Thorny Issues · We are now accepting photos for the 2018 Roses Wall Calendar - open to all ARS members. Here are a few guidelines: Photos must be 13” x 11” AND at least 300 dpi

Thorny Issues April 2017 1 Acadiana Rose Society, Lafayette, LA

ThornyThorny IssuesIssues A Publication of the Acadiana Rose Society in South Louisiana

An affiliate of the American Rose Society

April 2017

Volume 27

B.J. Abshire-Editor

INSIDE THIS

ISSUE

President’s Message

This n That

April in the Garden

Johnny Becnel’s Recipe

Tips for Spraying

Blind Shoots - To Keep or Not to Keep

Exhibiting Terms

Explained

Picture Gallery

April 20th Meeting - Petite Show Bring your roses to enter in our petite show. It’s a great way to learn and share your love of roses...and it’s fun. Members will help judge some the roses. Get to the meeting early (6:00) to get your roses ready. See the schedule and more information inside.

Refreshments Juan Nieto and Pia Albuquerque have volunteered to bring some food to our April meeting. Thanks

Festival des Fleurs Many thanks to the members that helped man our information booth at Festival des Fleurs on April 1…Mike Hamner, Monica Soileau, Lou Savoy, Letha Briggs, BJ Abshire, Virginia Bowen, Juan Nieto, Carolyn Brupbacher, Diane Rountree and Lois & Maurice Manuel. We had a great time talking roses with the many folks that visited our information table. We offered visitors an opportunity to win a rose bush for $1 a try. There were 3 very excited ladies taking home a rose bush.

Joni Younie’s Knee Surgery Keep Joni in your thoughts and prayers. She had knee surgery the week of March 19 and will be down for the count for about 3 months. In other words, Bill is in charge of everything, including the roses. Good Luck!

Carol Benoit Carol has just had surgery to clear a blockage . Keep her and John in your thoughts and prayers. We wish you a quick recovery.

Calendar of Events

April 20, 2017 April 22, 2017 April 29, 2017 April 29, 2017 May 6, 2017 May 18 2017 June 3, 2017

Acadiana RS regular meeting - Petite Rose Show Gulf District Rose Show - Pineville, LA Green Thumb Series - American Rose Center Golden Triangle Rose Show - Beaumont, Tx. Herb Fest - Sunset, LA Acadiana RS Birthday Banquet Daylily Festival - Abbeville, LA

Happy Easter


Attention Photographers !!! From Beth Smiley, ARS Publications Dir.

We are now accepting photos for the 2018 Roses Wall Calendar - open to all ARS members. Here are a few guidelines:

Photos must be 13” x 11” AND at least 300 dpi

Please, no more than 10 submissions

Digital photos only

Deadline is June 1, 2017 Email submissions to [email protected] or mail a cd to American Rose Soc., ATTN: Editorial, P.O. Box 30000, Shreveport, LA 71130 We will post all entries on the website again this year after selec-tions have been made - see last year’s at www.rose.org

This-N-That

President’s Corner Greetings Rose Growing Friends, Well, here we are in April and the rose garden has very few rose bushes that have not started blooming. In fact several of the English roses are into their second bloom cycle. We had over 50 roses on Abraham Darby, and not a single rose left. I did manage to cut the last one for the Master Gardeners plant sale April 8. Several of the customers would come find me, just to find out the name of that rose. I saw several of our members at the plant sale.

I wanted to say thanks to all our members that came to help promote and support our rose society at Festi-val des Fleurs. For those that could not make it, we had plenty of help.

To Mrs. Carol Benoit our thoughts and prayers are with you and John, have a speedy recovery and come see us when you can. For the other members at this month’s meeting, good luck on your competition roses, our horticulture judges will be there.

We have two garden talks on Rose Care coming up. On April 15 at 11 a.m. at the Horse Farm, BJ and I will be there. On May 6th Mrs. Lou and Karen will be at All Seasons nursery for a 10 a.m. garden talk on roses. They welcome any support you can give them. I cannot stay for that one, I have duties at the Sunset Herb Fes-tival that day. Next month May Vidcovich will be at our Birthday potluck meeting to show us how to split an am-aryllis bulb.

