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Is there any way to get more than 2 weeks of flowers per year from a rose bush?

My rose bush makes flowers for about 2 weeks in June then it is over. I trim off the old flowers and trim the bush a little then it might make a few more flowers in September but not many flowers. Last year about December I cut the plant so it was about 12" tall still it make a ton of flowers in June for 2 weeks. A sticker bush that has no flowers for 11 1/2 months is no better than a weed. Give me a reason not to cut it down.

I'm sure there are other members who are more knowledgeable than I am, but I believe the old fashioned roses tend to bloom only once and the more modern cultivated roses have been developed to bloom for a longer season. There must be some that are adapted to your Arizona location.

I have a rose bush that my grandmother and I planted together. Aside from that, it's got nothing going for it. It's not disease resistant. I get one large FLUSH of blooms in the spring. I will say that it IS stunning to look at. It has ZERO scent though. I guess one day I'll get over my nostalgia and replace it with something magnificent!

Btw... Knockout roses stay in bloom through summer and fall and are widely disease resistant. They usually smell fabulous, too.

A great scent on a rose is something I would consider to be worth keeping. Even if it only had 1 spring bloom!

not necessarily re Knockout rose fragrance:

"The Sunny Knock Out® Rose is the only fragrant member in The Knock Out® Family"
https://www.starrosesandplants.com/plant ... ywXah.dpuf

If you are looking for what type of rose to get for your garden, I like the searchable database at everyrose.com:

https://www.everyrose.com/everyrose/roses/search.lasso

you can tell it what you are interested in re type of rose, size, shape, color, fragrance, length of bloom season and it will tell you rose varieties that match your criteria.

"The Sunny Knock Out® Rose is the only fragrant member in The Knock Out® Family"
https://www.starrosesandplants.com/plant ... ywXah.dpuf

They have them EVERYWHERE here! Lots of businesses and park entrances. I'm unaware if the cultivar, but the do smell lovely! And they're big and beautiful! I'll check out that link later to see if it's a match. I'll be so.

I get roses every six weeks or so. I have hybrid tea roses, shrub roses, landscape, rambler, floribunda , and a David Austin rose. Of all the roses, the David Austin Gertrude Jekyll blooms the least. It is a very tall rose and it only has three canes, but even that one will bloom more than once.

Roses are heavy feeders and need to be pruned and fed again after each bloom cycle to encourage more blooms.

There are some roses that bloom only once a year. The only one I know of is the Lady Banks rose.

If you want more blooms and don't mind the smaller sizes and short stems, floribundas and grandifloras will probably give you the most bloom. I have a rambling red rose I do not know the name of, I bought it as a mini rose in a 4 inch pot never dreaming it was going to become a 20 ft rambler, but even that one will bloom repeatedly.

I have an advantage as far as blooming goes, I have roses that bloom at Christmas.

The only Roses that I know of that make flowers none stop most of the summer are the wild roses called Multiflora Roses. These grow wild in many State. My grandfather had them all over his fields along the fences. My grandfather dug up a pink one and planted it in the front yard of his house for Grandmother. WOW they smell so good a 6 foot bush with several 1000 flowers the smell will knock you down. The one Grandmother had start making flowers in late May and continue to make flowers until about the time school started again with was Sept 1 in those days. It is illegal to allow these to grow in the State of Illinois. They grow wild in several colors, white, pink, red, and colors in between, light pink, light red, etc. They grow large plants and they spread just like blackberry plants. The plant my Grandmother had was about 6 feet tall and 8 feet diameter.





Watch this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZHA9FwmTgw

There are several 100 acres of roses growing about 15 miles north of me. I drive past there sometimes, plants are small and in rows along the highway over a mile long both sides of the highway for as far as I can see. Roses is one plant I don't know much about.

iceberg is a prolific grandiflora with a light fragrance and the top rated rose.

If you want fragrance Mr. Lincoln, Fragrant Cloud, Honey perfume, double delight, Scentimental, New Dawn (climbing rose), Memorial Day, Chrysler Imperial, Peace, Dick Clark and gold medal.

David Austin roses have a heavy old fashioned fragrance. But for me Gertrude Jekyll is not a very strong bloomer.

Gary - the secret is to plant multiple varieties that have different bloom times. Knockouts in the south bloom year round - OK maybe 10 out of 12 months. Even repeat bloomers need to rest. My Mother has a couple of heirloom roses from my Grandmother. One is pink and the other is yellow. Both bloom profusely for 3 or 4 weeks at different times. She also has a bed of hybrid teas and grandiflora roses. At nearly 83 she can no longer give them the care that they require. Consequently they do not bloom as profusely as they once did.

Select roses with different bloom times. Give them the proper environment - a very raised//mounded bed - 24" at least. Proper irrigation. Lots of TLC.

