Grooming

Welcome to a world of artifice.  Many roses, although infinitely capable of producing exhibition blooms, perversely insist on arriving at perfection too early or too late for show time.  Thanks to certain techniques, however, they may be slowed down or hurried along.

If roses bloom a little too soon and aren't going to last, you can either refrigerate them or tie them with nonsticky corsage tape and leave them in a cool, dark place.  If they're too tight and aren't going to open on the bush on time, you can cut them off and push moistened cotton wads down between their petals to hasten what nature would do in time.  All grooming props must be removed before show time, of course, but their use can make all the difference.

Unsightly petal removal.  

If you want to exhibit a rose, or if you just decide that the green or white streaks on its outside petals offend you, remove them.  Don't be in such a hurry, however, that you pull at them and break them so they leave an unsightly stump.  To take them off correctly, insert your thumb between the upper surface of the outside streaked petal and the under surface of the next petal row.  While compressing the faulted petal against the crook of an index finger, rock it forward and backward until it snaps clean at its base.  It may take several to-and-fro motions before the petal turns loose from a turgidly fresh specimen, but the result is worth the wait.

Cleaning foliage.  

Cleaning rose leaves can have such a pleasing effect that you will want to try it whether or not you plan to exhibit.  I've heard of all sorts of approaches.  Some claim milk does wonders.  I believe the idea is better than the result.  Others use oil, tantamount to disqualification in exhibition, and otherwise just cosmetically offensive.  My recommendation is clean water.  Rinsing leaves of spray residue really does make a difference.  If you care to go a step farther, even just to see what foliage groomed to a fare-thee-well looks like, try polishing cleaned and pat-dried leaves with a piece of velvet or old nylons.

Evidence of disease, particularly traces of mildew, can also be removed.  If plain water doesn't do the trick, baking soda added to it surely will.

Brushing.  

I have seen dowdy blooms become Queens in the hands of a good groomer with a camel-hair brush.  Practically speaking, brushing is useful when you want a perfect bloom in the perfect bud vase and the bloom isn't quite ready.  If properly stroked with a brush at strategic points near their bases, petals can be coaxed into almost anything.

If you really want to show off, try back-brushing the outer petals and making them curl and decoratively reflex.  With thumb tip to base of petal, move the brush bristles in a circular motion up the petal's length.  It's sort of like teasing hair, and gets petals ready for how you want to shape them.

Don't get carried away with what brushing can do for petal shaping.  A bloom must be typical of its variety to win, and judges know what that is.  If you make petals quill or reflex in a way that isn't natural to the variety, it doesn't matter how pretty it is, it won't win. 

Label the roses you cut for a show before you leave home.  I use a strip of plain paper looped loosely around stems and fastened by cutting a slit in one end and inserting the other end into it.  Use a pencil or a waterproof pen for writing names; water will smear anything else.  This may seem like a lot of trouble when you first do it, but you'll be happy when you can tell your Mon Cheri from your First Prize from your Color Magic from you Duet when you get to the show.  If you misname roses, judges will not only disqualify them for awards, they'll write humiliating comments on your entry tag.

If you want to know more about exhibiting, and particularly if you are tempted to try it, you must read Guidelines for Judging Roses, a publication of the American Rose Society.  You will learn a great deal more than the general suggestions presented here, and you will find information you must have regarding disqualification and penalization rules.