Update: Abraham Darby And His Rust

As described in a previous post, on June 1st I cut back Rosa 'Abraham Darby' and stripped off all his rusty leaves.  Since all of his foliage was diseased, I stripped off all the foliage:

Rosa 'Abraham Darby'

Today:
Rosa 'Abraham Darby'
Rosa 'Abraham Darby'

Abe bounced back quickly with the help of a little fertilizer and some extra water.  He's about 75% leafed out again in just a little over two weeks.  There has been no rust on the new leaves since we have not had any rain.  There are no flower buds yet, but probably soon.  Abe has saved himself from Mr. Shovel.  Mr. Shovel is waiting.  Mr. Shovel is ever vigilant.  

Shovel

As an experiment, I sprayed the entire plant with an anti-transpirant.  A garden club friend received some samples of a new product and distributed bottles at the last meeting.  I'm trying it on three of my most heat sensitive roses.  The label recommends it as a non-toxic method of disease and insect control;  however I'm reviewing it mostly as an anti-transpirant to protect three cool-weather-loving roses against the heat of summer.  If however Abe is rust-free after Labor Day,  I may suspect the product has some benefit against Rust.  It is supposed to last 5 months. 

These three roses:  'The Prince', 'Louise Clements', and 'Abraham Darby', suffer in hot weather.  All three get fierce reflected sunlight, which sunburns their canes and toasts their foliage.  They are long-established in their current spots, and I've observed and fussed over them for years.  Because of this, I think I'll be able to spot any improvement the anti-transpirant product may produce.  We'll see what happens.  I want more of these:

Rosa 'Abraham Darby', looking particularly pink:
Abraham Darby, pink morph

Abe with his more normal apricot hues:
Rosa 'Abraham Darby'

Comments

  1. What is this anti transpirant called? Where do you get it? My Austin roses have the same heat problem. LOL on Mr Shovel.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The product I am trying is called "Moisturin 5"--the Google will bring up their website. I'm going to do a blog post on it later in the summer, to report how it works (or doesn't work). There's a few other anti-transpirants available, one is called "Cloud Cover", and there are others.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you! I think I'll try it too. I'll look up CLoud Cover as well. You have the most adorable dogs; what kind are they? I have an insane Maltese.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Always interested in your thoughts.

Any comments containing a link to a commercial site with the intent to promote that site will be deleted. Thank you for your understanding on this matter.