Hi, Owie, a friend told me that boiling water will kill things like that. I haven't tried it yet but sounds like it should work.

Yeah, I'd try the boiling water thing too. Diane, you sound like me. I gave three of my rose bushes away Sunday -- only kept the one Joseph's Coat bush that I love. DH dug them up for me. I sure hope they don't come back from any roots he might have left. I love roses but think they are too much trouble to care for. I'm gonna plant BANANA plants in their spots! LOL

I was hoping for something besides boiling water. I can't make it out there with a pot of boiling water without spilling it all over myself on the way. LOL Between the door and the yard is a door that doesn't open all of the way, then the deck walkway which has zero width (bumping into stuff on the sides, splashing hot water all over), then through the 1' wide exit to the stairs (more bumping and splashing, probably accompanied by my screams of pain), then down the most horrid deck stairs in the world (more bumping, splashing, screaming, and massive cussing, followed by skin grafts to replace my now-missing skin). Finally, I collapse into a pile of quivering flesh at the bottom of the steps, never to reach the rose with any water or flesh left. :-D

Ouch!

OB - SOMEONE FINALLY came and rescued the poor little 'Dainty Bess' rose that I thought I was going to have to put out a contract on. I will NEVER try roses again. What a horrible experience. I still have one rose to uproot and toss in the dumpster, but it will probably have to wait til next year. It has about, oh, let's see......one cane. It stretches about, mmmmmmm, 40' high, and is a very consistent specimen, in that it never, never, never, fails to get blackspot right off the bat, and it never, never, never, never, has more than 1 bloom!

Ah, one of these days, when I have everything else done in the yard, and the aches and pains don't prevent me from lifting an axe!

SusanLynne

My vote is for salt & vinegar, or for bleach. Just add a little soap to whatever you spray on it, to help the "rose-killer" stick to the leaves.

OR

Just tell the kids to say away from it because it is your absolute favorite plant in the world! At most houses, THAT guarantees it will be repeatedly run over by basketballs, young men with large feet, dogs and an occasional stray bike! If you can't get your own kids to kill the rose bush for you, then maybe you could invite some of their friends over to play? LOL

Seriously, if spraying something on the leaves doesn't work, drill as large of a hole as you can into the main woody portion of what's left in the ground, and pour bleach or salt/vinegar right into that hole in the stem. It should kill the thing from the inside out.

Diane, you know, it is painful to discuss willfully killing plants that I like! :) (And I do like roses, but only the tough ones that don't get black spot and that don't need pampering!)

Oh, thanks for the bleach idea! I'll go ahead and try the salt and vinegar thing first but, if that doesn't work, I'll go buy some bleach. Luckily, it's not growing too closely to anything I want to keep.

It is/was a very healthy rose bush. Nothing disease-like going on. I never tended it, just let it go wild, and it did its rosey thing. Anyone that wants a rose bush that won't die, better come and dig it up quickly before I kill it. LOL

yes, those rose bushes are sometimes indestructible. Last november, I dug up and tossed out into my yard a rose *miniature* that I thought was dying. In april, I looked at it where it lay, was going to toss on the trash heap and it was greening up! I took it out and potted it up and now it looks wonderful Lol

I don't know what kind of a rose is multiflora - the one that carries rose rosette disease, but I would suggest vinegar as opposed to bleach. I had a rose with crown gall, and was told to pour straight bleach on it - that the bleach wouldn't hurt it. I poured a cup on the crown, and the bleach didn't hurt it, but later I found galls on the roots, and got rid of the rose.

I probably missed it, but what are you trying to kill? The little sprouts that keep coming up or does it have a stump or something? Even though you don't do Round Up, they sell it in little spray bottles. Would you find it acceptable to just spray that one little sprout and nothing else?

Sammy

Sammy, you're talking over my head with the multiflora, rosette disease, and galls there. LOL

Anyway, I'm trying to kill the whole darned rose bush. A few weeks ago, hubby cut if off at and below ground level. Now it's sending up shoots again, laughing at us. We can keep cutting off teh above-ground stuff but I'd like to kill the underground part, as well, so we're not forever battling it.

Nope, no RoundUp at all. I'm a stickler about it. I might consider a small atomic weapon, though...

What about Borax. That is a plant killer. Used to kill mold and works better then bleach. Was told that was the best thing to use if you want to kill any kind of plant.

Hummmmm, wonder if borax would work on Trumpet Vine??????

