- Last year I read an article about roses.

That was so interesting.

I did not know that roses have been around for 35 million years.

And the industry now is divided into three areas.

The first is the fragrance area and it takes about 10,000 pounds of rose petals to make one liter of rose oil, which is used to make perfumes.

The second area is the cut flower market.

And the third area is the garden roses that we will talk about today.

Let's go learn about roses together.

- [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of Truck Country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

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Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And By Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long term growth of this series.

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(enchanting music) - Tom knows that if he wants to make special points with me, all he has to do is make or order me a bouquet of flowers.

And on really special occasions I get roses which are my favorites.

Prairie Yard and Garden producer, Mike Cihak and I, both wanted to do a show on roses.

So I called a friend who said, (humming) roses?

That's not me.

But instead talk to Joe Bergeson of Bergeson Nursery at Fertile, who is just awesome with roses.

So here we are.

Welcome Joe.

- Thank you, Mary.

- Tell us about yourself and Bergeson Nursery.

- Well Bergeson Nursery was founded in 1937 by my grandfather, Melvin and his wife, Olga Bergeson on this very location.

And then my father and mother Paul and Glenda took over.

And then they sold the nursery to my brother Eric, who eventually sold it to me and my wife Gaye.

And, so it's the third and a half generation and my grandfather was really into finding new plants.

He introduced the red splendor flowering crab and the flame willow and the Bergeson ash, he was an explorer.

My father was more interested in the nuts and bolts of producing plants and making everything work.

So it skipped a generation and now I like to find new plants too.

So breeding roses is one of my passions.

- Okay, here's a question for you.

Are roses hard to grow?

- Are roses hard to grow?

It's one of my missions, especially as someone who sells roses to tell people that, no, they don't have to be hard to grow.

There's two secrets that people have to remember.

You have to plant them properly and you have to choose the right varieties for this climate.

But here at Bergeson's, we don't spray our roses with any chemicals, and we don't do any winter protection of them.

The only work necessary, is to cut off the dead canes in the spring.

- What are some of the different kinds of roses?

- For me, there's two main categories of roses.

There's the hardy, old fashioned shrub roses, and there's what I call the modern dieback type of rose.

So what most people want to plant in their yard is a rose that stays fairly short and blooms all summer.

And I call that the modern dieback type of rose.

But they come in all shapes and sizes, from masses of tiny blossoms to larger blossoms that more closely resemble a hybrid tea.

- What are the best kind of roses to grow here?

- Well, there's no one answer for that.

You have to go variety by variety because they all have their strengths and weaknesses.

But I found myself moving away from the Canadian roses like Morden blush and Morden Centennial which were so popular 10 years ago, because they develop some disease problems.

Now I'm moving to roses that have been bred by Bailey Nurseries in Minnesota and by Will Radler, who's based out of Milwaukee, he breeds very disease-resistant roses.

And that is so important.

If not more important than actual Winter hardiness.

But you do have to pick varieties that are a little bit Winter hardy, and very disease-resistant.

- What do you mean by hardy?

- Well, hardy is resistance to the brutal Winter temperatures of this climate.

And I don't necessarily mean hardy up in the air like a shrub, roses have to be crown hardy, which means that you're almost treating them like a perennial, a plant that dies back in the winter and it's normal for them to do that.

But as long as they store enough energy below the ground, and are hardy enough, so that they have a little bit of live wood in the spring, then usually they can come back and flourish year after year, even though they die back in the winter.

One thing that's important to consider is that good landscape roses for this area don't always look like a grocery store florist rose.

That's what we call a double rose, where there's a whole bunch of petals and it emerges in it.

And for some people, that's the only thing that is a rose.

And yes, there's some good roses that you can plant that look like that they are double.

But there are also some that have what's called, a single blossom, just a single row of petals around there.

And that's actually an advantage for a rose if you want color in your yard because that rose doesn't have to produce as many petals but it's putting more blossoms out, you're getting more color.

And another really interesting type of rose for this area is something called a polyantha rose, a polyantha rose has masses of tiny blossoms instead of the larger individual blossoms.

And they can be really cute and give good color.

But they maybe don't fit exactly with what people think of when they think of a rose.

- When it comes to planting rose, how much sun should you have?

- Roses are pretty much a full sun thing.

I think they should have seven hours of good sunlight per day.

There are some roses that might be able to tolerate less, but each individual person has to just experiment with shadier spots.

In general, they should have at least seven hours of midday sun.

- [Mary] Would you be willing to show us your bed where you have planted roses and then also walk us through the steps of planting?

- Absolutely.

(enchanting music) So Mary, when you're ready to plant a rose, you've found a good sunny spot in your yard, the first step to planting a rose is gonna be to dig a hole.

And that's where the work has to be put in.

