Number 5 Maria Trevino, Editor May 2013

The American Rose Industry Born to a family in the greenhouse business in East Germany, Lothar Behnke grew up spending his whole life appreciating the “green” industry. After the family immigrated to Canada in 1958, Lothar worked for the family business and increased his horticultural insights, receiving a diploma from DuPage Horticultural School in West Chicago in 1969. Lothar operated a garden center and landscaping firm in Winnipeg, Canada, for 28 years, was very involved in local and national nursery associations, and also engaged in numerous radio and TV shows on horticultural topics. In 1997, Lothar joined Iseli Nursery, Inc. in Oregon, one of the finest conifer nurseries in the world, representing the North Central area of America. Weeks Roses joined the parent company in 1998. Today, Lothar represents Weeks Roses, and Simple Pleasures, in the 11 states of NM, TX, LA, AR, OK, KS, NE, SD, ND, WY, and MT, along with Iseli Nursery in the latter 5 states, all under the proud ownership of Gardens Alive, of Tipp City, Ohio. Lothar still spends much time teaching seminars and attending Open House events on roses, as well as conifers, and general horticultural subjects. He and his lovely wife Erika reside in the Dallas area. Consulting Rosarian for April is Mary Fulgham. Bring your rose questions to the meeting. April Rose Parade Bring your rose blooms, in their own containers, to share with us. Note the variety and name of your roses. If you have a rose that you don’t know what it is, bring the rose blooms. You may go home with a named rose.

This Month's Meeting

Thursday

May 9, 2013

The American Rose Industry

7:30 pm Garden Center Hermann Park

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May Practices. ......................... 2 Five Weeks to a Blackspot-Free Garden……..……….………......3 President’s Corner………….….5 Library………………….……..…5 Society Potpourri…………...…..7 Event Calendar……..….……….7 Consulting Rosarians….….......8

Distant Drums

Barbara & Ally Hannemann

Houston Rose- Ette 2 May 2013

What Good Rosarians Are Doing in May

What a cool spring we have had. While I am not one to complain about cool nights, the roses have missed the warm weather we usually get in April. Blooms have been slow to develop. Of course, the roses that were not pruned certainly have had a showy display. Water. There has been rain and some areas of Houston got a good dose. But, don’t let the rain fool you. You may think that rainstorm was strong but then your rain gauge tells you it was only a tenth of an inch of rain. Not enough for roses. Don’t rely on the television reports of rain in the area. Keep a rain gauge or two in your garden to know how you fared. Keep your rose beds well watered. Not soggy, but moist. Fertilizer for your established roses should have been applied right after you pruned. Newly planted roses are fertilized after their first bloom. Water before and after fertilizer is applied. Synthetic fertilizers can be applied every 4 to 6 weeks during the growing seasons. Always read and follow the manufacturer’s directions for application. Organics can be applied more often. Pests are still present through this cool weather. If you are seeing your light colored blooms looking dirty or with brown edges, thrips are the culprits. Cut off those badly damaged blooms and throw them away. Conserve SC kills the thrips and not the beneficial insects. Orthene (active ingredient acephate) kills thrips and everything else. Remember, spray only the affected blooms. I have not seen many aphids. Check your new growth and water wand your roses if you see them. Spider mites love warm weather and miniature roses. If you had them last year, chances are you will have them again. They overwinter. Keep your bushes clean. It’s another reason to get that water wand out and use it. Deadheading. The first bloom cycle on some of your roses may be over. Remember those roses that did not get pruned? As the blooms fade, cut the spent bloom stem about ¼ inch above a set of five leaflet leaves. Go down the stem to about the second or third set of five

leaflets and cut just above an outward pointing eye of the five leaflet. Ensure that the stem where you will cut to is strong enough to hold new growth. Yellow leaves may begin to appear on the bushes. Typically, there are two reasons for yellow leaves. First, as the bush ages, the lowest set of leaves will be the first to turn yellow and fall off, usually the first set that emerges on a new cane. Second, it could be stress on the bush. Before you panic, identify the problem. Are you overwatering or under watering? Is the pH in the range of about 6.5? How about the fertilizer? Did you apply too much? If you are not sure, bring your leaves, in a sealed bag, to the next rose meeting and ask one of the consulting rosarians.

