Question
I planted a John F Kennedy Rose Bush about 5 years ago. Every year it makes beautiful white roses. This year it's making the same white roses , along with tons of smaller red roses. How did this happen ? I'm a total dunce when it comes to roses other than knowing they like manure and rusty nails in the soil.

Answer
To give roses extra vigor to help them grow and make perfect flowers, they are budded onto what is called an understock. This understock is a totally different rose but has great vigour. Sometimes it gets away on you and sends up canes of it's own. The understok is called Dr. Huey and is a climber which has semi double flowers. To make sure this dosen't happen again because Dr. Huey could take over your JKK rose and kill it, do the following. Dig down alongside where the red rose canes are coming from. It will be the canes coming from BELOW the union bump of the two roses. Take your hand, grasp the base of the cane and give a good yank downwards to tear it off. The rose will then cause a callus on the injury and no more canes will come. If you cut the canes off it won't kill the canes, it will be like pruning and will encourage the Dr. Huey to put out more canes and that will quickly kill the JFK.