Post Pennsic

Friday, Aug. 23, 2002 – 6:09 p.m.

2002-08-23 6:09

Roses through Pennsic

Well, I am back from Pennsic (and have been for almost a week) and it look like the roses faired pretty well. Pennsic was great and I had a wonderful time. Orville and Wilbur (my nicknames for the two Kitty Hawk miniature roses I took up with me) made it through just fine. They even bloomed while I was up there. I managed to find two books about roses among the merchants. One is on uses of rose in period (something that I have been meaning to research) and the other about English rose gardens (not period but it may have some interesting info about introduction dates and locations of gardens worth visiting in England.)

Back in the main beds, I had a lot of dead heading to do but that was to be expected. The blackspot also seemed to have made in-roads so I will need ramp up my spray program to see if I can prevent it from spreading any more (more on that later). I did notice that some plants seem to be doing better than others (regarding blackspot). Not terribly surprising but don’t know if it is an inherent resistance (or susceptibility) that some plants have, or environmental factors (water, light, wind, density of foliage and stems, general plant health, etc). Suffolk, Artistry, Mr. Lincoln, QE, Sentimental, Kitty Hawk, and not-Chicago Peace seem to be the most affected by the fungus where as Caesar Chavez, all the polyanthas (Fairy and White Pet) and most of the OGRs seem to be least affected. Peace and JFK seem to be doing particularly well this year but have been nailed by blackspot in past years.

It took me about 30 minutes to do all the deadheading when I got back (usually it only takes 5-10 minutes) and I filled an entire dishpan full of prunings. It looks like I missed some good flushes on QE and Peace and Scentimental. Oh well, I bet they looked great from the street.

Back to Spraying

This morning I finally roused myself early and went out and sprayed. I used Orthonex and ended up only having enough for beds 1,2, and 3. I need to get some more. Either Sunday or Monday, I am going to spray with the Fruit spray (which has Captan in it) or the neem oil spray. At least I was able to get the most impacted bushes done.

More water restrictions

While at Pennsic, the Cary town council passed a more water restrictions on outside watering. Now I can only water on Tues and Saturdays (before I could also water on Thurs.) That only applies to sprinklers and hand watering is fine anytime (at least for the present). I have now adjusted my auto timer so that it is only those two days but I may also up the duration time from 45 minutes to an hour. I will have to see how things work out. I know I need to hand water the one peony that I have…. it is looking a little sad right now. It probably needs to be moved into another bed but I am kind of afraid to disturb it. I need to read up to see how one goes about moving such a plant.

I hope to be able to pick some roses tomorrow for putting in vases (and taking to Francesca). I also think I need to repot Orville and Wilbur. I also had the idea of picking some blooms to take with me to Iowa next weekend. I need to figure out how I can transport them.

Enough for now….