Blind shoots are stems that grow and grow but never produce a bloom. Often the leaves are closely spaced and the stems are short. Blind shoots usually occur when the spring weather is cool. Because of our cool weather in the last month, we are seeing more blind shoots than normal. Cut the stem back as if deadheading, to a five leaflet, and the new growth should produce a bud. Blind shoots are a problem most often reported in the spring.

See you in the garden!

May 2013 3 Houston Rose-Ette

Five Weeks to a Blackspot-Free Garden by Donald Burger, Consulting Rosarian

For many parts of the country, blackspot is the bane of rose growers. Those yellowing leaves with black spots signal the presence of the worst fungus to attack roses. While some roses are resistant to blackspot, many of the roses we have loved over the years must be protected from this fungus in order to flourish. And even if you don’t plan to enter your blooms in a rose show, there may be occasions when you want your roses to look perfect for a garden party or a wedding reception. You may want to eliminate blackspot from your garden. The purpose of this article is to tell you how you can do this by spraying once a week for five weeks. We will then cover how to keep blackspot at bay once your garden is clean. Let’s get started. The chemicals used to control blackspot are called fungicides. Because there are many kinds of fungus, there are many kinds of fungicides. To fight blackspot you must purchase fungicides targeted at blackspot spores. There are two classes of such fungicides. One class is a contact killer that kills the existing blackspot fungus on your roses but will do nothing to prevent its return. For that protection we need a second class of fungicides called preventatives. We are going to assume that you already have blackspot on your roses. To get rid of it you will have to spray your roses. I recommend you use a pump-up sprayer for this spraying program. Do not use a hose-on sprayer because it is not accurate in the amount of chemical it puts out. Use a pump-up sprayer and carefully measure the amount of fungicide you put into the tank. I figure that one gallon of spray will handle approximately fifty rose bushes, depending on your spray techniques and the make of your sprayer (and its nozzle). Adjust your chemicals accordingly. And use the dosage the manufacturer recommends. It is not the case that twice the recommended dose yields twice the result. Not even close. Go by the manufacturer’s recommendation to get the best results. We will be using two fungicides for each spraying. We will use the same contact fungicide each of the five weeks to kill existing blackspot. We will alternate between two preventative fungicides each spraying so that we don’t use the same preventative two weeks in a row. Fortunately, the contact fungicide can be added to the same tank with the preventative. In other words, you can spray the contact fungicide and the preventative fungicide at the same time. For the contact fungicide, I recommend Mancozeb. It is reasonable in price and a pint should last several seasons. It is a thick liquid, so shake the container thoroughly before measuring it into the sprayer. Mancozeb is widely available.

Next, we need a preventative spray. There are several choices here. It is recommended that you alternate preventative fungicides every other application so as to decrease the chances that the blackspot will become resistant to the preventative spray. The means we need two preventative fungicides.

Houston Rose-Ette 4 May 2013

The first choice is easy. Honor Guard is an excellent preventative and is affordable. It is a liquid and you only use a small amount per gallon. The second choice is harder. For years I recommended Compass as the second preventative. However, the price of Compass has skyrocketed out of control. Although you use very little Compass per gallon, the smallest container you can buy is 16 ounces that goes for about $480.00. My current recommendation is Heritage. It goes for a little over $150.00 for four ounces. Because you only use ¼ to ½ teaspoon per gallon, four ounces will last a long time. Still, this is also an expensive choice.

The budget choice is a product containing triforine as its active ingredient, such as Ortho’s Rose Pride. Rose Pride is cheap, but its residual effectiveness lasts for only one week.

