Why I Oughta...

It was just six-or-so weeks ago that I planted three small, bareroot Disneyland Roses in our front porch beds .  I wasn't expecting much out of these in their first season.  When they arrived, they were, indeed, bareroot.  But, they were also pretty bare in terms of foliage.  Two of the Floribunda roses that arrived via UPS showed some tiny, yellow flowers.  I applied some rooting compound, buried them deep - per the instructions I found - and hoped for the best. I was assuming that I'd see mostly foliage growth this first year.  Something like 60% below-ground growth (roots) and 40% above-ground growth (leaves).  But, to my surprise, I'm seeing blooms.  See below for a look at one of the new Disneyland Roses.    I've stuck to a feeding schedule - once per month - with a granular rose food.  And, this soil was amended pretty heavily last Fall with a mix of 10 bags of composted manure and 4 bags of mushroom compost .  Along with a heavy dose of municipal biosolids this

Number 3 on my 2023 to-do list is to plant out the front porch bed .  In that listing, I talked about planting some color in the form of Disneyland Roses that I received as a Christmas present from Nat's mom.  She ordered us three bareroot roses from Jackson and Perkins - which is where she had purchased our three previous floribunda roses.   These three arrived in a cardboard box with instructions to first re-hydrate the roots by soaking them in a bucket of water for anywhere from two hours to a full day.  I opted for what I'd call 'most' of a day.  I put them in the bucket one evening, then planted them the next afternoon in the bed. Below is a look at these as they are soaking in water to rehydrate. They came with these little metal tags: As they were soaking, I dug out the three holes.   And watered the holes in to get them wet.   Then I placed each of the bareroot roses in their hole - see below. And applied a little bit of Rooting Powder to the bases of each of t