Durham has been dreary and cold for the past couple of
months. Few sunny days have interrupted
our cloudy days with rays of bright warmth.
The dismal winter months can be hard on rose lovers. Once you winterize your rose beds, there is
not much to do except crack open the Witherspoon Catalog and dream about the
new roses you are going to add to your garden in the spring.
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| 2014 Catalog - Click photo to browse our catalog |
Even when the days are cold (well what we North Carolinians
consider cold) and wet, here at Witherspoon we are always working hard to
provide the best roses for your garden.
The gardens are quiet, but here at the shop we are getting ready to
unload, grade, and pot up approximately 24,000 roses. That’s right, 24,000!
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| Unloading the refrigerated truck from Weeks |
The first step in the process is to unload boxes of bareroot
roses from refrigerated trucks that traveled from the sunny state of
California all the way to Durham, North Carolina. These boxes of roses have been carefully
packed in wet moss and kept around 35° F.
This insures that the roses stay dormant for the entire trip across the
country!
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| Bareroot roses ready to be graded and pruned |
We then proceed to unpack and grade the roses. Here at Witherspoon, we only sell premium
grade one roses. A grade one rose is two
years old and has been meticulously pruned to produce at least three strong
healthy canes. Each bareroot is
inspected to make sure it meets our standards before it is trimmed up and
prepared for potting or placed in cold storage.
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| Potting Station |
Our cold storage unit is 1000 square feet and is kept around
36°. This unit keeps all of our
bareroots cool and moist until they are pulled out, trimmed up, and packaged
for shipping or pickup. We have guys who
work in our cold storage unit for hours on end preparing bareroots to ship out
as well as make sure that they stay within the proper temperature so that you,
the customer, receive a bareroot rose that is healthy and will grow well for
years to come. We are very thankful that
they are willing to work in such a cold environment to help us provide the
healthiest bareroot roses possible.
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| Cold frames are filling up! |
Even though we offer bareroot roses, the majority of our
roses get potted up and grown out in our cold frames until the first of April. The potting up process can be daunting, but
all of the route managers and assistants come into Durham from our satellite
locations to help pot up! It is cold
hard work, but seeing the cold frames fill up with pots of roses that will
begin to leaf out is exciting! While the
landscape around us is asleep, lying in wait for the warmth of the spring sun, our
cold frames are filled with roses ready to wake up and share the beauty and
brilliance that only they can offer.
