Roses - Keys to Growing Climbing Roses

Climbing roses are one of the many varieties of roses and come in an array of different colors. While most garden roses are bushes with heavy stiff canes, climbing roses have longer and more flexible canes allowing them to climb support poles or ropes. Their natural growth habit encourages them to appear as though they are climbing.

Climbing roses often reach a height between eight and 20 feet and will repeat the blooms year after year. Rambling roses are often confused with and mistaken for climbing roses. Rambling roses can reach lengths of between 20 and 30 feet and usually bloom only once during their lifetime. Climbing rose varieties are usually the result of natural mutation and not through breeding efforts. Although the perpetual blooming nature has been attributed to breeding efforts.

The colors and types of climbing roses that are seen today are much the same as the traditional garden and miniature roses. They all share many common traits such as color and shape. It is mostly the size and flexibility of the rose’s cane that marks the differences.

The ability of a rose to seemingly climb a trellis or a wall often causes their being mistaken as ivy or a vine. The climbing roses are simply a rose bush with longer more flexible canes and lack the natural ability to cling that is evident in ivy. Roses will need some help in maintaining their hold on whatever material it is they are climbing. When a trellis is used the canes can be thread through it's structure to help hold them up or in some cases wire or thin rope is used to help hold them vertical.

Most of the physical traits known to all roses also exist in climbing roses such as the thorns on the out layer of its canes. Two of the most common diseases to infect roses, including climbing roses, are rose rust and rose black spot. The more serious rose rust can cause a plant to lose all of its green foliage while rose black spot which is less deadly than rust is evident by black circle on the leaves. Pruning the affected leaves or applying chemical powders will be needed to rid the plant of the illness.

Aphids, mites and caterpillars often use roses as a major food source and their attack can defoliate a rose bush or climbing roses and preventive measures should be taken to prevent an initial assault. The pests are more difficult to get rid of once they have established your rose bushes as a preferred feeding ground.

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