Another Way to Get Them There; Transporting Roses to Rose Shows

Another Way to Get Them There; Transporting Roses to Rose Shows
(all photos by the author)

By Cliff Orent, ARS Consulting Rosarian and Horticulture Judge

The setting:

There are ten days to go before the ARS Spring National Convention and Rose Show in Denver.  A late spring heat wave had recently arrived in southern California with afternoon temperatures hovering around 105 F and the forecast was for more of the same for the days leading up to the show.

The dilemma:

It’s roughly 1,000 miles to Denver and the estimated driving time is 16 hours.  Gas prices had recently soared to over $4.00 a gallon and my trusted Ford van, while not the worst gas guzzler on the road, isn’t exactly the best in terms of miles per gallon.  It was too late to fly to Denver at a reasonable fare, and it looked like the cost of gas would be close to the cost of an airline so close to the departure date. I had never transported roses that far by van, and to make matters worse, the blooms had gone into their desert summer mode – fewer petals on blooms that open and crisp within hours.

A quick look around confirmed that there would be no hybrid tea blooms, nor any decent minis or minifloras.  With very few exceptions, my species roses had pretty much finished blooming for the season.  In any event, getting the blooms of species roses to local rose shows is tough enough.  But transporting them for 15 hours in the van is another thing completely.

There was the occasional spray on a hybrid musk, some interesting climber blooms and here and there the odd polyantha spray was trying its best to look perky in the heat.  Oddly enough, a few of my seedlings were producing blooms and sprays that might just make it to the show.  But when do I start to cut blooms and at what stage?  This was uncharted territiory for me.

The decision:

Since flying and driving would cost about the same, it made sense to start to cut blooms and then reevaluate a few days before the show.  I could always try to purchase a last minute air ticket if I didn’t have the blooms to justify the long drive.  So the decision was made to start cutting blooms on Friday, a week before my planned departure date.

If you’ve never cut blooms for a rose show when afternoon temperatures are around 105 degrees, you don’t know what you’ve been missing!  Forget everything you’ve learned about cutting blooms when the sugar content is highest, or however you’ve done it in the past.  By 7 a.m. the desert was already heating up to the point where the blooms were starting to lose their edge.  So for the next week I ventured out every morning between 4:30 and 5:00 with flashlight in hand, searching for anything that just might make the grade.  The take during the first few mornings was rather pathetic and by day three the thought of flying was becoming more and more attractive.

But each subsequent morning brought a few more stems to the florist refrigerator, and by Wednesday (two days prior to departure), I decided “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and made the decision to drive.

Do as I say, not as I do: How I transport roses to rose shows

A number of articles have been written on the topic of transporting roses to rose shows using styrofoam boxes, Rubbermaid coolers and the like.  This article is not intended as a review of the contraptions available for transporting roses.  For information on methods developed by serious exhibitors, you might start with the excellent overviews written by Kitty Belendez (see http://scvrs.homestead.com/coolerHT80.html and http://scvrs.homestead.com/FlyingRoses.html, among others.  The purpose of this article is to share another way to get your roses to the shows, albeit a somewhat unorthodox method that has evolved over the past several years and that works for my purposes.  I’m certainly not advocating its use by the experienced exhibitor looking for the safest way to transport blooms for potential use in national or district challenge classes.  But if you’re just beginning to explore the world of rose exhibiting, you might give it a try.
Anyone who has seen me arrive at a rose show knows that I used to bring far more blooms than I could ever manage to enter, leading to disorganization at best and panic at worst.  I had actually managed to bring this bad habit under some degree of control until preparations for the Denver national show were underway, but let me come back to that.

Restaurant dishwasher racks

The mainstay of my system is the restaurant dishwasher rack. These come in various shapes and sizes and can usually be found used at reasonable prices, either in restaurant supply stores or over the internet.  A google search using a combination of the key words “warewashing,” “restaurant” and “rack” will usually yield results.  I’ve found racks with eight or ten compartments to be the easiest to manage, both in terms of weight and flexibility of loading into my van.  These sizes are also useful when walking around looking for blooms to clip prior to a show.  I find that inexpensive plastic bud vases, which can be purchased at floral supply stores, fit nicely into these carriers and are light weight, making it easy to transport the carriers when full.

Eight-compartment carrier

10-compartment carrier

I’ve tried larger carriers that can transport up to 25 stems, but after a while found that they were fairly heavy and bulky and there were fewer options for loading them into the van in a way that maximizes available space.

