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A blind shoot on this Miss Congeniality rose will never produce a flower, even though there are blooms elsewhere on the bush. (Photo: Debbie Arrington)
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Usually, June is full of roses in my Sacramento garden. It’s the second wave of bloom after the big burst of first roses in April.
But not this year. Where there should be buds, there are only stubs.
Those are “blind shoots,” growth that never produces a flower.
In early May, I dutifully deadheaded spent blooms to prepare the bushes to generate new buds. But May’s confusing weather – triple-digit one week, 30 degrees cooler the next – created equally confused plants. Is it August? Is it March?
The stems look healthy with lots of foliage and fast growth. But no matter how long those stems grow, they won’t sprout a bloom.
Blind shoots are the result of extreme fluctuations in temperature and growing conditions. Our yo-yo
weather confused many bushes, especially when temperatures plunged back below normal.
Another oddity: Blind shoots can appear on the same bush with normal blooming stems.
Some rose varieties are more sensitive to temperature fluctuations than others. But this week, I’ve seen blind shoots on more than 100 bushes in my own garden. They’re appeared on almost every hybrid tea in my garden as well as most of the floribundas and many miniatures. Even the David Austin shrub roses have blind shoots.
This is a condition on modern reblooming roses, which covers most varieties commonly grown in home gardens. Old garden varieties introduced more than a century ago include many once-blooming roses such as Lady Banks banksia roses or Dorothy Perkins ramblers. Their growth after initial spring bloom is all foliage, no buds.
But modern roses are valued for their reblooming qualities. And an abundance of blind shoots will prevent the bush from producing new buds this summer.
Fortunately, the cure for blind shoots is easy: Prune them off. Restart the growth by cutting the cane or shoot back about 5 or 6 inches, snipping about 1/2-inch above a leaf with five leaflets.
So, I’m back deadheading my roses again, but all I’m snipping off this round are a bunch of stubs. Hopefully, if weather cooperates, I’ll have a new round of blooms – in August.
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Food in My Back Yard Series
May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
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Garden Checklist for week of May 18
Get outside early in the morning while temperatures are still cool – and get to work!
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. Transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.
* Plant dahlia tubers.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Are birds picking your fruit off trees before it’s ripe? Try hanging strips of aluminum foil on tree branches. The shiny, dangling strips help deter birds from making themselves at home.
* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.