we get enough wind here that everything loose eventually blows away.
I don't worry about bs, because no matter how fastidious or slobbish a gardener's hygiene, they are never bs-free. the argument can be made that good hygiene lessens the bs, but i don't believe it.lol. i have noticed that when i have a flush of bs, that i also have a lot of new growth on the roses, they seem to grow together.

I'm with your extention agent.
Steve.

Since I spray regularly, I don't worry about fallen leaves. I also spray the ground under and around the roses to get any leaves that have fallen. You can also do a dormant spray in the winter that should kill any remaining spores on the canes and on the ground/mulch.

But you will still get BS because it's all over, not just on your roses.

It's true that black spot primarily carries over on the canes; however, it can also carry over in fallen or unfallen leaves, so that it will show up eventually even when roses are pruned to the ground. The Cercospora spot that is a big problem in my garden is said to carry over entirely in the leaves.

I agree with the other posters that sanitation is a big chore that probably doesn't carry big benefits. You can't begin to remove all the diseased material. Applying a solid layer of clean mulch in spring and leaving it undisturbed as long as possible ought to reduce any transmission from fallen leaves and petals. Personally I question whether spraying the ground is a good idea. Sprays don't affect dormant spores.

Never have and not going to start now. Well, I might take a little of that back, anything that falls now could be vacuumed up by my lawn mowers when they do their "spring cleanup" next year. I never bother to check.

I do it the lazy way - the leaf blower way.

Thanks to all. I prefer the advice from the real world rather than the ideal.

I can see the blackspot lesions on the canes, so I know that picking up every single leaf isnt' going to make much difference. I do pick up what I can, but I'm not trying to get even close to all of them.

A lot of the gardening advice we get is just wishful thinking. If you do X diligently enough, then you won't have to spray. Well, it just ain't so. 1, Impossible to be diligent enough. 2, even if you were able to remove absolutely every little fragment of bs-carrying leaf, the spores are all around you outside of your control.

I have also heard that the spores overwinter in the soil itself, not on the fallen leaves. And I am sure that spraying the soil with oils and fungicides is not a good idea on a regular basis - too damaging to the soil microbial community, and the oil could gum up soil pores, blocking water and air movement to plant roots.

reg pnw,
What do you do about the Black Spot lesions on the canes?

Someday I hope to find someone who has tried spot treating those lesions and done so successfully.

Ann (whose roses live on a hilltop and whose leaves, by next spring, are over the river (Holston River) and on a cattle farm in the next county.)