In the garden there’s a lot to do, drink plenty of water, plan your day but most of all get out and enjoy this beautiful weather. As always let me know if you want to see the garden, so that I can be there. Thanks again for all you help and support.

Dry Wrapping Your Roses… If your roses are blooming right now con-sider dry wrapping them for our Petite show on April 22. They can last for weeks in the refrigerator until you are ready to exhibit, use in a bouquet or give them to someone. Use saran wrap or Press n Seal (my fa-vorite) and completely wrap your cut rose. Make sure the sepals are all the way down and the rose is completely dry be-fore wrapping.

Ask BJ if you would like to know more about it...

Juan

Look for this good guy on your roses - Ladybug pupae

Are You Prepared? Get up to date on your tetanus if you are not. Believe it or not there is a “rose gar-deners disease” called Sporotrichosis. It is caused by an infection of the fungus Sporothrix schenckii.

If you see this small alligator-like larvae crawling on your rose bush leaves don’t kill it. It’s a ladybug larvae and they eat aphids

The American Rose Society, estab-lished in 1892, will celebrate its 125th birthday in 2017. Go to www.rose.org for more info on all the great prizes you could win.

http://www.ars.org/

http://www.rose.org


Do your roses have labels? Check out www.everlastlabel.com for a variety of garden labels at a reasonable price.

A tea rose that dates to 1901, ‘Mrs. B.R. Cant’ is named after the wife of famous English rose breeder and nurseryman Benjamin R. Cant. Flowers are cabbage-like pink with a silvery tinge and have a strong tea fragrance. Foliage is medium green. ‘Mrs. B.R. Cant’ has good resistance to blackspot and other diseases that plague modern hybrid tea-like roses. As a class, these roses are particularly well-suited to the southern United States, Owings said. “They are able to tolerate our heat and humidity, while retaining most of their foliage. Prior winners of the Gulf District Rose of the Year include Belinda’s Dream in 2015 and Cinco de Mayo in 2016. These varieties along with ‘Mrs. B.R. Cant’ are available from a wide range of local garden centers and mail order nurseries. They tend to be large, upright-growing plants 8-10 ft. tall that are often narrower at the base, and some grow as large climbing roses.

Join the American Rose Society's FREE

e-membership to learn all about growing

roses! Sign up for The Fragrant Rose

at: http://ow.ly/l43W3086liX

ARS Gulf District Rose of the Year-2017

‘Mrs. B.R. Cant’ Gulf District American Rose Society

2017 Spring Tour

Thursday April 27 - Sunday April 30 “Texas Bound and Down”

Chamblee’s Rose Nursery - Tyler, Tx. Rose Gardens - Farmers Branch, Tx.

Earth-Kind Rose Trials - McKinney, Tx. FlowerDango - Chambersville Tree

Farm

Contact Allen Owings for more info

Gulf District Rose Show Saturday, April 22, 2017

KEES PARK COMMUNITY CENTER

Pineville, Louisiana 71360

Offering a class for every rose; a trophy for

each class, 56 horticulture classes plus 21

arrangement classes.

For a schedule contact:

Billie Flynn Lee Dautreuil April 4 Judy Boe April 22

This-N-That

‘Mrs. B.R. Cant’ in Letha Briggs’ yard. Photo BJ Abshire

Check this out!

Lowe’s has just gotten in some Kordes rose vari-eties for $18.98 and several David Austin Eng-lish rose varieties for $29.99, plus other hybrid teas/floribundas etc. for $12.98. This is the Amb. Caffery location but all Lowe’s locations will have roses.

http://www.everlastlabel.com

http://ow.ly/l43W3086liX


April in the Rose Garden

Water – Start the good habit of watering regularly now. It is essential for healthy plants to get 2-3 inches of water a week. Get some soaker hoses or other convenient watering system so that you don’t put it off. You may have read that overhead watering is not recommended. You may also have read that you should not even let the leaves get wet. It takes 7-15 hours of continuous moisture for fungal spores to germinate. Therefore, overhead watering is quite alright if the leaves have time to dry before dark...and they will dry quickly in our heat. During the summer heat your roses will greatly benefit from a cooling shower...just as you do. Don’t be afraid to water your roses from overhead or with a water wand. Just make sure they dry before dark.

