Why are my roses chanigng color?

I live in zone 8b and my red roses are now deep pink, the pink ones are washed out and very pale pink, the yellow are dirty white with faint yellow centers. I have moved the container grown ones to the yard, transplanted some from where they were fading in the yard to a new spot with more sun, and have used the Miracle-Gro shake and feed for roses. I am watering them more, mixed peat and compost with what is generously called "dirt" in my area to transplant to, and mulched with shredded oak leaves. The plants themselves appear healthy. The running roses are climbing all over the fence, the leaves are green and sturdy looking (I am treating a bit of black spot on two plants), but still my roses are faded and off color. Can anyone help?

If your growth is coming from under the nob, the roses have returned to rootstock. If this is the case, yank them and start over.

EGADS! I've just been crawling around in the roses. That's exactly what has happened. All of the growth IS coming from below the knob with the exception of one plant whose color is still vibrant (a gift to us from a neighbor earlier this year). Now, wasn't that simple? I must admit, however, the prospect of yanking, buying and replanting is a bit overwhelming just now. It hasn't actually rained here for over a month now. Oh well. Thanks for the info.

Is it that they bloomed a different color this year than last - or perhaps its just that the exisiting blooms are just fading now before they wilt off?
It wasn't very clear to me which it was, from your description.

If its that the flowers are a different color this year than last then I agree, they were trimmed back too far and the graft was cut off, or the grafted rose has died and they have returned to rootstock. You don't necessarily have to yank them if you don't mind the ones that have grown up from the rootstock - it is still a rose, afterall.

Hi Knot, I am a wee bit confused also, Rose bushes etc are normaly GRAFTED onto rootstock from one of the wilder roses for good hardy roots, That root lives under ground, IF when hoeing on digging, you can cause wounds to these roots just at the point of the graft, they will send up stems from the wild rootstock, these are called suckers, they NORMALY have 7 leaves where your nice GRAFTED stems will have only 5 leaves and are a darker green or purple/red, so IF you still have proper stems from the grafted rose that you planted, all you should do is, carefully scrape away the top soil where the stems come out the ground, and trace where the sucker is comming from and pull down on this stem to get it broken/torn away from the root, (if you prune this sucker, it will love that and will grow even stronger and take all the strength away from the good stems.
Go around all your bushes and check them over and do the same to every sucker that is growing from under the ground, wild roses have completely different flowers from the grafted ones, (NEARLY ALWAYS A SINGLE FLOWER) they also have hundreds more thorns (ware gloves) so you should have no prob identifying them from the good roses.
On your nice roses that you planted, all the flowers fade as they are ageing and the petals are showing signs of ending the show, you should just prune them off, take a good bit of stem down to a new outward faceing bud, you will see the new bud emerging from the stem LIKE a little pimple sometimes red in colour, cut on a slant away from the bud so water cant sit on the new bud and rot it, then you will get more flowers in a few weeks and should be the true colour, then they will fade also and you just keep pruneing off the faded blooms till the end of the season. you dont want your roses to form seed heads, (HIPS) as you want more flowers.
If I were you. I would go along to the librery and find a book on either roses and their care, or how to prune plants etc, as they will give you diagrams etc. When you do your last prune for the year, you should feed the roses with a rose ferteliser, and feed again in spring when they start to show signs of growth. I dont think you have lost all the grafted roses IF you still have the good wood/stems, but the suckers will definately take over and kill off the good bits, you will end up with wild roses which are lovely, but really hard to control. good luck, hope this helps you a bit.
WeeNel.

No, they're not fading with age, just coming out different from the original color. I'm sure it's the root stock thing, almost all died back to the ground with last year's drought. In fact, the silver lining to all this is the one that came in a gorgeous pink that last year was a delicate yellow with a light coral edge. I liked that one, but the root stock one is a vivid salmon pink. I probably will yank the others soon, the new colors on most are not good and there are a few with black spot anyway. There are some wild deep red running roses in the field next to us and will try to root some of those. Thanks again.

I agree with kyjoy. There's not much you can do if the rose above the "knob" has died but the rookstock is living on in original form and throwing up suckers/roses based on the rootstock. If you didn't remove the suckers they will overtake the rose grafted on them. Sounds like your red roses were grafted on the common dark pink/mauve flowering De La Grifferaie rootstock. Your pink ones resorted to the common pink flowering R. Mannettii rootstock, and your yellows resorted to the white common R. multiflora rootstock.

