I am a zone 5'er and a dedicated black spot picker offer.
Some of my rose's leaves are gone with the wind by now, and some of them are still loaded with green...by this time they are all blackspoted and funky. It has been my experience that even if every leaf is pulled off the organism will survive in the soil IF it remains viable through the winter. I am going to give it a few more weeks to get even colder and let the windy city do it's job on the remaining leaves, then I will pick and destroy whatever is still hanging around before I winterize. I think prophylaxis in the spring with clean mulch, spraying, etc. is a more efficient use of energy. I only have about 50 roses.
Enjoy that new baby!

Thanks Susan, so I'm not too late for winterizing? When do you plan to do it? Last year, my first with roses- we inherited about 40 when we bought this house, I had them covered for a few weeks by now.

Depends on temps. I have learned from this forum that the purpose of winterizing is to keep them cold and dormant...NOT keep them warm. At this time of year I am just tying the canes together and giving a nice trim so they do not rock in the wind. Over the next few weeks I will add clean dry leaves, mulch, and topsoil to the drip line. Cones etc. if I feel like it. My winterizing is a progressive activity as the temps. drop.
I forgot to add to my first post, I am semi-organic and do not use toxic sprays because I have 3 Wheaten Terriers.
Something to consider for your new little sprout!!!!

I strip the leaves off when I winterize. Like Susan I trim any really tall canes back some (3 to 4 feet high but do not prune heavily in the fall) and tie them to a stake to keep them from blowing in the wind. Mulch with leaves and peat to keep the leaves from blowing around. It's not at all too late to winterize. I haven't even started mine yet. It didn't get cold enough until the last couple of weeks. You want to wait until you've had a few good hard frosts and the ground is frozen. The object is to keep it frozen until real spring arrives. It's the freeze and thaw of early spring that does the most rose killing damage. In the spring when the roses start to leaf out you'll be able to tell better where you need to prune to.

I'm in zone 5 NW Indiana near Valparaiso. With 400 roses and being handicapped, I can't remove the leaves , especially from so many plants.
I don't spray during the growing season but get severe blackspot on only the most disease prone bushes.
To add to Susan's comment regarding overwintering of blackspot in the soil, the spores also travel in the air. They are all over the place and are a source of infection. Although keeping infected foliage picked up, these airborne spores will infect your unprotected roses when heat and humidity conditions are ideal for spore germination.
My roses are overhead watered daily, very early in the morning. The sun drys them off so they don't usually go into night with wet leaves. This practice seems to keep most airborn spores, that may settle on the leaves, washed off and prevents infection.
Cut extra long canes and strip the leaves if you wish. Cutting the canes will prevent damage in heavy snows or ice storms.
I doubt stripping the leaves will prevent much blackspot next year if you don't spray or use other preventative measures. If done as part of an overall prevention program it may help some.

Well I have to confess, I didn't strip any of the leaves off today before I put them to bed for the winter. We have snow and ice storm warnings for tonight and tomorrow so it was a race to get them done and leaves were the least of my worries at the time. Oh well, I can pick them off now if I feel the need. Maybe I'll experiment and just leave them and see what happens.

A new question.

What happens now that I didn't have a chance to protect them before the snow? While my kids were playing in 5-6 inches on Wednesday, I was tying the bits sticking out the snow together.

If it melts anytime soon (we are supposed to get more on Sunday so I have no idea when it would melt) is it worth covering then?

try to keep them cold...maybe mound some top soil and mulch at the bud union/soil level?

I had the same problem - -the snow came before I could protect my roses. I came here for advice, and was told to add the protection on top of the snow. So I dumped bags of soil over them, topped that with a layer of cedar mulch, and then we got a foot more of snow. Everything was frozen, and now completely buried, so they should stay that way, unless we get a really lengthy and severe thaw in January. I feel so much better now, no more fretting.....now if only New Dawn (Dr. Van Fleet?) would make it through without much winterkill....of course I'll still fret and worry, what am I saying?:)
Judith

Interesting. I'll do that. thanks!

yes I meant on top of the snow...snow is good insulation. I always worry too!

I can't remember a year when my roses went to bed with so many leaves still attached. It'll be a good experiment, I guess.

Oh yes, my roses (except the rugosas) were full of leaves too before the protection went down, and the snow buried them. I had cleaned the ground around them just before that, but that's it. We'll see what happens in the spring.
Judith

I'm in the chicagoland area and I haven't done any protecting yet, except for Souvenir De La Malmaison. I will wait till the snow melts, then use the cones.