Fertilize – Roses like their fertilizer. It’s never too late. Put out some organics like fish meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa pellets and Epsom salt. It will last a long time and it’s good for the soil. On newly planted roses it’s ok to put organics when you plant but don’t put chemical fertilizers (like Miracle Gro) until after the first flush of blooms.

Spray – If you spray, continue your regular spray program. If you’ve got a fungus problem, spray every 4-5 days with a contact fungicide (Manzate or Dithane) for a total of about 3 sprayings until it’s under control, then go back to weekly or every other week using a systemic fungicide. Prevention is always better than trying to cure.

Basal Breaks – A basal break is a new cane that emerges near the bud union. They are fragile and can break very easily until they harden off. Be extra careful with these. Also, look for blind shoots, stems that produce nothing. They can be short cluster of leaves that don’t make a bud. See the article in this newsletter. And look for suckers which emerge from below the bud union. Just break or cut them clean off at the point of origin.

Pests – Aphids are the first pests to appear. So far this spring there haven’t been very many aphids. Lady bugs can eat a lot of aphids but it’s not fast enough for me. You can knock them off with a strong blast of wa-ter, squish them with thumb and forefinger or spray an insecticide. Flower Thrips are probably ruining your blooms right now as you’re reading this. Add a good insecticide to your fungicide or use the “ready to spray” insect treatment to spot treat for flower thrips on the buds and blooms only because that’s where the thrips are. Chilli Thrips are worse because they chew on the new growth as well as the buds. Last summer some of you lost roses because of chilli thrips. We had only a couple of short freezes this past winter and only time will tell if it was cold enough to prevent them. Walk through the garden often and look at your roses. Watch for signs of shriveled, crinkled and burnt looking new foliage. Take action immediately and spray with a good in-secticide containing spinosad (Conserve or Fertilome) or imidicloprid (Bayer products or Merit). Contact one of our Consulting Rosarians if you’re not sure what to do. Eaten or holes in leaves means worms are present. I use the 2 finger squish method...but you have to find them first.

Spider Mites love hot weather and the hot weather will be here before you know it. They start at the bottom of the plant and work their way up. The leaves will look trashy, dry and fall off. Rub the bottom of a leaf on a white sheet of paper and you will see the red streaks...their guts. The spider mites work fast. Removing the leaves from the lower part of the plant up about 8 inches will make it much harder for them to get on the plant because they come from the soil. Blast them off the underside of the leaves with a strong spray of water from a water wand or the spray nozzle (free method) and it completely disrupts their breeding cycle. They must be on the leaf to reproduce. Do this every couple of days for a week and this should get it under control. If you have a lot of roses Avid and Floramite are excellent miticides but very expensive.

Share the knowledge and some roses – It’s an exciting time of the year for rosarians. Bring a friend some of your roses and bring a friend with you to the April 20th rose meeting so they can see how much fun growing and showing roses can be. Bring a few roses to enter in our petite show. It’s more fun learning together. The social aspect is always fun as well and you’ll always learn something new.


Johnny Becnel’s fertilizer recipe for exhibition roses

If you want exhibition quality roses use the following “6 weeks before the show” recipe.

Water the day before you apply this fertilizer and do not water for two days. Mix the following in a large 30 gallon trash can full of water and apply 1 gallon to each bush. Six weeks before the show:

2 cups 20-20-20 (Miracle Gro brand - 4lb box has 4 packets...3 cups in each packet) 1 cup Epsom salts 1/2 cup Sprint (iron) (found at Chastant’s) Five weeks before the show:

Water, mix and apply as the week before: 2 cups 20-20-20 1 cup Epsom salts 1 cup fish emulsion - (I found Alaska Brand Fish Fertilizer at Walmart (cheapest), Lowe’s, Home Depot and Stines) 1/4 cup Sprint Four weeks before the show:

