I never grew roses until last year. I bought a beautiful wrought-iron trellis, and planted three “Eden Climber” bushes. All last summer I had beautiful vines all the way up the trellis . . . but no flowers. I cut the vines down in early spring. This year, so far, I’ve got dozens of roses, but they’re not climbing. The plants are about 18 inches high, with great flowers, but there’s no sign of additional stem growth. Both years, I’ve used Miracle Gro rose food and watered them before the soil got dry. So how can I get climbing flowers?
How did you winter them? Did you wrap them in burlap and spray them with wilt-proof? Sounds like they may have been damaged in the winter…if roses are not wraped they can easily sustain damage that can take several seasons to get over, or never at all…
It sounds like to much cutting back. Climbing roses in cold climates are wrapped in burlap and buried in a trench. They are unburied and trellised in the spring. They are blooming now so I expect they are not just the rootstock. They will take off growing again, and then don’t cut them back so far. You of coarse must remove all dead wood , so if they die down to one foot tall, that’s how far you have to cut back, otherwise don’t cut them that short.
I’m planning to get a couple of Eden climbers soon. I thought that they were a particularly hardy variety, and didn’t take the sort of tenderlovin’ care that other kinds of roses do.
Can anyone point us to a reference that gives suggestions for handling this rose in different climate zones?
I don’t do climbing roses, because I’m not willing to do that. The only large climber I’ve seen around here was a couple that did that every year. They dug a trench to one side of the plant, and laid it sideways in burlap, being sure to not dig up the roots, only bend them. It was on one of those pathway arches,that was maybe ten feet high. It was covered in over a hundred roses at a time I would guess. The couple that did this are either dead or in the nursing home now. The arch and roses are gone. You can use the burying method, if you want to raise semi-hardy plants in your zone. That’s how you would treat a hardy fig in Wisconsin too.
One site I found said Eden Climber is hardy to Zone 5A, which goes to -28. Panache45, we’re in Zone 5B (goes down to -26) and I don’t do nuthin’ but prune my climbing rose (Zepherine Drouhin), and it does just fine.
Climbers don’t really climb, in the way a clematis or the like does. They have to be trained to a trellis. They have canes, not true vines.
I agree with the speculation that you cut it back too far this spring. It should bounce back, though, if it’s doing well otherwise.
Ok, so the advice I got from a friend was totally wrong. I have to admit that, in spite of everything, the blooms I’m having are magnificent. There are only a few more buds, and I’ll see what happens through the rest of the season. I’ll definitely do things different next year.
You don’t have to do that in warmer climates. Here in VA I just make sure the canes (not vines) are secured to the trellis so that they don’t rub, water well before the possibility of a ground freeze, and leave them alone.
Well, I know, I grow climbing roses here. Of course, the concept of “ground freeze” is as foreign to me as the concept of “unclimb your roses and put them in a hole in the ground”, for what it’s worth. That’s why non-local gardening advice drives me absolutely batty - when do I plant my bulbs? “Oh, before the ground freezes, of course.” So… never?