I don't spray or do anything special even if the plant is completely defoliated. For me, the choice is either to live with blackspot if I like that particularly rose enough to keep it in my garden or just to shovel prune it. Left alone, your rose bush will be fine.

I do know that some prune off and dispose all the infected leaves, but I don't do that. Since the spores supposedly are everywhere, my gut instinct is that removing the leaves will be marginally helpful at best.

But I am fairly new to roses, and you will have more informed advice from experts on this forum.

A rosarian on this forum uses the term Madame De La Shovel, which makes me smile. I used to dread parting with any of my roses even if they are sickly and unsuitable for my climate, but after finally picked up my shovel, I have to say De La Shoveling blackspot magnets feels really good.

Your options are:
1. Dig it up and replace it with something that doesn't get blackspot, say like a Knockout rose, or similar.
2. Spray it every 2 weeks for blackspot with a combination of Mancozeb and Bayer Advanced Disease control.
3. Do nothing.

If you do nothing, the plant is going to decline over time until eventually it will be so worthless you might as well dig it up anyway. There is no physical activity you can do to improve the situation. Perhaps more water and fertilizer might help it "outgrow" the blackspot. Don't waste your time pruning it away or picking up leaves.

Option 1 is the "best", find plants (roses) that grow well according to the way you want to garden.

Option 2 is very effective as long as one doesn't have a religious objection to using chemicals in the yard.

If you are asking what to do immediately, I'd try to pick off as many leaves as I easily could and throw them in the garbage. Yes, the spores are all around, but why add to them? Besides the yellow spotty leaves are ugly.

Depending on what you normally do, I'd then spray it with Bayer Advanced disease control. It will stop any new infection. The leaves will grow back.

I, and at least half my 400+ roses, live with various degrees of blackspot. I am no-spray for ecological and community health reasons, as well as a religion that advocates do no harm. I don't prune or pick up leaves. The leaves grow back and the plants live on and on and on. But if it is a great worry to you, by all means, choose your roses carefully.

In zone 6a, tender modern roses such as hybrid teas will decline or die owing to the combination of repeated defoliation and winter lows below 5 degrees F. Defoliation depletes the plant's energy, making it less winter hardy and less able to recover in spring.

If you want to keep such roses, you will need to spray every two weeks with Bayer Disease Control or another effective fungicide.. Shrub rose varieties that are more winter hardy can survive and bloom despite defoliation, but they will look bad from late June onward. If you are in the mid-Atlantic or Appalachia, the list of repeat-blooming varieties that will not get severe blackspot is very short. Most of the varieties that catalogs describe as "disease resistant" will not cut it in eastern US zones 5-7.

If you want to try to find more disease resistant roses, look for "very" or "exceptionally" disease-resistant (or very healthy or exceptionally healthy). Just plain ol' "disease-resistant" doesn't mean a lot nowadays since some nurseries claim just about all their roses are "disease-resistant"--I assure you, in many cases, they are only mildly disease-resistant at best.

Even "very" or "exceptionally" disease-resistant is no guarantee that the rose will not get BS. It just means that the odds may be in your favor. Of course, if you live in one of those bs-magnet areas, there is not much you can do except spray a fungicide like Bayer Advanced Garden Disease Control for Roses,FLowers, and Shrubs every 2-3 weeks--though you might experiment during the hot midsummer months--it just might be too hot for much BS and therefore you can take a break for a couple months. And winter may be too cool for BS--so you might get by with just some limited spraying in the spring and fall--maybe.

Definitely start looking for the "very very" disease-resistant roses--BS can still be a problem, but often a much lesser degree problem--and sometimes nearly a cure.

Kate

Is this in Toronto? Anyone know about blackspot pressure in that area? I think previously someone said the photos looked more like rust than blackspot.

Toronto is like Michigan, there's serious blackspot pressure, but not as bad as in the East. If I understand correctly, modern synthetic fungicides are not available for home gardeners in Ontario.

Ah, that's right. I had forgotten about their unavailability.

In my garden setting both shrub roses and Hybrid Teas defoliate, however they grow and bloom well.