In contrast, Honor Guard, Compass and Heritage have a two week residual. This is not as important in our five week plan, but if you want to control past five weeks, you can go to an every other week schedule if you use Honor Guard, Heritage or Compass. You must continue spraying every week if you use a triforine product such as Rose Pride. If you hate spraying as much as I do the $152.00 Heritage may be worth it if you spray all season. Your call. Below is a summary of the five week program: Week One: Mancozeb and Honor Guard Week Two: Mancozeb and Heritage (or Compass or Rose Pride) Week Three: Mancozeb and Honor Guard Week Four: Mancozeb and Heritage (or Compass or Rose Pride) Week Five: Mancozeb and Honor Guard By the end of five weeks, your roses should be blackspot free. If you decide to continue to spray for blackspot, the program would be as follows: Week Six: no spraying if no blackspot Week Seven: Mancozeb and Heritage (or Compass) Week Eight: No spraying if no blackspot Week Nine: Mancozeb and Honor Guard Repeat weeks six through nine to keep blackspot off your roses. Many rosarians say that the Mancozeb can be dropped during the second phase. They argue that if the blackspot has been eliminated, there is no need to use Mancozeb. I continue to use it as extra insurance. Remember that if blackspot returns, you have to repeat the phase one schedule of spraying once a week.

May 2013 5 Houston Rose-Ette

President's Corner

Liz Duhon elizabethduhon@yahoo.com

Our Board appreciates everyone who volunteered at our Rose Exhibition held on April 13

th and our Rose Garden Tours on April 21

st. Hopefully, you were able to

come out and enjoy the beautiful blooms and landscapes. We also want to thank the following members who graciously opened their gardens to us: Susan & Warren Kelly, Penny & Townes Pressler, Diana Maldonado, Alice Marinos, and Soledad de la Cerda & Claudio Soto. May is a great time to relax and enjoy our gardens since the weather is usually not too hot. If you like to feed your roses and other plants with organics and have not tried an alfalfa tea mixture yet, this is the right month to try using it. An alfalfa tea mixture can be made by filling a 32 gallon trash can full of water and adding the following ingredients: 10 cups alfalfa pellets, 2 cups Epson salts, ½ cup chelated iron, 2 cups of fish emulsion. I usually let the tea brew for 3 to 4 days and stir occasionally. Use one gallon on large bushes and a half gallon for miniature bushes. When you are finished with the roses, the remaining liquid can be spread around the base of other plants. As a reminder, our meeting location will change to St. Andrew Episcopal Church beginning August, 2013. The Church is located at 1819 Heights Boulevard at the corner of Heights Blvd. and 19th Street. It is easily accessible via I-10 (East or West), I-610 via Yale St. and from downtown via Washington Avenue. This location is fifteen minutes from the Houston Garden Center and you can learn more about the church and view photos of their parish hall located under the “facility rental” button at www.saintandrewepiscopal.org. We hope to see you at one of our meetings.

HRS Library Book By Denise Mallett

“If you ever wanted a rose garden, but never had the space, along comes the Mini-Flora rose to add joy and beauty to your life,” writes Sean McCann in his book, “The Rose for Today: Growing the Beautiful Mini-Flora,” published by

the American Rose Society. The book is concise and written in an engaging, yet informative style. “The Rose for Today” includes a forward by Marilyn Wellan, former President of the ARS. J. Benjamin Williams wrote the introduction. The book begins with some background of the dilemma as rose breeders were crossing miniatures with larger roses and produced in-between sized plants that were lovely, easy to handle and adaptable, especially for gardeners with limited space. However, they did not fit in either the miniature or larger rose classes. J. Benjamin Williams trademarked the title “Mini-Flora” and contributed much of his resources to get the designation accepted and established as far as officialdom and the rose community were concerned. McCann describes the Mini-Flora rose as having a height of 18 to 24 inches, compact, well covered with blooms and more disease resistant than many previously existing rose types. These roses are very suitable to grow in containers. He then

Houston Rose-Ette 6 May 2013

discusses in more detail how the Mini-Flora got its name and the international impact this group of larger-than-mini-smaller-than-floribunda roses made. The group has been called “patio roses” in Ireland and Europe. However, in other parts of the world that name has not been accepted, especially in South Africa, where patios are heavily shaded and some so-called “patio roses” grow to 10-feet in one season.