If you put the work in digging your hole, there's gonna be far less work later because you won't have to protect your rose, you'll get it deep enough.

So what I tell people is to dig a hole as deep as you can, and then go take a break and then go dig it deeper.

Because it's actually kind of hard to get a hole deep enough to really plant your rose how deep you want it.

Likewise, when I show people on a bare root rose just how deep they're supposed to plant them, they're surprised.

The rurals are different in this harsh Northern climate.

You want the crown of that rose, which is the place where the roots come together and change into stems that spot right in the middle should end up about five or six inches below the ground level.

And it's kind of a shockingly deep planting depth.

But the reason for that is, as I mentioned, it's normal for these roses to die back in the winter.

If they go all the way to the ground and they really go beyond that, it's fine as long as their crown is well protected, then they can come up like a perennial and bloom, the following year.

So I would say to dig a hole about 14 inches wide and 14 inches deep to start.

Then, it depends on whether you're planting a bare root rose or a potted rose.

With a potted rose, you wanna get it maybe three four inches deeper than where the dirt level is in the pot.

And with the bare root rose you'll have to look at that crown and decide how deep to plant it, but I have a tendency with my bare root roses of just kind of shoving them as far down in the hole as I can and filling in peat around it.

And I say peat instead of dirt.

We love sedge peat around here, it's Minnesota peat that more and more garden centers are stocking now.

It's not sphagnum peat, the dry brown stuff in the bales, it's rich black, cattail or grass peat from the swamp lands in Minnesota and when I plant a rose I actually just fill in my hole with straight peat.

Other people might disagree, but I have a bag of peat, I shoved my rolls in, and I don't put fertilizer down in the hole, I use water soluble fertilizer.

So I fill up the hole, But leave a good three, four inches at top to hold water for the initial watering, the initial watering is so important.

And you have to have a nice dish to hold that water so that it can soak slowly down.

Now with bare root roses, there is one more step.

After you do that, after you've watered it in, sometimes we take more of that soft peat and bury the whole plant.

And the reason for that is bare root roses, sometimes in storage, they start sending out these shoots that are a little bit delicate and the hot sunny day can maybe wither them up a little bit, so we protect them for a while.

So you plant it, you water it and then bury the whole plant.

Now that's only for bare root roses.

You don't do that with potted roses.

- So then should you fertilize again throughout the season?

- Yes, I would say so.

But it's more important, that initial fertilizing will take it through that first summer, if that's all you do, that's fine.

And then in future years, I would spread some granular fertilizer every spring around the rows and if you wanna give it some more around the end of June, that's okay.

But you don't wanna fertilize the rose after July 4th or so, as a general rule, because you want them to slow down going into the fall and harden off for winter.

You don't want them to be growing fast in the Fall.

- When do you recommend pruning a rose?

- Good question.

So Spring pruning is the main one.

So in the Spring, and this is pretty much the only maintenance you'll have to do with the rose, if you've planted it deep and you've chosen the right varieties.

In the Spring, it's really easy to see where the live wood at the base of the plant changes to the wood that dieback.

So it's just brown stem, brown stem, brown stem, and then at some point, it's green.

And you just cut it off right there.

And that's the main pruning that you need to do every year with the modern dieback roses.

- Do you mulch at the Fall?

- See, we don't.

We do have mulch in our gardens here.

And that helps.

But it's not something that we do as a Fall chore.

I want people to know that they don't have to have chores with the roses, the only real chore that you have to do is trimming off the deadwood in the Spring, like I mentioned.

- [Mary] When you have roses, and they're done blooming, should you clip those old spent blooms?

- That's a good question.

There's no shoulds in that regard, you can if you want, and it probably will help the rose to put out more blossoms throughout the summer.

However, it's not critical.

And also exactly how far you go back to trim it.

Just don't worry about it, is what I say, don't be counting the leaves and stuff like that, it's not a big deal.

Just, if you cut off that spent blossom, you're gonna be preventing the rose from trying to make seeds and that gives it a little more energy to make more blossoms.

But it's not a big deal.

It's something you can do if you want.

- How about insect problems?

- Are there are some that are specific to roses or cause problems for our roses?

- Yes, there are.

And as you know, down South, the Japanese beetle, is a huge problem.

And I can't consider myself an expert on that.

I just hate them and I'm really glad that they're not here yet.

So I'm not gonna talk about them.

But one interesting problem that I see over and over when people send me pictures of their roses that have holes in the leaf, is actually slugs.

So slugs are a pest that can create holes in the leaf.

And there's also something called a rose slug, which is specific to roses.

And, as I mentioned the telltale sign of that, of slugs in general, is that the holes are inside the leaf rather than a cutout on the edge of the leaf.

And people come back to me and they say, well, I looked and there's no slugs in my roses.