Water, mix and apply as the week before: 1 cup 20-20-20 1 cup Scott’s Super Bloom (found it at Lowe’s) 1 cup fish emulsion 1 cup Epsom salts 1/4 cup Sprint Three weeks before the show:

Water, mix and apply as the week before 2 cups Scott’s Super Bloom 2 cups fish emulsion 2 cups Epsom salts 1/4 cup Sprint Two weeks and One week before the show:

Water, mix and apply as the week before: 1 cup Scott’s Super Bloom 1 cup fish emulsion 1 cup Epsom salts Editor’s note: If you don’t exhibit but still want good roses you don’t have to follow this program for all six weeks. You could do it for however many weeks you want. If you don’t have 30 roses you can adjust the amounts to fit the number of roses you have.


Tips for Spraying by BJ Abshire

I receive newsletters from several other rose societies in and out of our district. Also, our society has several very knowledgeable rosarians that I tap into, plus other societies and the internet. Therefore, I have access to lots of information when it comes to rose cultivation. I would like to share some of the things I’ve learned from our members, other societies and from my own experi-ence.

Choose a sprayer that is right for your garden. I have about 50 - 60 rose bushes and use 1 gallon of mixed fungicide in a 1 gallon pump-up sprayer. For larger gardens there are all sizes of sprayers from backpack style to multi-gallon wheeled. Look for a sprayer that has a pressure release valve.

Regularity – Spraying your roses on a regular basis is important if you want to have clean leaves. Preven-

tion is Key! Pick a day of the week to spray and stick to it. If it rains or is too windy, spray the next day or as soon as you can. If your bushes already have black spot, spray with a contact fungicide such as Dithane M45 every 3 days for a total of 3 treatments. That should kill the active spores and then get back on your regular preventive schedule. Remember, no leaves means no flowers!

Make sure your roses are well hydrated when you spray. If they are not, they “drink in” too much of the

spray causing leaf burn. Remember, you are spraying poison on them and you want them to be at their best.

Always read the label and use the recommended dosage of fungicide or insecticide, never less or more. Fil

your sprayer 1/2 full of water. If you are using a fungicide in powdered form prepare your spray mixture by putting the measured amount of fungicide into a lidded jar or container and then add warm water. With lid on shake well to dissolve then add to your partially filled sprayer. Liquid fungicides can be poured directly into the tank of water. Finish filling sprayer with water to the 1 gallon line.

Don’t spray when it’s windy or when children or pets are in the area. Try not to spray too late in the day. You want the spray to have time to dry. Once it dries rain will not wash

it off. Using a sprayer with a fine mist will give you better coverage. Start by spraying the underside of the leaves

where the black spot starts. Some of the chemical will get on the top of the leaves making it a little easier when you spray the top.

When spraying the buds and blooms for insects such as thrips, use less pressure for more control where

the chemical goes. Spray insecticides only if you have a problem or to have clean blooms before a show. When using a small pump sprayer (1 or 2 gal), shake to mix chemicals about every third bush. It is recommended to periodically vary the order in which you spray your bushes. In other words, don’t start

and finish at the same spot every time. If you have chemical left in the tank when you are finished, if it is a fungicide, go back to your “trouble bush-

es” and hit them again or just spray the remainder on the ground around your bushes. Do not save for later. It starts breaking down in about 3 hours and will not be affective.

Take time to clean your sprayer thoroughly after each use. Rinse well and run clean water through the noz-

zle. Periodically add a couple of drops of dish liquid before rinsing well. Last but not least, protect yourself. Use Nitrile disposable gloves when mixing and spraying. Use a respira-

tor and goggles at a minimum. It is recommended to wear long sleeves and pants. It seems like a lot of trouble, but if you are going to do a regular spray program you should take a few minutes to do it right and be safe.


