Re: Repeat summer rose bloom

I am in about 7 miles from the ocean in West Los Angeles (ok, I am just a
little too far east to be calling myself  "West LA", just a little stretch
of the truth).   You must be south of me to have that much heat.  If it is
combined with a dry wind, you could have much more difficult gardening
circumstances than I care to think about.  However, with lots of mulch,
perhaps some wind protection and enough water, most of those negatives can
be mitigated.  (I believe I have lost more blooms to the dry, hot wind, than
to "heat" alone.  Although enough time spent above 90° will burst your
blooms, just a few gusts of wind at that temperature will do the same amount
of damage in less than half the time.)  That, I would conjecture, is more
your problem than simply the heat.

I absolutely insist on rose blooms almost year round.  I work like the devil
to try to deadhead my 30+ roses and I have only one (a gift) that is not a
repeat bloomer.  After the spring flush, I will usually only have two or
three weeks when I can't have a bouquet including at least one rose flower
in every room of my small house.  A trick I've yet to master is getting a
consistent flush for Christmas, which has more to do with unpredictable
temperature than for any want of effort on my part.

When cutting the plant in Summer, I do not do anything that I would describe
as "cutting them back".  I take out an errant cane here or there, but I feel
my work is more appropriately called "deadheading".  Bucket and pruners in
hand, at least an hour of my Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons are
mostly spoken for by my desire for more blooms.

The two most important qualities I seek in all my roses are scent and repeat
blooming.  In my little postage stamp garden, I don't feel I have enough
space for the luxury of a plant that won't rebloom reliably.  To me, it's
one of the most treasured qualities of my roses and I would be lost without
them, my garden would spend much of the year minus color.  And, while they
do follow some general outline, some bloom earlier, some bloom later, some
repeat rapidly (Nostrana is almost never without a bloom as is the
all-too-common Iceberg) so something is almost always in bloom except for
January, when I deadhead a little deeper and February whilst they recover.
I have a number of singles that repeat well, and flowers on most of my
climbers are ubiquitous.  Cecile Bruner ("best pruned with a chain saw or
anti-tank missles") doesn't know about "not blooming".  I have two or three
hybrid teas that rebloom prolifically, and the David Austin's (most of which
are less than two years old) rebloom a little more sparsely.  My hybrid
musks, do rebloom, but probably have the slowest rebloom cycle in the mix.


David King
Rose Lover,
Consulting Horticulturist,
Heirloom Tomato Proselytizer


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