If you yank them, think about getting roses that are "own root". The benefit of grafted roses is speed. Generally plants their first year develop roots, the next year they work on their upper growth, and third year they're usually all go. Roses can take from 2-4 years before reaching maturity. With grafted roses, their roots are a year old when grafted shortening the time to maturity by a year. It's a way to sell mass quantities of roses with good size, stature, and people like to see their plants doing something the first year. But, they have that "knob" which is the most vulnerable part of them. As you've found out, if the knob dies it will resort back to the rootstock or, if you don't keep removing the suckers they will overtake the grafted form. Own root roses are smaller as they're a year behind the grafted and their first year spent making roots but they will catch up and you don't have a vulnerable knob so if the top dies off, new true to form shoots will emerge from the rootstock and they're more hardy as they can survive colder temperatures since they don't have a vulnerable knob high above that can be killed in a hard winter.

Marshmellow, thanks for the info. I truly am new to gardening and had no idea that so many roses are grafted. I have plenty of time, I have recently "semi-retired" and finally have time to have a garden. I'm in it for the long haul, now. I want to develop a good garden that will be an "easy keeper" in later years. I would rather wait a bit longer for own root roses so that I won't have to worry about suckers. Even though we are in zone 8b and summers are generally in the mid to upper 90s, we are one of those peculiar "micro zones" which gets a bit colder than surrounding areas and can expect at least a few consecutive days of temps in the teens. We also experience a very late season frost almost every year, this one came in early April which sent us scrambling since we already had small peaches on the bushes. The saucer magnolia had already bloomed and was putting on leaves. That frosty snap lasted four consecutive nights and got my Nikko blue hydrangea. It was young and did come back out and is doing well, but I was hoping for blooms this year. Oh well.

Back to roses. The root stock on these have drab colors and NO fragrance at all. I like an old fashioned running rose that smells like a rose. I'm partial to reds, oranges and yellows (whites intermixed are fine). Any suggestions as to variety in our climate? They will be growing on a fence and will receive morning and midday sun until about 3 pm (CST) then dappled shade for the rest of the day. We get plenty of annual rainfall, although it seems to come mostly at once like a monsoon. We have a watering system in place to cover that problem. Thanks again for the info.

I agree with Marshmallow - I buy own-root roses for all the same reasons. I had the same trouble you had this year, with a very long cold snap after everything had leafed out, it took my two little rose bushes (new last year) down to the ground. Since they are own root, they bounced back pretty quickly, and I know the flowers will be exactly what they were last year. Check out the Garden Watchdog here for some well rated companies that specialize in old-fasioned own-root roses, I know I found a couple here that I want to order from, I just don't remember their names (oops!). Its the old fasioned roses you want if you are looking for that classic rose smell!! :)

I'm only a fan of red and yellow roses, so I can't help with the oranges. My priorities for roses are color, followed by fragrance, followed by disease resistance. I put my roses on the sides of my entrance walkway so I can enjoy them each time I enter and leave. For climbers, I think you'll find it hard to beat Don Juan. Beautiful red, fragrant, and proven to be the most disease resistant rose I have. All of my roses have had trouble in some shape or form except my Don Juan. Even when others had black spot and were touching it, it fought it off. The red rose bushes I have are Mister Lincoln, which is supposedly disease resistant, and probably the single most popular long stemmed red rose that, if I'm not mistaken the kind most florists sell. It won the James Alexander Gamble Fragrance Award which is nearly impossible to get, in 46 years there's only 14 or so roses have received it out of the thousands and thousands. Many report having no luck with the Mister Lincolns disease resistance, I'm giving it a shot but just planted them bare root a few months ago, and they have that darn knob I thought they were own root. I also have the Fourth of July climber, if you want a fun rose that's it. Nice fragrance, every flower is unique, mine got blackspot during a really bad time once and just a single application of fungicide and it was gone. I love it, it's just a fun rose but its red is hard to match so, don't plant any red around it.

