I have just lost my Compassion climber. I would like to get another, but it seems hard to find. Compassion is hardy, grows to medium height, 12 ft say, and is disease resistant. It is fragrant, and repeat flowering. If I wish to get a similar performing rose which would be fragrant, and repeat flowering, have yoiu any recommendations please? The planting site has plenty of sun, and new soils, properly amended.
Maybe you would be happy with 'New Dawn'. No scientific studies to date show any measurable benefit of soil amendment except in containerized plant production. Plants grown in native soil consistently showed better root establishment and more vigorous growth http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda Chalker-Scott/Horticultural Myths_files/Myths/Amendments.pdf
Thank you. I had a Compassion in the same location for many years. It became woody, gnarled, and obviously in need of replacement. However the site is the only one, and the best positioned one for another climber. So when I dug out the old roots I got topsoil to renew the site, having removed most of the original soil on the premise that it is bad to plant back into the same location. I did mix about 20% of steer manure, and maybe this is wrong. The site is well watered, and the adjacent soils are good, not poor. I will have a search to see of there is a New Dawn available. I am emotionally attached to Compassion, as it was originally chosen by my late wife for a garden in England, before we came to British Columbia 30 years ago. The blooms have been spectacular. As you may know Compassion is very common and popular in the U.K.
I don't know whether I agree with that statement and my recent experience contradicts it. I planted many bare root hazel nut trees and did not amend the soil (which was admittedly low in nutrients to start) based upon that theory. Quite a few died, and others languish even today several years later despite regular watering and fertilizing. I tried another group in the same soil and amended the soil with peat moss, manure, organic fertilizers, bone meal etc. and they have done very well, with no losses, and no sinking. I added no topsoil, just amended the existing soil. That theory may work in rich high organics loam, but in my flood plain soil it didn't.
Same result in multiple different experiments in different locations and on different soils over a long period. In 1968, a study was begun to determine the "optimum" amount of soil amendments to use in the planting hole since recommendations varied from 5% to 50% by volume. The optimum amount turned out to be none --Carl E. Whitcomb, Establishment and Maintenance of Landscape Plants, 1987 (1991), Lacebark Inc., Stillwater http://www.lacebarkinc.com/establish.htm
Thai, http://www.oldrosenursery.com/index.html Click on Climbing Roses and after that on the Order Form
Nice to see New Dawn recommended. I had it in Nova Scotia for years, with a bit of shade during the hot and bright time of day it did beautifully, disease free, never a spot on a leaf, with lots of bloom. I fertilized it heavily. However, here on Vancouver Island I had problems with it with powdery mildew... mind you the rose was located in a fenced patio with not much air circulation. I have moved it to a different locale and am hoping for the best, as long as I can keep the deer away.
I do not need a rose that climbs hugely, and needs cutting back too much. The colour of New Dawn is not suitable fror the site. I prefer salmon, orangey, yellow-red, amber. Repeat, disease resistant, and possibly a modified tearose like Compassion which grows well, but to 10 ft. Probably impossible? This will be climbing up an 8ft high box green metal support in a well planted border.
Thanks Ron, I understand the theory behind this, and even believed it and tried it myself (basically that the roots would be contained in the good soil and not grow into the native surrounding soil). It just didn't work well with my sandy flood plain soil, and bare root plants. There are lots of variables around this, such as width/depth of the planting hole. I believe if a small hole is dug and amended, the roots will have to seek out more nutrients in the native soil as the tree grows larger. For my trees I used either a 12 auger or a 24 inch depending on the size of the tree. I did go down quite deep though, perhaps 4 feet. Sorry for sidetracking the thread...
Well, "ask and ye shall be given"... Check out Hortico plant growers in Ontario, here is their rose catalogue: http://www.hortico.com/roses/roses.asp You will see that Compassion is there, under the "C"'s, and nice photo... you'd have to contact them to see if it is actually available this spring. They are a good business, or were when I purchased from them via mail-order when we lived in Nova Scotia.