McCann discusses old garden rose varieties that could fit into the same garden and growing settings as the Mini-Flora. These roses can fit in the container-type category, bringing with them a touch of old world charm. English Roses of David Austin are also discussed as modern roses having old rose charm and it is noted that some recently introduced Austin roses are lower-growing than his initial offerings. The book contains sections about garden design (plant the Mini-Floras on the sunny side of taller plants) soil, planting, pruning, caring for, propagating and hybridizing Mini-Flora roses. Disease and insect control is covered in a section followed by a “Troubleshooter Guide” that names symptoms and guides the

reader as to what the problem may be and some possible solutions. In the chapter about showing roses, McCann offers not only guidance, but many of his own experiences. Of note was the time when he took his roses on a ferry over the Irish Sea to a rose show in England and “put them in the mortuary which was always empty . . . and it was cool in there.” He writes about the changes that have taken place in rose competition before and since the Mini-Flora classification was confirmed. McCann shares the names, descriptions and some photos of his own seedlings including 66 miniature and Mini-Flora roses and 29 others in different varieties. He also includes some charming stories about how they were named. There is a section about what he sees, believes and hopes, for the future of Mini-Flora roses. The book is well written and a pleasure to read. Many full color photos are included. It is well-suited for expert gardeners as well as novices. Each chapter begins with an insightful quote that reads like poetry, one of which includes, “Roses are a simple obsession of gentle happiness that breathe with our lives and express true beauty.” Well said, Mr. McCann.

Violet Mist, MinFL Butter Cream, MiniFL

Garden Tour Thanks! Thank you to Susan and Warren Kelly, Penny and Townes Pressler, Diana Maldonado, Soledad de la Cerda and Claudio Soto, and Alice Marinos for opening their gardens for the Rose Garden tour, Sunday April 21st. Countless hours were spent making the garden ready or us to enjoy the beautiful landscaping. We appreciate all your work and support of the Houston Rose Society.

May 2013 7 Houston Rose-Ette

Society Potpourri LAST MONTH'S MEETING

Thank you to last month’s speaker Leo Watermeier for the wonderful presentation on rose gardens in New Orleans.

Mr. Watermeier’s presentation included photos of the roses in Louis Armstrong Park, replanted by the New Orleans Old Garden Rose Society after Katrina. He chronicled the efforts of the Society in returning old garden roses to the park. His talk made me want to go to New Orleans. From the excitement in the room, I was not alone in that desire.

Thank you to Maria Sabin, Gaye Hammond, Franka Correia, Susan Kelly, Margie Forester, Mary Bahn, C R May, Mary Fulgham and Denise Cope for our delicious treats.

Spring Rose Exhibition The HRS Spring Rose Exhibition held on Saturday, April 13th at The Arbor Gate was a big success and a fun day. The exhibition had over 150 entries with over 300 blooms. First time exhibitors Barbara and Ally Hannemann brought an arrangement of Distant Drums that was a show stopper. (See the photo on the first page). A big thank you to our tireless volunteers: Dan and Patti Lawlor, Susan Kelly, Gaye Hammond, Richard Burqdat, Suzanne Gilbert, Donald Burger, Maria Trevino, Mary Bahn, Liz Duhon, Baxter and Patsy Williams, James and Debbie Laperouse, Earl & Deanna Krause, and Mary Fulgham. We are most grateful to Beverly Welch for inviting the HRS to hold the rose exhibition at her nursery and to The Arbor Gate staff for their help.

HRS Events Calendar

Mark your calendar - updates made monthly

May 9 ���� HRS Meeting – Lothar Behnke May 25-26 ���� ARS Judging School, Beaumont,Texas

Around Town Here are some garden happenings around town: May 4-5: Annual Garden/Art Walk, Petal Pushers Garden Club & Deer Park Art League. Tour features many private gardens, art and garden themed arts & crafts and plant sale at Center & 13th Street in Deer Park. Tour Tickets $10.