For yellows, my favorites are Sunsprite, Julia Child, Golden Celebrations, and Molyneux. BTW that's probably the top 4 yellow roses. Each has its purpose, yellow roses tend not to be fragrant having to do with what makes them yellow. The above, Sunsprite which is the one I chose was also one of the 14 or so that won the Gamble Fragrance award, and so far the weakest of my roses. It's been fighting blackspot. But, for fragrance I think sunsprite is hard to beat, but it's roses shatter in short order. I like Julia child as well, big flower, upright, good shape and kept bush, disease resistant and smells like Licorice. All around Julia child is very good in everything that matters. Golden celebrations if you're picking the roses is probably the best choice. It's cut flowers are very fragrant and sweet smelling, blooms last a long time while cut, but it's bush/vine is rather large and unkept looking and the blooms nod (that is, they face down) but out of the lot the best cut yellow rose in my opinion. If you're not picking them and want a pretty yellow well kept rose, in bush form Molyneux is hard to beat. The bush is picture perfect, with roses upright, the bush stays well kept, well shaped, it's flowers have a musk type scent reportedly strongest at night, but flowers don't last long in a vase. If you want the bush for show Molyineux is hard to beat in maintaining a picture perfect look. So, there you go in the yellows. If you want the most fragrant yellow rose and don't care so much about the bush or for cutting look at Sunsprite. If you want a well kept bush and decent cut rose I'd personally get the all around Julia child. If you want a rose for cutting, with plenty of fragrance and time while cut and don't care about how the bush itself actually looks I'd spring for Golden Celebrations (there's also a climbing version). If you want a minimal maintenance bush, with perfect form and beauty in a high visibility sight and won't be using it for cutting much I'd recommend Molineux.

For orange roses, I can't really don't know much about them. Rose climbers bloom best spreading horizontally across a fence vs. vertically on a trellis, roses prefer morning sunlight over evening so you have good conditions there. Your irregation may be bad, as watering roses from above is likely to cause black spot which they're extremely susceptibe. You have to try to keep water off the leaves. Water only in the mornings if you use it so the roses leaves can have a chance to dry quickly, or get soaker hoses for roses instead. Good luck!

ORANGE ROSES??????????
Never heard of them!
But still if the new roses are good and you like them, you can just leave them. Or you can see what will happen to them next year.

I live in Zone 6. The late freeze we had in the spring killed all 25, of my roses. I replaced three and planted other flowers in my rose beds. The Weeks roses that I like have just gotten too expensive at my garden center, $25 per. As for starting out, the first year I tried rose gardening I purchased a bunch of on-sale roses at KMart. They were cheap, but unbenownst to me. they were all dead when I purchased them

Ok I know nothing about roses! I bought one in a bag that is a climbing rose "Joseph's Coat of Mine Colors" It puts off muli-colored flowers! They open yellow-orange and then varying to orange, pink and red.

It is fragrant, and the petal count is 20-25 (Which means nothing to me! LOL)

It also says it is an everblooming climbing rose.

It is #1 grade (Which also means nothing to me!). But I thought that meant it was a top grade or good type to have.

It is gourges when it flowers! How knew that you could have so many different colors on my rose bush!!!

Was this a good purchase? I hope it is winter hardy as I wil in zone 6b/7a!!

Also am I understand this right? You can graphed "any" rose stem/branch to another rose bush and have 1 that puts of lots of different colors?? If so that would be an awesome hobby to have! Wonder what else (types of flowers) you can graphed!! LOL

The reason for grafting in most cases is not to get multiple different colors of flowers, it's that often the plants with the prettiest flowers or best tasting fruits may not have the best roots--either they're susceptible to disease or they have something else undesirable about them. So you take a plant that has great roots but uglier flowers or icky tasting fruits and use that for the roots, then graft the nice one on top, that way you get the best of both worlds. Dwarf rootstock is another popular thing for fruit trees especially, some trees are naturally dwarf but the fruits may not be that great, but if you graft a nice tasting but tall tree onto the dwarf roots, it won't grow as big as it would if you left it with its own roots. If things go how they're supposed to, you will only have one sort of flowers/fruit (sometimes the rootstock plant will send up shoots of itself, generally you don't want these and they should be cut off). Roses and hibiscus (at least the tropical ones) are often grafted, as are many types of fruit trees. Grafting is also sometimes used as a propagation method for plants that don't reproduce easily by cuttings. The only time I've seen something where multiple different plants are grafted onto one set of roots is the "fruit salad" trees where they graft on a peach, plum, apricot, etc onto the same tree so if you have a small yard you can grow multiple types of fruit with only one tree. I'm sure there may be other examples too but most of the grafting that I've seen is for one of the other reasons above.

Hum well good to know!