Eight or 10-compartment carriers provide flexibilitywhen attempting to maximize space in the van

Using a greater number of small carriers also allows you to sort your entries by type, making it easier to quickly scan possible entries at the rose show site.

25-compartment carriers are heavier and bulkier

Restaurant dishwasher racks unloaded at rose show site in the early dawn

Florist refrigerator

While the cost of a florist refrigerator can be prohibitive, I went around to local grocery stores and found one that was about to bring in a new model.  All they wanted for the old unit was for me to have a truck available to haul it away.  So for the cost of renting a truck for the day and help from a few friends, I have a florist refrigerator that, while not exactly new, certainly does the trick.

At first I crammed blooms into the refrigerator in no particular order.

Blooms crammed into florist refrigerator

But over time I came to realize that I was wasting a lot of time sorting and resorting, and now try to organize potential entries by type in carriers inside the refrigerator.

Entries in carriers in refrigerator

One other type of carrier well worth mentioning is that used by many florists to deliver arrangements.  I came across these during a web search and have found mine extremely useful for trans-porting larger entries or those requiring special attention.  I would think that it would be equally if not more useful for arrangers transporting arrangements to shows.  It has two layers of webbing running across the length and width the container, providing an extra measure of support during transport.

Entries in carriers in refrigerator

Florist delivery carrier

A special consideration in windy areas

One final thought on collecting/transporting blooms is for those who live in particularly windy locales.  This area is known as one of the windiest corridors in the country, with the landscape not far from here dotted with windmills intended to harness the wind as a source of renewable energy.  That’s great for the environment, but the wind can present quite a challenge for growing and collecting roses for a show.  The wind has been so strong in the days leading up to some rose shows that it wasn’t possible to cut even one bloom at a time and race back inside without serious damage to the bloom in the process.  In an attempt to overcome this problem, I’ve rigged up a Rubbermaid box and attached it to the back of an electric golf cart that I use for hauling things around the garden.

Rubbermaid box provides protection from the wind

During periods of high wind, I cut a stem and immediately put it into the Rubbermaid box and close the cover.  That allows me to cut several blooms before making a trip back to the house.  And a golf cart certainly isn’t required; the box could be attached to a wagon or other type of cart with the same result.

Box is easily opened and quickly closed after each bloom is put inside

in an eight or ten-compartment carrier.

The long haul to Denver

I had used these methods to transport roses to local shows and to shows within our District as far from home as Albuquerque, which is about 680 miles or roughly 10 hours by van.  These trips were made with the air conditioner at full blast, often while wearing gloves and a jacket to keep warm while the roses remained relatively cool.

But Denver was a new adventure at 1,000 miles or about 16 hours’ drive.  Unable to find anyone willing to drive that distance with me, I ended up making the drive alone.  And not knowing whether the roses would suffer from an overnight stay en route, I made the decision to drive straight through -  something I would definitely not do again.  As it turns out, there are a number of places at high altitudes where the roses could have remained in the van overnight and I could have had a good night’s sleep.   I found that I couldn’t quite make it to Denver non-stop and had to pull off the road about an hour and a half from the rose show site for a few hours’ sleep.  Even that wasn’t really sufficient to allow me to arrive at all rested, and I’m afraid that I was somewhat less than cheerful and polite when trying to find an area in which to set up and prepare my entries.

Due to the early heat wave that hit just before the show and the long distance that the roses would have to travel in the van, I had no idea how many, if any, blooms would make it to the show in sufficiently decent form to be entered.  That resulted in my falling back into the bad habit of taking far too many blooms with me.  But in this case, not knowing at what stage to cut the blooms so that they’d open sufficiently by show time yet not blow prior to arrival, I ended up trying to cut multiple blooms of each variety in the hope that at least some would arrive intact and sufficiently open.  I’m not sure how much I learned from this experience that can be applied to future shows, but I ended up with roughly 25-30% of the blooms in what I felt was passable, if not of blue-ribbon-quality condition just prior to show time.  The result of my efforts?  I was delighted to return home with five

trophies, including Genesis (‘R. marrettii’), Best Climber (‘Delhi White Pearl’), Best Polyantha Spray (‘Happy’), Best Classic Shrub (‘Heavenly Pink’) and, most meaningful to me, Best Seedling with a seedling of Darlow’s Enigma.  Was it worth the effort?  You bet it was!

Darlow’s Enigma x Seedling- Best Seedling 2008 ARS Spring National Rose Show – Denver