Your concept of the "theory" is not actually what has been found by researchers. The critical problem is that placing plants in a small area of one texture surrounded by a larger area of a different texture often subjects them to adverse soil moisture conditions. This is why untreated control plants in organized studies often do markedly better. To get the story from one who has done the work, see Whitcomb's publications.
Oops, checked out the Hornby Island Old Rose Nursery above, saw the "Compassion" climber after checking under Climbers, which I hadn't done before, just glanced through part of their offering, I guess, Thai, sorry for the duplication... Looks like a nice rose to try, colourwise, maybe I'll order one.
Well I've done my own work and research and found different results under my conditions. I have to believe my own eyes. The hazelnut trees that I placed in amended soils are doing much better than the trees in pure native soil. This is the case after 5-6 years. Will that be the case in 10+ years? I don't know. The trees are approx. 10 feet tall now and may still be rootbound in the amended holes. However, they seem very healthy and are producing nuts which was the plan for me. The fact that I lost 15% of the trees in pure native soil and others still languish, and zero so far in amended soils is telling to me. I planted the trees to sell the nuts and the fact they are healthy and producing well is all I need to know. Since I only amended the original soil with organics (peat moss and manure) and organic fertilizers (bone meal, corn meal, humic acid, rock dust, etc.), I'm sure most of the organic material has been used up. So I see no way that the roots would be exposed to varying moisture levels/etc beyond the natural variability in the soil. Thanks for your insight...
I have settled for "Strike it Rich". This seems to have a fine record. Purchased and planted in container components and in awell dug area in which some bone meal, and some small addition of steer manure mixed with ordinary earth broughtfrom another place in the garden,in the same place as the deceased Compassion. Should be interesting.
Don't know that cultivar. Hopefully you will, in fact, strike it rich. Regarding planting with bone meal: • Bone meal supplies high levels of phosphorus and calcium, elements that are rarely limiting in non-agricultural soils. • Phosphorus, from bone meal or other sources, does not “stimulate” plant growth; it is only a mineral, not a plant growth regulator. • High levels of phosphorus, from bone meal or other sources, will inhibit growth of mycorrhizal fungi. • Without mycorrhizal partners, plants must put additional resources into root growth at the expense of other tissues and functions. • Before you add any supplementary nutrients to your landscape, have a complete soil test performed first. http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda Chalker-Scott/Horticultural Myths_files/Myths/Bonemeal.pdf
Regarding mineral balance and soil tests, a good site for information is http://www.soilminerals.com/ I tested my soil throughout my orchards and gardens and amended the soils following the guidelines on that site with very good success. By balancing my soils mineral content, I have incredibly improved the biological life in my soils. I don't know where all the earthworms came from! Plus my yields have greatly improved. Edit: I reviewed the soils mineral website and noticed that they have taken down a lot of the information that was originally available on the site (for free). It appears that they are now only selling the information. I bought the book a couple of years earlier, but the gist of it is that there is an optimum balance of minerals in the soil that promote the best growth, nitritional content and biological activity in the soil. Using readily available and relatively inexpensive minerals and nutrients, one can take soil that is out of balance and bring it back into optimum growing balance.
You know, for the average gardener with no time at the moment to send out that soil test sample, athough they should, for sure, the solution is to loosen the soil in a larger area than just a small hole, and check to see how it feels, if too clay-ey then a larger area has to be improved by adding some compost... and/or planting higher. The idea is not to create a smallish hole with loose, perfect soil in a plateau of hardpan or clay or sand or whatever, totally unsuited to the tree-roots/shrub-roots to be... That wouldn't work by simple sensible thinking and planning. It's a good lesson Ron B gives us, though, and what it means to the small gardener is to check out the area in general, decide is it suitable for planting rhodos or a group of flowering deciduous shrubs, etc... and not to create a discrete planting-pot thing in the soil with poor surroundings... Mr. Minter, on air around here from Minter Gardens, suggests digging, loosening and adding compost and a little lime to make sure even the native acid fertility is able to be absorbed and used by whatever plant -- even Japanese Maples and rhodos. I was surprised, called in the recheck that with him, and that's what he said. Not to put lime around the root zone, but if preparing a bed before planting, to add a little at that time.
