Protecting Roses in East Hartland

I live in East Hartland, on top of Mount Crumpet.  We are north of Granby, CT, about 20 minutes from Bradley Airport, hugging the Massachusetts line.  Though we are technically in Hartford County, our weather mimics the Litchfield hills.  We are colder than most places in Connecticut and usually count on plenty of snow cover to help with rose survival.

I typically buy only tough, zone 4 or 5 roses that I am confident will survive the winters here.  I started off in my early rose years, the faithful and dedicated protective mother who would pile organic material around the base of all my babies (except the super hardy rugosas).  Yet I grew tired of this as the years went on (raking an acre and a half yard and motivating my husband to do the gutters is enough).  I was lucky to find that the first time I didn’t protect my roses, they generally did well, with maybe only one not surviving, so it wasn’t worth the time investment to even bother.  I know many in other climes can not get away with this, but so far so good up here on the mountain.

Despite my luck with the yard roses, I have had dire trouble overwintering my potted roses.  Those I keep on my deck are among my favorites, including Honey Perfume, Country Dancer, Gertrude Jekyl, and Hot Cocoa, and of course I wanted them to survive very badly.

Someone told me to store the potted roses in my garage and “they’d be fine”.  Supposedly because they were frozen and dormant, I was told, they wouldn’t need watering.  So I complied and found all 8 of them dead by spring.  Of course I was heartbroken and rushed out to replace my favorites.  This next winter I relied on the guidance of another well-meaning rose person who told me that all I had to do was water them once a month in the garage, and they’d be fine!----So, I again stored them in the garage, and faithfully watered them throughout the winter.  By spring it looked like many had survived as there were green canes, but not a one budded out and I dumped more roses into the rose graveyard.  Very frustrating, sad, and expensive to lose this many roses each year!

Desperate for a guaranteed solution to overwintering my potted roses, I found out about “The Minnesota tip”.  This is a method of burying your roses for the utmost in protection.  The article was geared toward roses planted in the garden. 

The steps in quick summary are to first cut back any really long canes.  Then  gently tie the canes together with synthetic, colorful twine (organic twine will decompose).  You then attach a long piece of this bright twine to the base of the rose, allowing several inches of it to extend out onto the ground.  This “twine tail” assures that you locate your rose in the spring, and also know which end to dig up first, the root end, assuring the protection of the precious canes.

After the rose is prepared, you then loosen the soil around the rose, dig a shallow trench behind the rose and gently tip the rose back into the trench.  Then you cover it well with soil or other organic material.  (For a more detailed description and pictures, just google “Minnesota Tip”).

Excited to have this newfound method, I selected an area of the yard that is used just for annuals (tomatoes and such) and I dug a sizable trench.  I did indeed feel like a gravedigger.  It wasn’t big enough for all my roses, so I picked a couple more spots in my yard and did the same.  Though I dug the trench before the ground was frozen, I did not store the soil inside, and when it was finally time to bury the roses because they were dormant, the soil piled up was a hard mass. Note to self:  store bags full of soil in the basement or use potted bags from the garden center to cover. Anyway, once I had soil I could work with, I tied up the canes, left a long twine tail at the base, removed them from their pots, and laid them down to sleep.

When I dug them in the spring to re-pot them, they were all dead….only kidding!  They were magnificent, with vibrant green, healthy looking canes, ready to burst forth into life. They would soon all bud out quickly, surpassing growth in the yard roses.  However I had a nagging suspicion that I had buried 6 roses, and only dug up 5.  Somewhere there may still be a rose preserved for all eternity….