I don't remove spotty leaves, when they fall off I rake them into the ground to recycle them.

I've found that organic fertilizers build the soil to create an enviroment where roses thrive, even with blackspot present in the garden. The roses' natural strength/resistance enables them to be strong garden plants.

thank you everyone

i pruned off all the infected leaves because there's lots of new growth (many more blooms YAY!) and i don't want the new growth to be infected

i pruned off all the infected leaves because there's lots of new growth (many more blooms YAY!) and i don't want the new growth to be infected

It's not going to matter. That's not how blackspot works. If the plant is a variety that is suspectible to blackspot it's going to come right back unless other measures are taken.

Infected leaves are the readiest and most abundant source of reinfection, so removing spotted leaves promptly will slow the spread of the disease.

It will not stop the disease from coming back, though.

Get rid of the infected leaves and some of the infected mulch and douse with Serenade or the Bayer version of said same.

Make sure the entire plant is wet and put about a gallon of the solution into the ground.
Works for me every time.

Hey people..Paul Zimmerman..(google his name) says that the spores die when the leaves fall off. He doesn't pick up diseased leaves. I am so convinced it is about the rose. I have some BS in my garden and have not sprayed. Some roses with LOTS of sun everyday have BS. My Octavia Hill rose is shaded in part by a japanese maple..not one spot..not one..she blooms away.The same PITA roses BS and defoliate...my French Lace, my Double Delights, it is the rose. Don't most of you think it is really counter productive to use lots of chemicals in your garden when you can grow roses that don't need chemicals? Save the money..go out to eat..enjoy yourselves and stay off the chemical IV.

Don't most of you think it is really counter productive to use lots of chemicals in your garden when you can grow roses that don't need chemicals?

No. I spray once every 2-3 weeks, it takes about 15 minutes, and I don't have blackspot, so by definition, spraying is very productive. I use 2 tablespoons of fungicide every 2-3 weeks for about 80 roses, which I consider a very small amount compared to the amount of lawn chemicals all my neighbors are getting sprayed on their lawn every year, the amount of CO2 emitted by people driving around everywhere instead of riding a bike or walking, acid rain and mercury/lead contamination from coal fired power plants, ground water contamination from fracking, etc, etc. Those are big problems that I worry about. Not a tiny amount of rose fungicide.

Serenade is not a chemical.

I do not tolerate black spot on any of my roses, and I will not let black spot dictate which ones I grow.

well this question is much like deadheading for me - I start off with great enthusiasm, removing yellow spotty leaves, gradually losing interest/enthusiam as the season/disease progesses, eventually developing selective vision. A couple of roses get it every year, from mid June onwards and most of them are showing symptoms by August.....but always return with vigour. Life is too short to pick off leaves continually, especially when said leaves have vicious prickles along the rachis of each leaf.

I'm with nitric above; I use 1.5 tablespoons every 2 to 3 weeks on my 60 roses. I don't suit up like an astronaut, either. I could grow some different roses that would never require spraying, but I really don't want a bunch of space hogs that bloom once per year. I'm short of space, and the reason I got into roses in the first place was for their repeating bloom.

I also don't worry a lot about the occasional use of a fungicide in the home garden (compared to the vast quantities Agri-Business uses), but for the record, let me explain that when I encourage people to select more disease-resistant roses, I am not referring at all to "space hogs that bloom once per year." Those who want to grow the spring-only bloomers certainly enjoy certain advantages the rest of us do not have, but absolutely NONE of my roses fall into that category.

Disease-resistant Austin roses like Queen of Sweden and Lady of Shalott and disease-resistant floribundas like Our Lady of Guadalupe and Eutin and even disease-resistant hyrbrid teas like Red Intuition and Elina go through at least 3-4 bloom cycles from spring through fall--probably more cycles in areas with milder temperatures than in my Zone 6. In fact, my Lady of Guadalupe only rests about a week or so between cycles and then starts blooming again very heavily. She repeats that pattern again later in the summer and during the fall also. She may be my heaviest bloomer in the entire garden and I do not spray her--because she does not need spraying.

Kate