As with all instances of recommendations for adding chemicals to the soil telling everyone in a region to add a little lime without knowing what minerals are already present on each site being addressed is, although typical, nevertheless still bad advice. It's like telling everyone in a human population to take a little bit of a certain pharmaceutical product without knowing their individual case histories. If your soil needs more than a little lime you are wasting your time and money applying a small amount. If it does not need any lime, same again only in addition you could produce a toxic condition by adding too much. Probably not so likely with lime on most soils in this region, but other commonly used substances like phosphorus are likely to be getting overdone on many sites. And with that one you are pretty much left with digging out the affected area and putting down new soil, since phosphorus leaches extremely slowly. With soil amendments such as composted manure there is a similar situation in that adding a little will have little effect, and adding enough to change the soil texture markedly will then be likely to produce the undesirable effects on water movement that makes liberal amending of small planting areas for plants with normally sized root systems unproductive, if not deleterious. So, there is no good amount to add. Long-lived plants like trees, shrubs and infrequently divided perennials (such as peonies) need to be planted into soil that is naturally suitable for them, without the digging in of bark, compost, peat, sand etc. Amending of planting areas is for subjects that have small root systems or short life spans, like flowering annuals and vegetables. Such types are also often developed from wild plants that pop up on recently disturbed sites, making the repeatedly amended and dug over special bed a natural situation for them.
Well, interesting, this debate has changed my approach to gardening for sure. I am about to go out and plant two Japanese Azalea hybrids, one looks with its narrower airy shape [better for the patio] almost as if it had some deciduous azalea blood but surely not, recommended for this climate area ['Hardijzer's Beauty'] and to move a rhodo I have never liked where it sat from when we took over this place, a large very dark-green leathery-leaved one which will have dark red blooms, on our patio, which looms over the smaller plants too much, so I am going to move it to some other location... I will be using the natural soil and choosing my locations carefully.
That one is a from a cross between a Kurume azalea and Rhododendron racemosum, therefore only half Japanese azalea. The other half of the parentage will account for the differences you have observed. As with other native heaths like salal and huckleberries the native rhododendrons are generally plants of the coarsely textured rooting environments present in sandy or rocky places, or rotting wood. This serves as an indication of what kind of garden situation should be chosen for exotic species and garden hybrids in the same family.
Try SELECT ROSES ROSES <www.Selectroses.ca> they are out in Langley. I maintain a large rose garden and I have bought a lot in the last couple of years, they have a wonderfull selection, as a matter of fact I just added 2 apricot and gold climbers to my order this week, they are supposed to be highly scented. Joe
How wonderful! Thank so much, Joe. It is just great to find out about this local rose producer and distributor, and no doubt there are others in the area I have missed -- hope others will contribute more sources. I will definitely make this nursery a stop for a visit. I wish we didn't have deer to factor into growing roses in Saanich, but we do... such a painful problem we Saanich gardeners have. Those who have fenced properties are fine, but I live in a townhouse strata with rather open land and the deer love it here. I am thinking of developing a very small decorative fenced enclosure with roses in it, as a garden device for my front garden -- a sort of mini fenced garden, with decorative panels surrounding it. Not sure it will be possible, but considering it...
I'm trying this new pink climber this year. Although the introducing company does not mention this important attribute in their blurb (same text appears on cards attached to plants as at page linked to below) the patent application description on the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site says the cultivar has a "rose-clove" fragrance. http://www.conard-pyle.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=srplants.plantDetail&plant_id=856
That looks lovely. Unique. It looks like a "double single" rose, if one could call it that without mis-using the English language too much. Scent is hard to find these days and the clove-like scent would be wonderful. Keep us posted on how it does, Ron.
Looks like you found a replacement but I thought I would throw in a suggestion if anyone else is still paying attention. Royal Sunset is my favorite peachy climber - beautiful fragrance and well behaved!
