Mini Rose Newbie with Questions

[merrycat]

So, I picked up three of those little pots of mini roses from the grocery store becaues they were so cute and on sale for only four dollars each! I put them outside and right away two of them dropped all their flowers, and they all lost a bunch of their leaves. Perhaps because it's been scorching hot here for the last few weeks here. They seem to have bounced back, and one of the flowerless ones even has a flower again!

I started reading up on them, and it turns out there's so much I don't know!

First, I know I need to move them from their tiny little pots, but will they survive outside over winter (we're in zone 3), or should I plant them in larger pots and move them inside? There seems to be more than one plant per pot, so I was thinking of bringing in half of them and planting the other half in the garden. That way at least half of them might survive... hopefully?

Second, two of them have yellow leaves, and one has white spots that look like droplets of bleach all over the leaves. Does anyone have any suggestions about what's causing this, and what I can do about it?

And finally, can anyone tell me what type of roses I've got? I know that different mini roses need different care, but I'm not sure how to tell them apart. Here are a couple of pictures:

My red one! It managed to hang on to a couple of it's flowers but, as you can see, most died. It also has the fewest yellow leaves.


This one had white flowers with a soft, pale green tint to them. But they all dried up and died, along with a bunch of leaves. The leaves are starting to grow back, but not the flowers.


This is my favorite one! It lost all its flowers, but one grew back. The leaves have some sort of weird mottling though.



Thanks so much if you made it through my whole rambling post. I really appreciate any suggestions or information you could share!

[imafan26]

What I have to add is that roses bloom in cycles, so even if you had done everything right from the start, the flowers would still have eventually dried up. Roses bloom on new wood so if they were healthy, I would have cut off the old flowers just above a node and let the rose sprout new branches. I do normally feed unstressed plants when I prune them, and they bloom again in about 6 weeks. If roses are in a pot they can be brought into bright light when it gets cold. Roses can overwinter in the ground with mulching and protection.

[rainbowgardener]

Zone 3 is very challenging! It is said that the mini-roses can survive in zone 4 with a lot of winter protection, but I think you should figure on bringing them in. But they do need cold dormancy, so you are not going to bring them in to the house. What you will be looking for is some kind of unheated but protected space, like a shed or garage. Maybe put the pot they are in then (you do need to up-pot now) inside a bigger pot and fill the space in between with leaves/ mulch etc, with some of the mulch over the base of the plant. Stop fertilizing at least 6 weeks before your first fall frost date. Once they have dropped leaves, they need very little light or water. Protected like that, they can tolerate temps down to zero or a little below.

When you buy rose bushes like that, they have usually been forced to bloom. All those blooms were going to die anyway. Do keep deadheading- snipping off faded flowers.

[merrycat]

Thanks for all the quick responses! I'll move them to a bigger pot right away. That said, I don't really have a shed, garage, or unheated space to put them in. We're only in a townhouse with a teensy little yard. I do have a basement that stays cooler in winter, if that would work. It's also fairly dark in there. We also have windows that face full south, so I could put the roses there in early spring (we still sometimes get snow and frost in May or early June here).

I've cut the dead flowers and leaves off, and the poor babies look so scraggly. I'll grab some insecticidal soap as soon as I can.

Also, we'll probably get frost by the end of September, so I should probably not fertilize them for now, right?

Thanks again for all your help!