Deer eating my roses :-(

Your roses are glorious to see … and obviously very tasty as well :wink:

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Is that Just Joey?

Having watched deer running across the fields, seemingly enjoying keeping pace with our car (on the road) and seeing them flying/leaping effortlessly over the various farmers’ fences…

I don’t think you’ve much hope of saving All of your roses… :wink: :wink:

Would it be unreasonable to suggest that some kind of trade takes place in the future, with you getting to eat one of the deer after they have fattened themselves on your roses?

:wink:

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I hope I’m not going off track …
Yes, they are beautiful flowers. How do you propagate your roses? I’ve got some beauties myself (Lady Gardener/Munsted Wood/Zephirine Drouhin) and would like to increase my stock.

Depends on the rose. Some are easy, some not (and it’s hard to predict). I tend to have two pruning seasons - late autumn when some have got very leggy and I’m just tidying up and then again in early spring when I’m pretty brutal - not on every one, some I just leave to do their own thing.

I started doing this years ago because it seemed such a shame to be putting healthy green stems on the compost heap. The stems are roughly about a pencil thickness - but some are thinner or thicker, depending on what the rose gives me. I cut the stems straight across just below a leaf node. Sometimes I dip them in rooting compound or cinnamon but often don’t do anything. I take a large pot filled with potting compost (nothing special) give the compost a good soak and then just shove about 10 to 12 stems ( each roughly about a foot long) into the compost in each pot. About 50% of the stem is above the compost. Out of the 10-12 stems I might get 4-5 new plants or maybe none.

I have a bit of terrace under trees and the pots just stay there in a corner, including through winter. I water them very rarely. Some sprout quite quickly but that’s just the residual energy in the stem. basically forget about them as they need to form roots - some of mine have been in pots 4-5 years waiting for somewhere to go in the garden and will grow and flower while still in the pots. I will then take the individual single stems with their roots and shove them where I’ve got a gap in one of my borders. Some are fine, some give up the ghost, but whatever survives and thrives is a free plant.

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Thank you so much for sharing this with me (and others).

I remember years ago I was told to put the stems in sand but I’ve never had much luck that way and I’m sure I didn’t use my husband’s building sand !!!

The majority of David Austin roses cost around 18.50€ each these days. Mind you, I have had a bargain or two from Noz at around 3-5€ but I’ll definitely try your method and hopefully save myself a few bob.
Thanks again @SuePJ.

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Can yo7 tell me if that picture is Just Joey please.
It has such a wonderful perfume.

Hi Jane, sorry, I thought it was some oblique reference to the deer! :roll_eyes:

I’m hopeless at the names of my roses but it’s not a David Austin and doesn’t have a perfume, so no. Most of mine I know as “that was from Lidl” “that red one came from Leclerc and nearly died and now is magnificent” “that one came from the specialist rose nursery” “the pink ones were already here when we moved in. They are alongside the pool and have been there at least 30 years!!!”

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Looks like a feast for deer.

We had deer opposite where I lived once and their area was surrounded by very high fences with mesh.

Is there a pherome you could spray on the ground, of another animal.that would put them off coming into the area?

rumour has it that pee works - but opinion is divided. Some say deer are attracted to it.

In fact the feast is not so much the big open flowers but all the tiny new growth and young buds. As a lot of my roses are floribundas deer eating the multiple young flower heads is a disaster.

This has never happened before in the 16 years we have been here, so don’t know what’s changed other than perhaps he’s a young buck, on his own and wandering into territory where no others have come. We’ve lost trees in our field before now, but not this.

Spotted this cheeky blighter only 10 minutes ago.

Clearly knew the difference between a rifle and a camera as he looked me right in the lens and didn’t give a monkey’s.

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Again, going slightly off track.
I noticed that the photos @SuePJ posted were only KB big. But @NotALot’s photo was 2.91MB in size. I’m wondering if @SuePJ uses something like Light Image Resizer when posting photos. I’ve used it for ages simply because I’ve got a very slow internet speed and to send some of my photos would take a month of Sundays.
I’ve got a dear friend who sends me photos using the camera on her phone. Some of them are about 8MB and it always causes a problem with my email system. I haven’t got the courage to tell her - I just do the adjustments necessary to download them.
So - what do you use @SuePJ ?

I use a VERY ancient photo processing software called Microsoft Digital Image. I love it. In its day it was a serious competitor to Photoshop but Microsoft walked away. Any reasonable software does what I do - GIMP is a good one and free. Affinity you pay for and it competes with Photoshop.

My photos full size are 5184x3456 pixels (jpg) and typically 5-6 mbs. In Digital Image I just reduce the longest side to 1000 pixels which brings them down to kbs and the resolution is only 72 pixels per in (fine for online viewing). Not least, I think it’s polite not to clutter up servers with unnecessarily large files.

It’s interesting how some people have such large mobile phone photos. For most uses it’s not necessary and photos can be set to smaller sizes for sending by email. If someone is serious about taking photos using a mobile phone camera then downloading the Snapseed app onto the phone is a good way of being able to post-process a photo, including making it smaller.

If anyone needs a simple, fast and lightweight image modification package for re-sizing images to use on the web, let me recommend Irfanview. It’s free, mature but current and very good.

Have you considered using Dropbox?

Thank you @SuePJ - I’m quite happy with what I am using because it is so simple to use. Open the app, drag and drop the photo and press the process button. The original photo is retained plus it puts a ‘copy’ into the same folder next to the image it has just reduced. And it’s true what you say about large mobile phone photos. I can understand a large NEF file from my husbands D800 camera - anything from 8-20MB but when Jenny sends me her photos, using her basic mobile phone, they are anywhere between 8-10MB. I don’t usually edit photos but if we do, then we use Lightroom/Photoshop (I don’t because it’s too complicated for me but OH does!)
@NotALot - I have used Dropbox before but only when sending very large MB of data. We’ve got more than 20TB of data storage space so don’t need the Cloud. BTW - superb photo of the munching deer!
So back to the original posting - have you decided how to stop Bambi from growing into Monarch of the Glen by not eating your roses @SuePJ ?

The resolution setting makes no difference at all to the file size - it’s purely a “what if” value embedded in the file to determine its default dimensions when printed. It derives from the days when all digital images had to be scanned, in which case specifying a print resolution was part of the calculation to determine how what settings to use on the scanner to obtained the desired final print size.

All that matters for the filesize of ex-camera digital images is the dimensions in pixels, and the degree of compression, ranging from zero compression in an uncompressed TIFF file to blotchy horridness in an over-compressed JPEG.

WeTransfer (www.wetransfer.com) is easier for most people to get their head around than Dropbox, I find.

It’s free for transfers up to 2GB.

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Almost anything is easier than D/box, in every respect. It’s pants. I click ‘photos’ and it announces ‘no photos’ when I know there are scores.

As for resizing pix I use ‘Paint’, one of the accessories of Windows.
image

Original image enormo.
image

Left button click the image. Choose ‘Open With’ from the drop down. If your OS is Windows ‘Paint’ will be one of the options.

The image apears in the ‘Paint’ window. Choose ‘Resize’ and put a value into Horizontal or Vertical - whichever, the other one will auto adjust in pro

Now 1000 x 666

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