Blind Shoots - To Keep or Not to Keep By Linda Aguzin - Master Rosarian

Blind Shoots are those short stems with no flower buds. Now is the time to remove unwanted growth on your rose bushes. Unwanted growth is the weak and twig-gy growth, or growth that is going to the inside of the bush and BLIND SHOOTS. They are typically no longer than 3-5 inches long. Some emerge from the main cane with 3-4 leaves. Some believe that fluctuations in weather or temperature as the bush is beginning to grow cause blind shoots. Others believe that they occur because the rose is throwing more stems than it can support with corresponding blooms. Whatever you choose to believe, by removing the inside, lower growth and foliage, you are increasing air circulation and not allowing spider mites and fungus to find a home in that bush. Start at the bottom of the bush and working upward, you will be able to see the origin of the blind shoot and remove them at their source. You may even find smaller stems that are growing to the inside. These should also be removed even though they may contain a small flower bud. Removing this unwanted growth is not a lot of fun, but you will be rewarded by more vigorous, productive growth. You do not have to do this job all at once. Set a goal to do a few bushes at a time. By removing all of this unwanted growth, you are forcing all of the food and energy of the plant into major, vigorous, productive canes which will produce maybe fewer, but larger and more beautiful roses. I was once told by Johnny Becnel “If it doesn’t have a bud on the end, get rid of it”.


Information complied by Rosebud editor Billie Flynn and Thorny Issues editor BJ Abshire

Exhibition Bloom

An exhibition bloom is a bloom at the most

perfect stage of possible beauty for that variety of

rose. Exhibition blooms are displayed with only

one bloom, on a single stem, without any sign of

other stems, flowers, or buds on the main stem.

Generally, the most perfect

stage for hybrid teas or

miniature roses is

when the bloom is

one-half to two-thirds

open, gracefully

shaped with sufficient

petals symmetrically

arranged in a circular

outline with a high center.

Spray

A spray is a group of florets growing

on many side stems which all originate

from the same main stem. A dramatic

spray is composed of many blooms at

the same or near the same stage.

However, unopened and newly opened

buds many be included. The collection of

blooms should form a pleasing outline or

known as “inflorescence” with little or no

gaps in the arrangement of blooms.

Unwanted growth may be discreetly

removed in order to form a balanced and

pleasing arrangement of blooms.

Polyanthas, shrubs, floribundas, climbers

and many old garden roses are shown as

a spray. Hybrid teas, grandifloras and

miniature roses may also be shown as a spray.

Every rose show is guided by strict rules and regulations found in the show schedule booklet. The following is a brief explanation of these terms used in a show schedule booklet.

Exhibiting Terms Explained

Rose in a Bowl

One rose in a bowl of water with no foliage. This is a good way to exhibit a rose that has bad leaves. The rose should fill most of the bowl but should not be too big or small for the size of the bowl. The rose is in exhibition stage and has no stamens showing.

Decorative Hybrid Tea

A decorative hybrid tea does not normally pre-sent high centered exhibition form, instead has a symmetrical spiral of petals, somewhat informal and very pretty.


Fun at Festival des Fleurs

2017


‘Dark Desire’ ‘Good As Gold’


‘Tahitian Treasure’

‘Valentine’


A Publication of the Acadiana Rose Society An Affiliate of the American Rose Society

Thorny Issues

B.J. Abshire – Editor

Lafayette, LA. 70503

The Acadiana Rose Society

Consulting Rosarians: B.J. Abshire 981-4473 [email protected]

Linda Aguzin* 560-1336 [email protected]

John & Carol Benoit 234-6823 [email protected]

Letha Briggs (Emeritus) 984-1868 [email protected]

Mike Hamner (Emeritus) 235-6436 [email protected]

Juan Nieto 290-1451 [email protected]

Diane Rountree 988-1741 [email protected]

Lou Savoy 235-9872

* Master Rosarian

Officers: President: Juan Nieto 1st Vice Pres: Lou Savoy Treasurer: BJ Abshire Secretary: Lois Manuel

Meeting Place: Ira Nelson Horticulture Center 2206 Johnston St. ,Lafayette, LA 3rd Thursday of each month 6:30pm (except Dec - 2nd Thurs.)

No meeting in July

Membership: $20 for ind. & $25 for couples Make check payable to: Acadiana Rose Society c/o BJ Abshire Lafayette, LA 70503

Documents

Thorny Issues · We are now accepting photos for the 2018 Roses Wall Calendar - open to all ARS members. Here are a few guidelines: Photos must be 13” x 11” AND at least 300 dpi