You may have to use a small, sharp saw to get that off there, plus treat with fungicide.

I have 2 PMs and he needs a LOT of fertilizer. Mine were slow the first year. A very heavy feeder. The flowers are huge--I guess it takes a lot of nutrients to produce them.

Thank you, hoovb. I performed the surgery and sprayed. I am generally pretty good about watering and fertilizing, but maybe not enough for PM. I remember my Yves Piaget also took forever to get going, and had lots of canker in early spring. It is very heartbreaking to watch the rose struggle, I hope my PM will make it. Thanks again,
Masha

Your picture shows dieback that cannot be responsible for the problem your rose is having getting started. Only canker or dieback on the good canes would be causing a problem but those canes look good from what I can see. What I think is happening is that your rose was forced and now it is resting while it concentrates on its' root system. By any chance did it have bad chopped roots? That would explain why it is just sitting there. If it was here I would say the chilly damp weather had something to do with it but in San Jose I doubt that is a problem. I bet it comes around if you're patient.

Thanks, Henry. I didn't see the roots as I bought it potted up, but the nursery got it bareroot, it is like any harvested HT, I presume. I hope you are right and it is just growing roots. I didn't presume that canker was something that stopped it from growing but just to say that that's all I could see going on with the rose. Pope John Paul II planted right next to it and getting the exact same treatment is growing and blooming fine. I expected it to be slower than PM because it is own root, but I was wrong.
Masha

I think your rose is at least two years old on a graft which means it once had a pretty good root system. It was dug up rather roughly probably causing all that damage and possibly 3/4 of it's roots were cut off when it was stuffed in a pot. Is it any wonder it is not taking off? It's going to have to survive first. My advice is never buy inexpensive potted roses from garden centers unless you are sure you know what you are buying. They pot them to trick unknowing people into buying because they think they will have an instant rose garden. What they get is usually a lot of problems.

I actually quite like my local garden center. They have a pretty good selection of modern roses, and they get them from major growers like JP, Star and Weeks the same way that any garden center does. The roses they sell are not cheap either:-). They pot them up to extend the selling season, and I like it because I don't have to plant their roses right away. I have bought from them a lot in recent years whenever I needed a modern rose, and they have always done very well. The reason I posted this thread is that PM is so untypical.

Masha

Masha, I received my Peter badly cankered too. When canker gets in the graft, I usually try to cut off/carve out the diseased part; this kind of surgery I had to perform on Peter about 8 years ago when I got him. He was very slow to grow during his first season in my garden. But then he took off and turned into a huge and beautiful monster.
BTW, do you have midge in CA? I see no new purple-red growths, and the only visible new growth on the photo 2 looks dry to me. In my part of the woods, it often means midge damage.

hoovb: Can you explain further what you mean by "heavy feeder"? I also have a Peter Mayle that I planted from a five gallon nursery pot last year. It is about two feet tall now. It was not very productive last year. I fertilize like I fertilize all my hybrid teas: 2 tbsp. of Dr. Earth in the spring and fall. Does it need more than this? Thank you for your help.

Jeff

Several points and BTW my comments always are based on growing roses in the northeast. I probably shouldn't say anything about growing roses in California. But that said, what is showing is simple dieback on the cut. It wont get any worse or hurt anything so you don't need to do anything. If you cut it off you will just get a little more dieback. Peter Mayle does grow huge and when it gets going you will need to feed it but not now. You have to be very careful feeding a newly planted rose because you can burn the root system. Better not to do it at all. There is no evidence of midge. Midge damage looks like someone burned the growing tips. They are black and crisp like burned paper. I think your rose just needs time to get its' roots established. If you think you may have not planted it well lift it out and do it again. How is your drainage? As far as buying potted roses, one thing I always used to look for is how far up on the rootstock stem is the graft? If it is quite a few inches up the stem then the roots had to have been chopped to get it in the pot. To know if this is the case just feel down the stem below the graft to where the roots start. If it is more than two inches then the roots had to have been chopped to get the rose in the pot so don't buy it.

jeff_zephyr, when I say "heavy feeder" I mean in my yard, I need double or triple the dose of fertilizer to get the same results (a good flush of new foliage and flowers) as a "light feeder" requires.