(Hand raised and waiving wildly)
Haloooo!
I know how you can kill your rose bush!
The only bloomin' plant in our yard when we bought this place was a nasty, diseased climbing rose. The trunk was so thick we figured it had to have been planted in 1955, when the house was built, or shortly thereafter.
I tried for two years to cure this monster and finally gave up.
Invited my son over one lovely spring day and handed him the pick ax. He's a very physical kind of guy and was up to the challenge.
Sufice to say that he told me he would never, ever offer to remove a rose again!
It took him all afternoon.
In the end, I had a huge hole (about 3 feet deep!) with a huge severed tap root at the bottom. That was a deep as he was prepared to dig.
It worked, though. The rose is long gone.
After that little episode, and one other experience with a huge rented sod remover which I'll save for another thread, my son became just a little more wary of my calls for help in the yard.
As in he has drawn a line. No holes over two feet deep and no mechanical equipment bigger than a Troy Built tiller!
Heck, I can handle that stuff. LOL

Borax, huh? I just so happen to have some. Hmmm...

Broken Lady, you silly thing. No one can kill trumpet vine. They're indestructible alien beings sent from a galaxy far, far away. They're currently running an elaborate maze of tunnels throughout the Earth's crust, just waiting for the right moment to simultaneously shoot up all at once, strangle us all, and rule the planet.

Dawn, I'll be impatiently awaiting arrival of your son into my mailbox. I might need to get a bigger mailbox, though.

Diane, Maybe you could plant a trumpet creeper beside the rose bush and it would just strangle the bush to death! Tee hee! Giggle. Just trying to help!

Dawn

Had 4 that needed to go away. Loosened the dirt around it (reasonably dry) to a depth and width 4x that of the trunk width. Tied a ski rope around the base of the trunk and hooked it to a garden tracker and pulled it out. It came out well enough for the guy who had the garden tracker to replant them, with 2 actually still living 4 years later.

Might work for others. Might not. I seem to have the most macabre luck with gardening--easy stuff is often a struggle yet I can get some toughies to flourish.

Just invite me over with the intentions to give me the rose bush. It will die instantly. I have the worst luck, although I do have my first bloom showing at this time.
Vingear will kill the bush, however, and as usual there is a however, it will sterilize the ground also. I was watching tv the other night on weed killing and this was their story. Boiling water will work, but I'm a nurse and don't want to have to take care of you for third degree burns, so I'd drop that idea unless you gave one of those gas fish or turkey fryer handy you can sit next to the plant. Round-up might work except i'd tried that for years on the grass in the flower bed, so far the grass is tuffer.
Good luck killing that rose bush, I'm just keeping my alive and still planting the stupid things. smile.

Horse manure will burn it up real fast. Do not mix it in the dirt. Just cover the area where it is coming up and sit and wait.

We killed a mimossa that was growing right next to a nice old 7 sisters rose bush by cutting the mimossa down to the ground, drilling a big hole in the stump, and pouring stump killer in the hole. You can buy the stump killer at a nursery supply store. I keep it handy just to kill all those pesky little trees that keep growing on our fence line.

Susan

By the time time you mess up your soil with the vinegar and salt you should just spray round up and be done. After all it is just a salt that neturalizes on soil contact where as regular salt would ruin your soil.

Send the rose to me, I will take care of it, and it might die anyway. I love roses, but have a very limited budget and would not go out and spend money on them.

Ok I read all of those messages and well what about the little things blooming everywhere??? I came in the house to look up a solution for the rose bushes and this was AFTER I dug up the main root. I didn't get it far far down but now what should be my next step??? Will the salt and vinigar make it so nothing else can go in that spot or what is the ruin your soil stuff??? I now need to find a way to get rid of the roots that are sprouting within the area of the main guy. OH MY please help don't have time to mess with it like I have been....Email me at tnfeich@aol.com please. NOt sure how this site works. Thanks all.

Okay, I am laughing out loud and then again at these postings. I bought a house last fall with 2 rosebushes that I hate. They're pretty and all, but I have no use for them. Now that I'm preparing for my spring garden, I can't get rid of the parasite. I have chopped and dug and filled the hole with water to soften the beast, then hacked at the miserable creature until my neck jumped with spasm after spasm. Mud covered all over my cute little gardening outfit because I am determined to get the little (can't say it here) out of my garden. Now I have a 10 foot hole to China and the tip of a never ending root laughing its arse off at me. If I do Round Up or Bleach or Vinegar, will it ruin the area for the vegetables I want in that spot? I'm not sure I can afford the son ... they're costly.