May 11: Sugar Land Garden Club is hosting its 14th

annual Spring Garden Tour “The Secret Gardens of Sugar Lakes” from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm in the Sugar Lakes subdivision. Tickets are $15 for nine gardens. www.sugarlandgardenclub.org May 11-12: Peckerwood Garden Foundation Open Days. Guided garden tours 1:00 pm & 3:00 pm. $10 per person. Hempstead, Texas www.peckerwoodgarden.org May 20: Open Garden Day at the Harris County Master Gardeners at Precinct 2, 8:30 am to 11:00 am. Master gardeners will be on hand to answer your gardening questions. Genoa Friendship Garden, 1202 Genoa Red Bluff, Houston, Texas More information email jansidk@aol.com The Galveston Master Gardener Gardens located at the Galveston County AgriLife Extension Office in Carbide Park, 4102 Main Street (FM 519), La Marque Texas 77568, are open to the public on the first Tuesday of each month, from 9:00 to 11:30 am. The large 6 acre garden includes demonstration and research garden beds and orchards. The garden also has EarthKind and demonstration rose beds that feature a variety of roses, including a Hybrid Tea research project and some newly hybridized roses.

HRS Officers 2013

President Elisabeth Duhon 713-885*8447 elisabethduhon@yahoo.com VP Show Dan Lawlor 281-343-9422 dplawlor@pdq.net VP Programs Baxter Williams 713-944-3437 bxtwms@att.net VP Member. Manning Correia 281-465-1080 manningcorreia@yahoo.com Secretary Susan Kelly 832-867-7013 Suzzieq1971@aol.com Treasurer Gaye Hammond 281-458-1616 gayeh@lpm-triallaw.com Editor Maria Trevino 713-869-3693 maria@burger.com Publicity Mary Bahn 713-623-0200 Bahn.mary@gmail.com Past Pres. Robin Hough 281-482-8944 rzhough@gmail.com Director Donald Burger 713-861-5412 burger@burger.com Director Mary Fulgham 713-668-1054 mfulgham1@att.net

ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

____________

____________

Web address: http://www.houstonrose.org

Non-Profit Org. U. S. Postage

PAID Houston, Texas Permit No. 4872

P. O. Box 22614 HOUSTON, TEXAS 77227-2614

�Call a Consulting Rosarian These Rosarians welcome your rose questions.

♦♦♦♦Jim Bailey Far SE 713-594-4030 Donald Burger / Maria Trevino Heights 713-861-5412 Denise Cope SW 713-771-4841 Manning Correia Wdlnds 281-465-0180 Elizabeth Duhon N 713-855-8447 ♦♦♦♦ Mary Fulgham / Randy Keen Bel 713-668-4054 William Groth SW 713-728-1854 Suzanne Gilbert Spring 281-251-4013

♦♦♦♦Gaye Hammond NE 281-458-6116

♦♦♦♦ Robin Hough SE 281-482-8944 John Jons SE 281-794-2998 ♦♦♦♦Earl / ♦♦♦♦ Deanna Krause SE 281-487-3347 James Laperouse NW 281-746-2842 Shirley Morgan W 713-463-6719 John Patterson Bry/CS 979-690-9630 ♦ Baxter / ♦♦♦♦ Patsy Williams S 713-944-3437

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♦♦♦♦ Master Rosarians Randall’s Remarkable Card for HRS,# 5928

THE HOUSTON ROSE SOCIETY is a non-profit educational organization affiliated with The American Rose Society and dedicated to the cultivation of roses in the Houston area.

MEMBERSHIP is $15.00 per calendar year, Electronic only $12.00

January thru December. Mail membership dues to:

Baxter Williams 2502 Leprechaun Lane

Houston, TX 77017-7320 Phone 713-944-3437

bxtwms@att.net

NOTE: Send address changes to this address.

HRS mails bulk-rate and it is NOT forwarded.

♥ ♥ Editor - THE ROSE-ETTE ♥ ♥ Maria Trevino

P O Box 70828 Houston, Texas 77270 Phone 713-869-3693 Fax 713-869-5133

maria@burger.com