But, they come out at night and they go and hide during the day.

So they're doing that feeding at night.

And the solution with slugs is a product called Sluggo which seems to work, it's iron phosphate, it's non toxic and it's this these granules that you spread around.

- Joe, do you have any problems with critters with your roses?

- Critters, what do you mean by critters?

- Oh, you know the regular deer and rabbits - Deer and rabbits, my least favorite question.

Yes, we do.

Deer, despite the thorns, love roses and our solution for that is Liquid Fence.

One of the products on the market.

I'm not endorsing that over the other products because I haven't tried those, but we spray Liquid Fence and it seems to work as long as we remember to do it.

People do have problems with rabbits around here, it's so fun because the rabbits just hop in and out of the flowerbed and then go eat a dandelion.

And mostly they're not gonna reach the roses, in terms of cutting down the whole plant, and again, Liquid Fence is good for that.

I don't worry too much about deer and rabbits eating roses in the Winter, because as we talked about, most of those stems are gonna be cut off in the Spring anyways.

- Joe, this has been so informative.

Can we see some of your favorite roses?

- Absolutely, let's do it.

(enchanting music) - I have a question.

I've seen this large white vine like plant in the wild that looks like a cucumber.

Is it?

- Yes, well actually, it's in the cucumber family.

And we call it a wild cucumber, sometimes a bur cucumber, but that's another plant in the cucumber family.

But this is an annual weed.

It's actually native to Minnesota, native to all the United States.

And in certain areas in the Fall of the year, it will cover shrubs and even start to climb up trees.

It's a vine like a cucumber and it does have a leaf that looks like a cucumber leaf, and it has a white flower.

Even though it's an annual, it can grow 15, 25 feet in a season.

So it can take over an area, but it propagates by seed and it has a little birch shaped cucumber like seed pod.

So if you have it and you wanna control it, you wanna make sure that you cut it off at the base and keep it from producing those cucumber like fruits that are gonna then set seed and then grow again the following year.

Though cucumber wild cucumber likes boggy wet places, so it tends to be near streams and wet areas, marshy areas where it gets quite a bit of moisture.

But it's amazing how quickly it can grow.

And if it self seeds, you'll have even more than next year.

- [Narrator] Ask the Arboretum Experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to enriching lives through the appreciation and knowledge of plants.

- Well, let's just start talking because I can't pick favorites.

I like them all.

This on the end, I have three sunrise sunset and that was one of the first roses to come along.

That was an improvement over the mordens and boy that is just a mass of color.

It's kind of a sloppy growth habit, but it spreads out and it has a couple big flushes of blossoms throughout the season.

Sunrise sunset was one of the first roses I started steering people towards after I found out about the problems with some of the older Canadian varieties.

This was bred for Minnesota and released by Bailey Nurseries, so and it has excellent disease resistance and a lot of color, a lot of bloom power throughout the season.

Another rose that was introduced by Bailey's is kashmir, that red rose down there.

Now Kashmir has those lovely double blossoms that make you think of a rose.

And for me it's done fairly well.

You do need to plant it deep.

This one suffered some Winter damage this year.

But when they do their thing, they're good and it's not a rose that you wanna plant in part shade because it doesn't have a lot of blossoms, it has to have full sun to really thrive.

Now this beauty right here is a rose that is right on the edge for me here.

I'm in zone three B hardiness up North here.

But this one came back beautifully over the winter.

It's called, "kiss me."

And that's another in the easy, elegant series from Bailey's.

And the cool thing about this, fragrance.

- [Mary] Is that something they're trying to breed more into is for fragrance?

- [Joe] Yes, there's a great demand for fragrance in the Rose world.

The first thing we all do and we see a rose is to smell it.

But there's so many other important characteristics like disease resistance and hardiness.

That fragrance does get pushed down the list a little bit but now they are coming out with some more fragrant ones.

- [Mary] I see some yellow roses over there and it always reminds me of the old fashioned yellow rose that you would see at the homesteads.

- Yes, yellow really is the hardest color to breed into roses and there are fewer yellow roses on the market than there are the pinks and the reds and things like that.

One of the good ones is yellow brick road, right over there.

which for me is a little light on hardiness, but anybody in zone four and warmer like Fargo and South of Fargo, it should be a very good yellow rose.

Another good one is sunny knockout over there, which is a single blossom.

And that illustrates one of the weaknesses of yellow roses is that the first day they're yellow, the second day it fades to cream.

And so fading is a problem that's hard with yellow roses.

And then another one that we sell is called high voltage.

And high voltage is a pretty good yellow rose as well.

But I'm working on breeding some hardier, healthier, maybe even fragrant yellow roses.

This rose right here is called fruity petals.