The amount of fertilizer you need depends on your soil and growing season. Of course, always follow package directions. 2 T seems a little light, but your plant is still young. I give my 5 year old (well established) Peter Mayle with many broomstick-size canes 2 cups of alfalfa meal or Dr. Earth type fertilizer in February and June, plus koi-pond-filter-gunk full of biologically digested nitrates which can be readily absorbed by the plant.

In contrast, little 'Gruss an Aachen' reblooms all year on 1/4 cup of alfalfa meal once in February. So Gruss is a light feeder and PM is a "heavy". Makes intuitive sense--it probably takes 10 Gruss flowers to equal the weight of 1 PM flower.

Of course as Henry in CT points out, you don't want to overdose your roses with fertilizer since it can damage the root system. Organic fertilizers such as alfalfa meal are considered safer than chemical fertilizers because they break down gradually in the soil via soil bacteria or earthworm digestive system to the point where the plant roots can absorb the nutrients. Chemical fertilizers provide a quicker stimulus. Like whole wheat bread vs. a candy bar.

Jeff.

4 tablespoons a year doesn't sound like nearly enough to me, but then again it would also depend alot on your soil too.

Just look at the package, the label says to spread 2 CUPS of Dr. Earth Rose food for every inch of stem diameter, every 2 months.

Thank you! I will follow your advice for the fertilizing of this rose and will provide it with the extra nutrition that it needs.

Henry said "There is no evidence of midge. Midge damage looks like someone burned the growing tips. They are black and crisp like burned paper".
Yes, but the damaged by midge tips do not hang forever on the plant, they wilt, dry, and then fall off. And the tip of the branch looks unnatural: a mature leaflet right at the tip of the stem and no new growth at all. It's hard to say for sure what kind of damage is on the particular stem shown on the photo 2 (it could be also an accidentally burned or broken new growth too), but it would not hurt to inspect the tips of all stems.

The way you can tell if it is midge damage is that the growing tip that has been damaged by midge keeps growing! It forms a nub that can become large and grotesque, If you nip off a growing tip it doesn't do this. The best thing to do if you have midge damage is nip it off because otherwise the rose will continue to grow at the point of damage without being able to develop correctly.

Henry,
Looks like you're talking about a different type of damage.
The following is an excerpt from Pittsburgh rose society site: " Typical damage from midge appears at the new growth tips, where you expect the bud to form, shrivel and drop off. A typical garden infested with midge will have healthy bushes but no flowers".
http://www.pghrosesociety.org/rosemidge.html
BTW, Connecticut Rose society calls this article excellent and refers to it.

One more excerpt: "The adult midge lays its eggs inside the sepals of new flower and leaf buds. The tiny maggot that hatches feeds in these areas causing blackened tissue, tip abortion, and distorted flower buds."
More info on midge damage with pictures of tip abortion and tip damage can be found on the following site:
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/nurspest/rose_midge.htm

alla pa, Read my previous post. We all know what midge damage looks like and we know that you don't get roses because the buds have been destroyed and that the rest of the rose looks healthy. What I thought you wanted to know is how do you tell if it is midge damage after the tell tail crispy "burned' part is gone. I tried to tell you. You get a stub, a dead end that often develops in a grotesque way. The aborted growing bud can be gone altogether in which case it will be a dead end where a bud should have been or it can continue to develop as a partially destroyed grotesque bud or it can be a bud with part of its' stem gone so it curls over. An aborted cane tip will continue to develop as a thick stub and eventually will form two bud eyes that will be two canes which will be inferior. Whatever form the damage takes it needs to be cut back to a point where the rose can start a new growing tip for the cane. You want the rose to recover as quickly as possible.