District meeting and other activities

Monday, Feb. 17, 2003 – 1:45 p.m.

2003-02-17 1:45

District Meeting

Well it has been a while since I was here. [sigh] I thought I would take advantage of the fact that I am snowed (ok, ICED) in to bring things up to date. Weekend before last, I went down to the Winter Meeting of the Carolina District of the ARS. As I mentioned before, the meeting was in Columbia, SC, where my parents live so I also got a chance to see them. I got to the meeting on Friday night at about 8pm; according to the schedule, the Presidents’ meeting was at 9pm so I had made it in plenty of time. Rich has asked me to attend the Presidents’ meeting as the rep for the Raleigh Rose Society.

The main day of the meeting was Saturday and there were several good presentations , including one by Bill Patterson of Roses Unlimited about OGRs (Old Garden Roses), a slide show tour of some member gardens in the Winston-Salem, and a good presentation by Paul Zimmerman of Ashdown Roses. Paul had some very interesting things to say about looking at roses (predominately OGRs) as they work in the landscape, not as ROSES but as flowering shrubs. There was also a very interesting talk about Rose Rosette disease (a probably-viral disease spred by a tiny eriophyid mite); it causes abnormal growth of rose canes and eventually kills the bush. Last year I notices some strange growth habits in my Voodoo so I am going to pay particular attention to it this year.

One of the other interesting things I discovered is that Ashdown Roses is actually a quarter mile off SC highway 11 just outside Campebello SC. This directly on the route I take to go to my parents’ place at Caesar’s Head. That is either very good or very bad (for my wallet that is [grin]). I am looking forward to stopping in to see what they have when I am down there in April.

While at the meeting, I won two free roses from Roses Unlimited as a door prize. Now I just need to figure out when I can got over to Laurens to get them. I also don’t know exactly where I will put them but that is another topic. I also bought a new rose from Ashdown while at the meeting. They had a selection of bare-root roses on Dr. Huey rootstock (that’s the standard root stock used by a lot of west coast rose producers) for $12/rose or 5 for $50. These rose look really good too. I measured the root spread on the one I bought and it is more than 4 ft. The rose I got is Madame Berkley (or Mme Berkeley. It is a Tea rose (as opposed to Hybrid Tea) so it is an OGR and was introduced in 1899. Here is the description from The Antique Rose Emporium (the photo link above is also from there…):

Very full and slightly knotted flowers open in shades of salmon pink and apricot with a touch of gold at the base. Extremely free-flowering, the blooms appear continuously on an open, vigorous bush during the warm seasons.

Where to put them?

One of the things that I had planned to do this winter was to get the 4th (or actually I guess the 5th) bed built. Alas, between the weather and resource constraints, I have not been able to do that. Therefore, I think I will use this year to reorganize a little bit:

  • Angel Face just has not done well and several other folk have said that it doesn’t seem to do well in this area. I think I am going to pull it out.
  • Artistry and Fragrant Cloud are next to each other and their color is quite similar. I am thinking I will move Artistry to a different location.
  • JFK is too close to Peace so I think I will move it as well.

I am sure there are a few others to rework that will see when I get out there and look around some more. Oh, my initial plan was to put the Mme Berkeley in a pot that I bought but now I am reconsidering that. Oh, since St. Patrick didn’t make it last year, I also have that spot that I can put a new plant.

Pruning Workshop

The Raleigh Rose Society traditionally has a pruning workshop at the February meeting. Well, this year we move the workshop to Saturday, March 1st. Fairview Garden Center, who hosts our meetings, requested a pruning workshop on a Saturday so we are going to go ahead and move the meeting for this month. This may actually be good for me. I usually end up with a couple of plants from these workshops and the more folk there are at the workshop, I end up with fewer bushes. Ordinarily, this would not be good but since I don’t have much room for new bushes this year, it is good. Of course, I could always put new bushes in pots for a year [grin].

Trip to Logan Trading Company

I was reading the paper last week and noticed that several of the garden centers in the area are holding rose seminars over the next couple of weeks. I chose to go to the seminar at Logan Trading Company. Harvey Beauregard was giving the talk at 10:30 on Saturday morning. He gave a good talk and there were about 10 or 12 folk there. Harvey is a member of the RRS and mentioned it during his talk so at the end, I stood up and mentioned where we meet (4th Tuesday of the month at 7pm at Fairview Garden Center, Holly Springs Rd.) and mentioned the pruning workshop as well.

After the seminar, I wondered around and looked at what they had for bushes. They had a few of the Jackson & Perkins plants in the boxes and a probably 2 dozen other plants in pots but none that I really recognized or that interested me. I did, however, buy some chemicals. I bought HALT, a systemic fungicide that is a wetable powder, a systemic insecticide to battle the thrips (I am wondering if part of my problem last year was thrips), another fungicide and a tube for applying milky spore (it has to be put on the lawn in piles of 1 teaspoon every 4 ft.). Milk Spore is a bacterium that is lethal to the grubs of Japanese Beetles. You inoculate your lawn with it and in about 3 years it has spread through your entire yard. It last for about 10 years as well. Of course, it only really works well if your neighbors also inoculate their lawns. I have had a can of Milky Spore that I have been meaning to apply for a couple of years now… Now I have something to apply it with [grin].

Well, I think that is enough for now….