And fruity petals has a really kind of, it's hard to describe the color.

It's an orangey pink blend.

But that's one of these roses, that is a climbing rose for a warmer climate.

So here in this climate, it ends up being more of a shrub rose, but it's good and hardy.

And that was very popular with my customers this Spring because it's got that warm orangey color to it.

- [Mary] It almost looks like it's a by color, that the colors change and fade and-- - [Joe] They do and that's what a lot of roses do.

In this case of fruity petals, it gets the by color effect because the backside of the puddle is a lighter color than the front side.

And so as it opens, you see a different part of the blossom.

But also it has this characteristic of photochromism.

And that's a fancy term for blossoms that turn pink in response to sunlight.

So some roses just lose their color and bleach out to white.

And other roses, when they get hit by the sun, they turn pink darker and darker pink.

And campfire is one of those roses, right down there that has yellow blossoms that fade to a really rich pink.

So you get this by color effect where some roses, some of the blossoms are yellow, and some are bright pink on the same plant at the same time.

Now this rose is kind of fun because this is, was bred by another amateur hybridizer like me, a friend of mine named Julie Overeem from the Duluth area of Wisconsin, but she's in a true zone three a very cold climate.

And she got her first commercial release which is called cherry frost.

And they released it as a climbing rose.

But again for us here it's gonna be more of an arching habit rose, it doesn't have that really rounded mountie shape, it's more of an arching rose but you're rewarded with these sprays of vivid red blossoms, very good hardiness.

This is a good rose for somebody to try who wants a little taller rose.

And they don't wanna have to worry about any Winter protection because it's a very hardy rose.

And then right next to it is a Canadian shield.

And that's a newer Canadian rose.

They've been doing better and better job at breeding for disease resistance.

So Canadian shield so far for me has been healthy.

It's also a very bright red color.

And I have a hard time deciding between cherry frost and Canadian shield.

They're both really hardy red roses.

- [Mary] Does the foliage always have that pretty coloring to it that coppery color?

- [Joe] I haven't noticed it, the new growth yes will be the reddish coloration, the coppery color that you see behind maybe a sign of some sort of iron chlorosis actually, so we'll see if that greens up or not.

I haven't seen it on other Canadian shields.

- [Mary] When you have a rose like that, should you clip it back or leave the canes on over the Winter?

- I think it can develop best if you leave the canes on in the Winter and in the Spring, just cut back the dead parts.

That way you'll get more blossom.

This like William Baffin is not technically a reblooming rose, but it has a very extended one time bloom.

And another very popular rose for us is this one called mother of pearl.

And so far mother of pearl is the hardiest of the types that have that very large double blossom.

Whether you call it the hybrid tea style or a floribunda rose.

It doesn't matter.

A lot of people really want that huge, lovely blossom and it does get some blackspot, but not that bad.

And ours have been growing in two different locations here with no Winter protection and coming back for at least seven years.

This one only three years, my other one seven years and they're doing fine.

So of that type is one of the hardiest.

I really like mother of pearl.

Then we have the campfire that we talked about before.

That just draws people like bees because it's such a bright color effect with the yellow blossoms that fades bright pink.

Is not a perfect rose.

It is very hardy, but it does get black spot.

So either you have to live with that, or spray it or hope that yours doesn't get it.

It might not get it for many years and it's still worth planting.

This is on its third summer and it still doesn't have any black spot.

Because this is a new location.

I really wanna talk about this rose, one of my new favorite roses.

It's called highwire flyer.

And this is another rose from William Radler, who just really breeds healthy healthy roses.

And it's actually marketed as a climbing rose for a warmer climate again, like cherry frost, which it's turning out to be really hardy, crown hardy for this area.

And that combination of hardiness and health and a lot of blossoms that are this bright color, I don't know how to describe it, it's pink but it has warm orangey undertones on the new blossoms with big blossoms, makes me excited about highwire flyer.

I think it's gonna be a pretty large rose though.

I think in your climate, it's gonna be probably a forefoot rose.

Another interesting rose is Gaye Hammond, which was bred by my frien6d David Lee Zach.

Little harder to find but you can find it on online stores.

And because there's so few good yellow roses for this climate, that's one of the best in terms of putting out a lot of yellow blossoms Gaye Hammond.

- Joe you are so knowledgeable.

Do you go out and do talks at all?

- Sometimes yes.

Sometimes people drag me out.

I do seminars here at the nursery, this Spring of course there was a virtual seminar on Facebook.

I do a lot of little mini talks on my Facebook page as well.

- Well thank you so much for letting us come out and for sharing all of your wonderful roses with us.

- Thank you Mary I love to blab about my roses.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of Truck Country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart, Farmers Mutual telephone company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state of the art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota and By Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long term growth of this series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyj (enchanting music)