Climbing roses

We have a wonderful old rose that's incredibly tough.

It predates our residence here by many years, judging by its old canes. It sailed through the drought years of the last decade without a drip of extra water. This evening, it's flowering profusely.

A cutting taken a couple of years ago has also flourished.

In a permanent spot against the back of the house, it's looking robust, too.

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A blooming rose

I wanted to get a good picture before it got dark, and didn't manage to do it. But the rose cuttings from the old hardy rose that I've nurtured for awhile are looking wonderful. After a slow start, and a bit of neglect, transplanting them into a larger pot filled with nutrient-enriched potting mix has them putting on excellent growth and flowering up a storm. I'll add a photo tomorrow.

A morning rose...

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A rose, and thinking about fall...

Is it fall yet?

I feel like a kid asking, are we there yet? August days are trying for gardeners and nature watchers in the southern U.S. It's the worst time of our gardening year, actually -- even in 'good' years, it's hot and often dry. This year, we've already hit 100° in the first week of August. And hardly a drop of rain in the forecast.

The cutting from the hardy rose at the corner of the house is flowering beautifully, two hummingbirds are chasing each other outside my window, and I'm harvesting tomatoes, squash, and yardlong beans (the regular beans are sulking in the heat), so I'm grateful for that. And, the dry weather, unlike our usual humid summer days, makes mornings and evenings quite pleasant, instead of sticky.

But I'm enjoying thinking about fall vegetables, tough fall-flowering perennials, and fall color. The lettuces, mustard, and mesclun mixes in flats are doing well, although I'm waiting to sow some other things until conditions are actually favorable for germination.

I'm eager to try garden peas this fall, although they sound like something that is totally unsuitable for our climate. I've had good success with spring crops of sugar snap peas and snow peas, but never thought about trying garden peas (English peas, or shelling peas) before.

Seeing Rob's lovely photo in a post about his peas (and flocking pigeons) got me thinking about it. Hmm, peas would be fun (and my gardening companion loves peas with rice at Thanksgiving dinner)... So now I've got pea seeds, supposedly suitable for growing in warm climates, ready to go.

This morning, I was listening to a gardening podcast (Ken Druse Real Dirt) in which his co-host Vicki Johnson waxed enthusiastic about the virtues of fresh peas (which are legendary, of course), and has me even more eager to try. I'm going to try succession plantings in shadier areas starting in late August through mid September. And then I'll hope for a long (cool) fall. I like Ken and Vicki's podcast; it's quirky, and often gets off topic, but is often full of interesting environmentally-friendly gardening tidbits.

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An old rose

We have a old climbing rose near the corner of the house. It had been planted at the base of an old dogwood, and was overgrown by ivy and other vines. Nevertheless, it flowers almost all summer, without any supplemental water, no signs of any leaf diseases, and best of all has a lovely rose fragrance.

My gardening companion throughly cleared out the overgrowth there last summer and opened up the space around the rose.

It's repaid those efforts this spring by bursting into full flower in huge large clusters, looking quite the specimen compared to its 'poor' days.

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Rooted cuttings and winter flowers

I hadn't rooted cuttings much before, and I thought I'd try some Spanish lavender (lovely flowers most of the summer) and an amazingly hardy red climbing rose in front of the house.

(The lavender image is from a fellow blogger from Alabama: somethingthatwontcompute.blogspot.com.)

The rose has flowered season after season with no help from us; it scrambles up an old dogwood tree, and then flowers and flowers. Drought didn't stop it; light frosts are shrugged off. It's amazing. We don't water, fertilize, spray -- it's definitely a rose to grow! But since it pre-dates us, and is of no recognizable variety (without doing any research), I thought cuttings would be easy enough to try.

So in late summer, I took tip cuttings of the lavender and of the rose (this was in the depths of our dreadful August heat), dipped them in some Rootone that I'd had for awhile, and stuck them in some pots filled with half and half vermiculite and potting mix. I checked them a bit periodically, and by late October, both had started to produce decent roots, the lavender most vigorously.

I left the lavender cuttings in the pots, but transplanted the rose cuttings (totally leafless) to a nice rich bed next to the radicchio. I figured they'd be buffered from cold weather better.

I checked all of them today, and hooray! They all seem well-rooted, and hopefully I'll have both Spanish lavender and rose cuttings to transplant in the spring.

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