I provide a link to a telling it as it is on roses disease
you'll need to scroll around and see if it can help you

In my opinion I'd want to find out more about the trees on your list I am no tree pro or a rose pro nor do I live in Fla but it does sound like to much coming out of the soil as taken by the tree roots

http://www.rose-roses.com/problems/fungi.html#rosewilt

Use the entire link save the home page

Best of luck to you

Don't really understand what you mean too much coming out of the soil and taken by tree roots???

From the pics, it looks like your roses are getting too
much shade and are declining because of that issue.
If what is in the container is a rose bush, it has obviously outgrown the container and is root bound.
You need to limb up the trees, if that's possible and
repot or plant the container rose. Spraying is not
going to solve your problems.

In Florida, the first thought about declining roses would be root-knot nematodes, unless the plants were grafted on Fortuniana stock. Also check for tunneling and root damage by the pocket gopher.

Shade and root competition reduce productivity, but shouldn't cause canes to die.

Everything is on Fortuniana rootstock. Would more and more shade cause a rose to die? Every year the tall trees get larger limiting the amount of light some of these roses on the fence get. Since I work for the homeowners I would have to tell them the trees are hindering the rose growth. They may not like to hear the bad news. What would you suggest about the green/black mold growing on the older roses grafts/crowns? Is this inevitable and a sign the rose is getting close to the end of life? Pretty sure some of these roses are getting close to 7 years old which I am told is pretty much the lifespan of roses.

From what I read on these boards, roses that are in an appropriate zone/microclimate can live for YEARS. As in multiple decades.

In looking at the fungus covered roses, I'd guess that Rayrose is right, and the plants could be rootbound. Also, how wet is that soil? It looks really wet, which would contribute to fungal growth and poor plant health. Maybe that's just black Georgia soil, though.

I get the sense that fungus on roses can be like fungus on humans; it's an opportunistic infection, and comes on strongest when the host is stressed or injured. The potted roses especially look like they need some help culturally.

Best,
Lara

Would more and more shade cause a rose to die?

I've never gardened in your region or climate. Having said that, based on your pictures increasing shade isn't something I would expect to kill your roses outright by itself. I would instead expect it first to cause notably reduced flowering combined with new canes noticeably "leaning" out towards whatever is the nearest direction of strongest sunlight.

Obviously since the roses use sunlight to make the sugars & starches they need to function less sunlight means the roses are able to make less food for themselves. Being less energetic/weaker increases the possibility of their getting infected, or infested, with some pest and thus increasing shade could indirectly cause the death of a rose, but for a rose growing outside to die outright from increasing shade that shading of the bush must be very heavy.

Here in the Northeast there are some trees capable of creating such heavy shade (e.g. beeches, hemlocks, some maples), but you can see it happening year by year and watch as the rose becomes less & less vigorous. The decline of the rose is usually gradual and obvious. You get the chance to do something about it well before it dies.

So would one advise scraping off the fungus with a brush? Any idea how the fungus lives when I spray it directly with Bannermaxx or other fungicides when I finish spraying the canes and foliage?

lilgreenfrog, the mulch what you see is tan colored but I think I took the picture right after I ran the irrigation for that zone which would explain the wet soil. It only gets 5 minutes of water through theose shrubblers twice a day now since the rainy season is over.

Yorkrose, the same phenomenon happened in their front yard where they planted 10 knockouts around a mature Blossom Time rose. As the Knockouts grew in size they started blocking out the Blossom Time. Within a couple of months the Blossom Time was developing these browning canes and when you cut the canes the pith was still white, but the canes seemed petrified. Does anyone know what disease would show these symptoms? As posted earlier it has some similarities to Vermiticulum Wilt, but that disease mentions nothing about the stems becoming petrified like.

Anyone else? I was hoping I'd get a definitive answer regarding some of the issues here.

Anyone else that can offer some help? Please.

Very knowledgeable folks have already given you very good insights here.

I can only add that it is perfectly natural for older canes to get woody and brown, red, or gray, as you're describing. It's not a disease. Some old canes are very hard and near impossible to prune off (is this what you mean by "petrified"?) while others that are dead will sort of splinter/crumble if you cut them.

When these hard older canes cease to put out any new growth, these are the canes that one would prune off down to the ground in early spring. Hopefully this helps to rejuvenate the bush and stimulate it to throw out fresh new basal canes from the base of the bush. Younger canes bloom better. (Incidentally, alfalfa meal contains a substance, triacontanol, which can help stimulate a bush to grow new fresh canes, too. You can throw a couple handfuls around each bush in addition to whatever other fertilizer you're already using.)

All this said, as others have pointed out, roses grow and bloom best when they receive adequate sun and from your photos, these roses don't have that...

If your clients aren't interested in replanting the roses where there is more sun or limbing up some of the trees on their property, you could suggest replacing those that are struggling the most with roses that are reported to be more shade tolerant.

