Bloomin' beautiful

A few of my new roses are putting on their first flush of blooms. It will be interesting to see how they change as they mature. I love red in the garden, so all are reds or red blends and all were supposed to be fragrant...but we know how that goes.

I love roses. I'm thinking of trying a few again now that I'm retired.

Roses have always been my favorite. I had a huge rose garden at our previous place. I have been really missing them, so these roses were the first thing I planted at my new house. Many of the newer varieties are very disease resistant. I am very pleased with most of the ones I have put in. With a little research you should be able to find something beautiful, in any color you want, that will be very easy to care for. I researched my selections on HMF roses ( Help me find roses.com).

Is there any chance that your rose gardening is in an arid location, Just2Rosy?

I think that is most of my rose problem here. That climate condition and my inattention. There is a public rose garden not all that far from my home. The plants and flowers seem okay there. I notice, however, that they receive a great deal of attention from the park gardeners.

I had said that my climbing rose had grown well in 2015, had few aphids but the powdery mildew was setting in. I guess I should have dumped last year's spay outta the machine. I knew that it had a systemic insecticide in it but couldn't remember if I'd mixed the customary fungicide in for the final spraying of ornamentals in '15. Guess it didn't.

I discovered more aphids than I expected as I was spraying. I'm sure it helped with the mildew to get those pests off ... but mildew is seriously limiting the flowers now opening.

This is typical of the roses in my yard. Other roses have less problems with mildew, probably because of location but aphids love them. Late in the season, I have to watch out for black spot. It isn't usually a problem but sometimes! Disease and pests ...

Steve