like our current drought.  Time alone will tell the me truth.

EarthSong

Did you ever have a love-hate relationship with a rose?   I have one with a spectacular rose that should be on the top of everyone's list, but it just can't ever seem to make it to the top of mine. 'Earthsong', a 1975 introduction by Dr. Griffith Buck, has so many positive attributes that I almost feel guilty telling you that it is not one of my top ten roses, but it just isn't okay?  Please don't think less of me for it.

What, you might ask, is my complaint against a 4-5 foot tall continually-blooming rose with perfect hybrid-tea-like bud form?  A grandiflora that is unfailingly completely hardy in my zone 5b climate without any winter protection?  A rose that I haven't had to trim at all for 3 years but which maintains a perfect vase shape all on its own?  A rose that self-cleans its fully double blooms and leaves a few nice orange hips behind for winter interest?  One that never, ever requires me to take up defensive positions with a fungicide- or insecticide-filled sprayer?

My sole problem with this rose is the color.  Variously described as "deep pink," "fuchsia pink," and "Tyrian red" (which is the same as Tyrian Purple and I've never actually seen that color), 'EarthSong' is just a little too much on the "hot" pink side for me.  A little too showy and vivid for either a Iowa State horticulture professor to have introduced, or for a Kansas State veterinary professor to feel comfortable inviting to a mixer with just any other group of plants.  I find the color just a little garish, a little bold, a little too vibrant.  Against a nice bright yellow (I have it next to floribunda 'Sunsprite'), it'll even make your eyes bleed. But alone in the garden, it will certainly stand out from surrounding green plants.  And my own-root 'EarthSong' cloned itself with a runner this year in an attempt to endear me to it.  I moved the runner over between bright red 'Illusion' and 'Red Moss', where it hopefully won't be quite so grating.

'EarthSong' is a cross of 'Music Maker' and 'Prairie Star', the latter another disease free and perfect rose that is a much more acceptable cream in my garden.  A candidate under evaluation at present for the EarthKind designation, 'EarthSong' should perform well in just about anyone's garden.  Just as long as you don't mind the color.

Griffith Buck Roses for the Midwest

With all the hype about and garden center proliferation of the English roses produced by David Austin, I must confess that I'm still not a big fan.  I've grown 'The Dark Lady' and 'Heritage' for a number of years, and the past couple of years I've added 'Mary Rose', 'Windemere', 'Benjamin Britten', 'Golden Celebration', and most recently, 'Lady Emma Hamilton', but I'm not very excited about most of them.  Okay, if I'm stuck in a thumb-screw press, 'Heritage' is a very nice blush pink and 'Golden Celebration', a bright yellow-orange, is probably my favorite performer.  But none of them just strike me as a "Well bust my buttons!" kind of rose.

'Prairie Harvest'

Ask me however, what performs best in my climate and I'd tell you that it's the group of roses bred by the late Dr. Griffith Buck.  Professor Buck was an Iowa State University horticulturist who hybridized about 90 roses varieties, most of which were released to commerce by his wife and daughter after his death in 1991.  Dr. Buck set out to develop roses that were cane-hardy to Zone 4 and which required minimal care in the landscape.  Proof of his success in that regard came from another University program, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Earth-Kind® Rose Program with the naming of the Buck cultivar 'Carefree Beauty' as the 2006 Earth-Kind Rose® of the Year.  I grow a great number of the Buck cultivars, including 'Earthsong', 'Prairie Harvest', 'Prairie Star', 'Applejack', 'Country Dancer', 'Pearlie Mae', 'Polonaise', 'Hawkeye Belle', 'Griff's Red', and 'Winter Sunset' along with 'Carefree Beauty'.   All of these are great roses for my area, most of them cane-hardy and disease-resistant, but I've got to give a special shout out to 'Earthsong', a fuchsia-pink that does well both in my garden and at the KSU Rose Garden, and to 'Prairie Harvest', a light yellow Hybrid Tea that has the most perfect light-green foliage of any rose I grow.

'Freckles'

Many of the Buck roses are available from Internet sources such as Heirloom Old Garden Roses (http://www.heirloomroses.com/), but you also run across them in the most unlikely places if you know what you're looking for.  I ran across a rare Buck rose, 'Freckles', at a Hy-Vee Grocery Store two hours from home, thought that the name sounded familiar and took a $10.00 chance on it, and ended up with my favorite Buck rose of all.  'Freckles',  is now a three-year old, three foot tall rose in my garden and it has light-pink blooms speckled (as its name suggests) with darker wine spots.  As a single bloom, and as you can see on the right, a rose that comes closer to perfection than any other of the 100+ rose cultivars I grow.