Mike said: I don't know much about your climate, but from what I see, it appears to be a very arid landscape. I suspect that you will need to water these roses a lot.
For the first year that is true. Cotton did say he is gardening in soil that has a lot of clay ... which will hold moisture.
The most important thing for you to do, Cotton, is to encourage these roses to grow deep roots. Since the roses you purchased probably didn't have many, or any, longer anchor roots, you do need to water daily. I'd suggest 2 gal each. That's the size of most watering cans.
To encourage the roses to grow deeper roots, water each rose hole for about 10 min with a sprinkler
once a week .... I use something like this ...
https://www.acehardware.com/de....
Yes, you are only watering the rose hole for the most part, but keep in mind, the roots follow the water. Once the roses have grown a larger root mass, they won't have to watered as much. Moisture down deep does not evaporate as quickly as moisture near the surface.
I grow roses in a climate where summer temps are in the high 90s to low 100s every day for about 4 months with no rain. Each of my established roses gets watered once a week. Since I am gardening on five levels, I water a different section of the garden each day. (I do multi-task and don't just watch the sprinkler do it's thing
)
I actually use less water for my roses than a neighbor who waters her garden twice a day. She never does a deep watering.
Smiles,
Lyn
EDIT:
I left out part of a sentence. I put the edit in italics.
