Spent most of the day weeding around the roses. A couple of hours in the morning, then I went to my show, then came back and weeded again. I'm happy with how much I got done, although it still looks like hell from the street. Because I didn't work at all on the slope, which is what people can see from the road. But if you're standing up on top of the bank looking down at the ground, it looks a hundred times better.
Of the five roses up there, I got the weeds completed removed from four of them, and got started on the fifth. They are doing so well, big and healthy looking. The Awakening has four canes that are each ten feet long! And the Reve D'Or and Sombreuil aren't far behind. I learned a saying about climbing roses: "The first year, they sleep; the second year, they creep; the third year, they leap!" This is the beginning of the second year and I have to say, if this is creeping, I can't wait until they leap.
Antique, own-root roses really are the best. We planted them up on that bank a year ago, in not that great soil, and they've basically had to fend for themselves. We watered them some, but not that much, and never a single treatment of fertilizer, pesticide or fungicide. Heck, by the end of last summer they were pretty much covered over by weeds. According to what all the rose guides and websites say, they should be dead. Instead they're thriving. Three cheers for own-root roses!
The idea is that the roses will ramble down the bank, branches will fan out and cover the slope. I think once we get the weeds off the slope we're going to hammer in stakes and peg down the canes so they grow in the right direction. Right now they're kind of going every which way: some running along the edge of the bank, some straight up, whatever. The canes are still flexible enough that we can train them in the right direction.
The Reve D'or is blooming already. In fact, I weeded around that one in the morning, and I swear another half-dozen flowers opened while I was at my show. I bet it was the increased sunlight from having those weeds cleared away. The Sombreuil has a couple of blossoms open, and looks like it will be in full bloom this coming week. None of the others are near blooming yet, but they have lots of buds.
The Secret Garden Musk Climbers are still pretty small compared to the others. I got them from another vendor and they might have been younger plants. Or maybe because they were planted later in the season last year, they didn't establish as well. Or, maybe SGMC is just slower to get going. I can be patient though: it has the reputation for being a massive climber that will cover everything with a blanket of white roses that rebloom all summer. Sounds a bit too good to be true. If it's half as good as advertised I'll be thrilled.
While I was weeding Georg removed the stump of doom! He's been working on it for ages. I kind of can't believe it's finally out. That tap root was so big, it was like trying to dig out a telephone pole. The area where the stump of doom used to be will be covered with cardboard and have mulch piled on top. We'll leave it like that all year, and then next year it will be a new flowerbed!
Georg also got started on removing weeds from the slope and ditch by the road. That job is going to be a bastard. I think we are going to resort to chemical means (Roundup). We'll cover the roses with plastic so there's no risk of a breeze blowing the herbicide onto them. We also need to mulch around the roses, weed the back of the bed under the daylilies, and also I want to dig up a narrow strip of turf along the fence so it's easier to mow along the edge. It really never ends.
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