Good luck

ElizabethB wrote:Gary - the secret is to plant multiple varieties that have different bloom times. Knockouts in the south bloom year round - OK maybe 10 out of 12 months. Even repeat bloomers need to rest. My Mother has a couple of heirloom roses from my Grandmother. One is pink and the other is yellow. Both bloom profusely for 3 or 4 weeks at different times. She also has a bed of hybrid teas and grandiflora roses. At nearly 83 she can no longer give them the care that they require. Consequently they do not bloom as profusely as they once did.

Select roses with different bloom times. Give them the proper environment - a very raised//mounded bed - 24" at least. Proper irrigation. Lots of TLC.

Good luck

If roses are high maintenance, I don't want them. When I was young I could do high maintenance things but not anymore.

Thought you were asking about roses. My mistake.

If you plan carefully you can have nearly year round blooms by combining flowering shrubs, repeat blooming roses, perennials and annuals.

Good luck

Yeah, I don't grow roses, because I think they are one of the more difficult things to grow with my totally organic, low care routines. I did have one miniature rose bush that thrived for about five years and could hardly be called "miniature" any more (though of course the flowers were still small) until it got wiped out by our super harsh winter, this past.

But yes, with planning and lots of diversity, even in my climate I have SOMETHING blooming in my yard the whole time from Feb or March when the early crocuses and snowdrops start through November.

If you are being organic roses are very high maintenance because of pests and disease. If you are not organic, most of the pests and diseases can be controlled with systemics. Established roses only need to be deep watered once or twice a week and since you don't want to get the foliage wet, they are ideal for drip watering, so that can be done fairly easily and automatically. Every six weeks you need to prune and feed the roses. That is less work than mowing grass every week or two.

If you want to be organic, planting roses near a streetlight helps deter the rose beetles. The strong light deters them from feeding since they normally feed after dark. Weak light attracts them so solar lights can be used to set up beetle traps.
If you do not use systemics you need to find roses with glossy green leaves and fungicide when the weather is humid.
Roses are heavy feeders so lots of compost. Blood meal, bone meal and manures will need to be applied after each bloom cycle. Pruning and dead heading every six weeks or so.

I have also planted four o 'clocks which attract and kill the beetles (it is toxic), garlic and chives under the roses to disguise them from bugs, and I plant alyssum and cuphea under the roses. If I don' t spray, the alyssum and cuphea give me blooming color when the roses are out of bloom and because they are always in bloom they attract bees and predators so I don't have a lot of problems with most other bugs.

I was using merit for the roses, but I have a resistant scale. So, I have stopped the merit and now just use just use a brush and scrub them off. My roses are planted near a street light, so I don't have beetle problems and I am considering replanting four o clocks again. I also have geraniums which give the border more texture and long lasting color. I use citrus food for everything.

I have the roses inter planted with cuphea, alyssum, geraniums, nasturtiums (in the cooler months), and I have a lavender near the sidewalk. The under plantings help hide the weeds and the things I plant pretty much are always in bloom, except for the geraniums.

Some of my roses are very old. I used to replace my roses every two years, but now I have figured out how to keep them alive longer and so I replace roses a lot less now. I still lose canes, and some of my roses are down to a single cane, but they are still producing. I had to take out one of the simplicity roses since it was too near the sidewalk. I have one left of the original set of roses that I bought in 1989.

Since I have stopped using the long lasting systemics, the bees and beneficial insects are back. I still have problems with the scale, but it is no worse than when I used the merit and the roses are still free of most other pests.

When I first moved into this house, I started out with a Rose garden and had something like 8 different cultivars. Then I had some health issues and the roses were neglected.

I had three David Austin roses -- Gertrude Jekyll, Abraham Darby, and last one I don't remember. Out of all the roses receiving no care whatsoever, four lasted the longest: Attar of Roses Damask Rose, Abraham Darby, Gertrude Jekyll and Mr. Lincoln. I hated that the Damak rose would only bloom once a year but I wasn't able to collect the petals and I wasn't pruning it properly. Eventually, it succumbed to neglect, then Gertrude Jekyll, and finally Mr. Lincoln.

Abraham Darby, however, un pruned and competing for space with a honeysuckle vine as well as a gigantic pokeweed that persisted on being a perennial in that space for three years running (I finally had to crawl under the arching rose and honeysuckle and kill it) grew to the eaves of the one story roof, and continued to bloom several times through the season and drop petals, getting black spots once in a while and shedding all it's leaves, never dead headed, making huge hips.... Then couple of years ago, the gutter along the roof clogged and for the entire season, the bed was absolutely flooded every time it rained. The honeysuckle declined and all the Crocosmia in the front of the bed rotted.

...It's still here, blooming high up near the roof, covered in spots and looking rather sad right now, still being neglected.

In a lot of areas repeat roses will take a break during the heat of the summer. Mine do this. As long as you are maintaing them like everyone else already mentioned then they will bloom again in the fall.