I Have Planted My Roses

Sort of. In early March I received a phone call from Rachel at Palatine Roses. I had placed an order last fall and had asked for shipping in mid April. Last year they arrived with lots of long new growth that needed to be removed because the bare roots can't supply that growth with water. So when Rachel asked if she could ship earlier I was torn but her reasoning was good. She wanted to ship all the rose orders to BC in a cold storage truck and then have them distributed by Canada Post from a single point in BC. I explained that I was in the part of BC that gets really cold and snowy, not the balmy part. But she was able to convince me that I could simply heel them in, paying attention to placing them horizontally and covering them with dirt.


The roses arrived and I looked out at our yard and shook my head. No dirt was showing. Not wanting to pot up so many roses I came up with an idea. Logic told me that the huge piles of snow might do. So I dug a hole in a pile that I knew would melt late because of it being in the shade, and I laid the incredibly big and healthy (with no new growth) group of bare root roses in the snow and carefully settled loose snow in between all the roots and around the rest of the plants. I figured they couldn't possibly dry out there, right? And when you think about it, this isn't much different from what Mother Nature does to them. While it is cold in their den, its not freezing. Okay, I think I have convinced myself. They will be just fine.

Update: It worked out superbly and I will definitely do this again.