📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Winterizing Roses & Climate Shifts
- 🌹 Winterizing Roses: Growers debate the best time to cover roses and other tender perennials for winter. Some prefer getting it done early in mid-October, while others wait for a hard frost in November to naturally kill off pests like whiteflies before covering.
- 🧅 Checking on Fall Onions: A quick update on overwintering onion sets—heavy leaf mulch keeps them safe, and growers hope the warm November doesn’t cause them to sprout prematurely.
- 🌤️ Shifting Seasons: A relatable discussion about how the climate is changing. Warm, snowless Novembers and Decembers are becoming common, while spring is shifting later, with freezing nights deep into April or May. Takeaway: Don’t rush to start your seeds indoors too early in the spring!
I covered my fall-planted onions with a thick layer of leaf mulch. When I get to the dacha, I’ll peek under it to make sure they haven’t sprouted yet… They are sleeping under their little blanket! ))
Good afternoon everyone. Today I was setting up low hoops to cover the roses and tending to my ‘Rosarium Uetersen’ climbers. I have 4 of them grown from tissue culture, and they grew into absolute monsters! I stripped the leaves off them and pruned them a bit. I didn’t have time to spray and treat everything, so that will have to wait until next weekend. Although, last winter I didn’t cover them at all and they overwintered perfectly fine (they were planted out during the previous summer).
The weather is gorgeous today! I also went out to the village and did a little work in the fresh air. I haven’t covered the roses yet; I’m waiting for a hard frost and dry weather. I covered my onions with a thick layer of mulch too. They peeked out of the ground earlier but stopped growing, so maybe everything will be fine.
My onions haven’t sprouted, but I sprinkled a little extra soil on top of the beds just to be safe. I also planted some onion sets into tiny planter boxes and put them in the greenhouse for now. My roses aren’t covered yet either. I just cut a little bouquet of roses for a vase indoors.
Quote from Aleksan9ra:
I haven’t covered the roses yet; I’m waiting for a hard frost and dry weather.
Lyuda, why do you cover your roses so late? I absolutely hate messing around with roses in the freezing cold, so I always cover mine in mid-October. Here is a photo from last year, October 27th—everything is safely tucked in for the winter. The regular roses, the climbing roses, the tender rhododendrons, the bigleaf hydrangeas, and the grapes. I do this every single year, and everything overwinters beautifully.
Anya, I don’t have that many of them. They are completely prepped, just not covered yet. I’m doing it because of the whiteflies—I want the frost to freeze them out a bit before I put the covers on.
By the neighboring house here in the city, there is such a beautiful rose still blooming! The entire bush is covered in flowers!
Marina, same here, some of my roses are still blooming, I cut them for a vase.
Quote from gala7496:
Marina, same here, some of my roses are still blooming, I cut them for a vase.
Autumn is so warm this year, and we even have sun, and this is in November! Usually, it’s the darkest, gloomiest month of the year, so we are incredibly lucky!
Quote from Marina111:
Autumn is so warm this year, and we even have sun, and this is in November!
I noticed the trend of winter shifting its timeline a long time ago. Now we barely get any snow for New Year’s, and it only starts dumping heavily after the holidays. That’s true for the whole region. Walking along a forest road on Saturday, I actually found a chanterelle mushroom! Which means if you go deep into the forest, you could probably find more.
Quote from gala7496:
I noticed the trend of winter shifting its timeline a long time ago…
Spring is shifting too. For years now, May has been absolutely freezing, and then suddenly it jumps straight into summer.
People are cheerfully posting photos of red-capped boletes (mushrooms) online. Sigh, I’d run to the forest right now if I could. )))
Quote from Marina111:
Autumn is so warm this year, and we even have sun, and this is in November!
If you remember last December, it was also unusually sunny and warm for us.
Quote from Marina111:
Spring is shifting too. For years now, May has been absolutely freezing, and then suddenly it jumps straight into summer.
YES, it seems we really are starting our indoor seeds too early, hoping for an early spring. Spring might technically arrive early on the calendar, but the nighttime temperatures in April have become extremely low lately.