I'm guessing they are growing hybrid teas? Two HT's that have done ok for me in a part sun bed are Bronze Star and Peter Mayle. I have read Granada is somewhat shade tolerant. Pink Gruss an Aachen grows in the shade of a deciduous magnolia here and gives a great first flush and scattered blooms in part shade the rest of the season. I have several David Austin roses that bloom well in part sun (Pat Austin & Molineux) and hybrid musks and albas are two other classes of roses to look into, for tolerating less than ideal sun conditions.

Still, all these "shade tolerant" roses tend to bloom better the more sun they have. Your clients need to adjust their expectations of any roses they're growing if they can't provide a rose it's preferred growing conditions. I don't envy you that task. ;)

Regarding your questions about the black fungus on the base of the containerized rose, perhaps I'm missing what you are trying to photograph, but I'm not seeing any fungus.

My first thought, too, given the diameter of the trunk versus the diameter of the pot, was that this rose has just outgrown the pot and is possibly very rootbound. It looks to me like as this rose has grown it may have pushed up out of the soil, leaving a gap or hole.

If you cannot replant the rose in a bigger container or rootprune it and replant it in fresh potting mix, you could at least add some compost and lime. (If that rose is still in the original soil from whenever the rose was planted, the pH could be far from ideal now...)

Hope some of this helps.

Dawn

The die-back that isn't makes me suspect a watering issue. Rule of thumb: roses should be deep watered about once a week. Five minutes on a shrubbler even once a day doesn't get down to the roots, especially if you are heavily mulched, but would provide enough surface moisture to cause mold. Watering on the surface I suspect your 'fungus' is mold from too much surface moisture. Rain also has a hard time getting thru mulch, plus it is an invitation to insects. I'd clear the mulch about ten inches away from the roses, give each one a good soaking, and then put two a-gallon emitters on each one and set it for 1/2 hr once a week in the winter and 45 minutes in the summer. If you have a very wet winter or summer, make it every other week.

Catsrose, thanks for your advice but living in Florida requires much more water than your recommendations. I control their irrigation for their roses and once or even twice a week won't cut it. Especially the pots in the summer, the soil would dry out in between waterings and the rose would wilt and die. Heck even if the roses only get once a day waterings they are water stressed during the summer as seen by new red growth going limp and wilting over. During summer I boost waterings to twice a day. They had the 1/2 gal or 1 gal /hour emitters and I promptly switched them over to shrubblers as the regular emitters would drip in one spot and eventually run out the bottom of the container. The shrubblers offer a much more even distribution of water throughout the rootzone and thus requireing less water per cycle. Trust me, water is not the issue here.

Littlesmokie, this Dreaming of Suzie rose wasn't that old and with the over 100 roses I tend to, the older canes on other roses are all the splinter / crumble type. As you can see in the picture there are mottled discolorations or rings on most stems which to me indicate some kind of disease. Old age usually is indicated when the lower stems crumble and decay. Usually this is the time when I would take a cutting from the old rose to start a new own root version of the mother plant. The phenominon with the Blossom Time that died within 2 weeks and this Dreaming of Susie that died in a similarly quick amount of time indicates some kind of disease. If it were a watering issue several plants would be exibiting the same symptoms. As I said the Virginia rose that is directly next to the dead Dreaming of Susie rose is "starting" to show symptoms of what killed the other rose. Most of the Virginia is healthy with nice green stems. If there is a virus and this plant dies within a few weeks I will know there is some disease present. I just hope there is a preventative so it doesn't spread to the rest of their roses.

Sorry about the confusion. I was referring to the roses in the ground, not potted roses. I'd suggest you take the potted roses out of their pots and look at the roots. Maybe root rot, root bound...

Catsrose, I have the zone that the roses along the fence are on set to water longer than the potted roses. Trust me I am obsessive over water and I tend to err on the side of conserving water than over using water even though they are on well water for their irrigation. I did repot a couple of their potted roses a month ago when we had cooler 60 degree weather but it was too soon during the year to repot those as they went through shock so bad I thought we were going to lose those 4 roses. I will probably wait until January or February to do the remaining 12 pots.

The roses are somewhat rootbound as exhibited by the roots growing through the drip hole in the bottom of the pot and rooting in the ground underneath the pot. Some of those roots are toucher than rope and I need loppers just to remove the rose from the pot.

In my experience excess water would have nothing to do with fungus growing on the base of the rose. If the soil medium was too wet fungus would generally grow on the soil surface especially considering there is a mixture of peat and pro mix and these pots don't exhit any kind of soil surface mold growing.

My last suggestion then would be to take samples of both the "die-back" and also the "fungus" into your county ag agent and see if they can id it or sent it someplace where it can be identified.

Photos 3 and 4 look like scale. I have had canes die from a modest infestation.