I had a rose bush on the side of my garage that must have been planted at or near the time the house was built (40+ years). About 8 years ago, I enlisted all of my kids, my neighbors' kids, my dad, my husband and myself and we took the thing out with a spade and an ax. Got every bit of trunk and root (or so we thought). It was gone for years. A few years ago, I noticed it growing out of the ground again, but it was small and pretty with lots of blooms. I had to let it go at that time and it has come back each year since. This year, it lost it's pretty...it is a monster. Around 8 feet high and just growing all over the place-even under the siding. I just hacked it out of the ground again yesterday - all by myself, though, because all of the kids are gone and my husband was working! I just couldn't stand it anymore. Now I will try the salt & vinegar or borax to make sure those roots are truly gone. I can't stand that this rose might come back again. Oh yeah - this is gonna take a couple trips to the chiropractor to recover from!

Lol, after all these 8 years, I sure hope that rose stump is very well dead and decomposed. I should cover and starve the thing from oxygen and sun light with a black upturned trash can also.

Oh my goodness...I was reading through all these replies and thought, Wow, where'd all these new posters come from? and for a poor rose? Whew, it is an old thread and hopefully Owie's rose has been taken care of :) Moving away helps, if nothing else!

I have used round up on a rose that I wanted to get rid of (on the stump)....that rose thought it was fertilizer... It is absolutely beautiful at the moment ;)

Susan, you just need the RIGHT rose! Own root, antique roses are the way to go. Hybrid teas and grafted roses come with a lot of problems.

Sammy, I was just thinking about RRD the other day. I lost a rose to it way back when and I was so sad. I haven't seen any more of it since I got rid of the diseased rose and the multiflora rose that may have been the vector.

Mamachile...that is what I did for my silver maple tree that I had taken out last year. I had the stump ground and then I moved my compost pile on top of it! I haven't seen one peep out of it.

If you don't want your roses - this fall, prune them down, dig them up and send them to me. I need about sixteen of them for a little project I'm working on. I prefer the old rosa rugosa roses, but other varieties will do, as well. I need a few of the latter for the bed in the front of the house.

I'll bookmark this page and come back to it later, if any of you are interested in giveng a poor, busted up, crazy old Veteran a ffree rose bushes. Not that I like them. They're for my poor old crippled up wife, you see.

(I wasn't too obvious with that tugging on heartstrings thing, was I? Ah, well...you can't be good at everything, I reckon...)

In any case, it might solve one of your problems while solving one of mine. win-win.

Currently two of the three bare root roses we planted this spring have survived and are now blooming. Pretty little things.

Wbonesteel. You need to go peruse the antique rose forum... you would fall in love. :) Have you thought about rooting roses? ......they are free that way! If you lived closer to okc I'd let you take cuttings from mine!

Look into antique/earth kind roses. They don't suffer from as many troubles as hybrid teas.

Chamblees Roses sells earth kind roses, you could check their lists for good roses. I have have several roses from them.

Thanks, Lisa. I'll look at the rose forum later on.

Chamblees didn't have what I'm looking for. I need between twelve and thirteen rose bushes that will grow about six feet tall with red roses and huge rose hips in the fall. Lots of thorns. A heritage variety, they were often used as hedges, which is how I plan to use those bushes, while getting a bit of vitamin c in the process. When raw, and reasonably fresh, rose hips are crunchy, but with a nice sweet and tart flavor that bursts in your mouth. Loads of vitamin c, too.

Ahhhh, gotcha! I do have a monster bush, but it is Georgetown Tea and it is pink. My thorniest rose is Fairy. That thing reaches out and butchers me anytime I get within 5 feet of it. But I don't grow anything just for the hips. I really ought to try to save some hips though.

Georgetown Tea

Up close view of Georgetown Tea.

Yeah. I'm after something very similar to that.

I don't want them just for the hips, I want them as a hedge.

Or...you can try looking on the website of the Antique Rose Emporium down in Brenham, TX. All of us rose LOVERS should take a trip to see that place at least once in our lives. And/or go to the gardens in Tyler, TX...beautiful!!

Sharon

Here is a link that might be useful: Antique Rose Emporium

That's the sort of thing I'm looking for! Thank you! Bookmarked.

Lol I'm glad I'm not the only one, I moved a rose bush when we moved in, thought I killed it, but it continues to come back in the same spot, which is right under a swing on my kids swing set. I finally moved the big one to the back of the yard, the one I've mowed over again and again, it's doing good back there. I've dug up what I thought was the last of the roots going as far down as I could and moved it by the other one in the back, only to find more coming up again today under the swing. I potted them for a friend but may have to try the bleach or salt and vinegar ideas because I assume it'll be popping out again in a month or so

I feel this thread, lol! I bought a home with a georgetown tea in the center of the front yard. Cutting it down makes it happy. Adding chemicals makes it shrug. It has runners out about 4 feet out in every direction. so cutting it down creates this ugly ground cover of leaves within two weeks. As it's rather isolated in its placement in the lawn, part of me is considering burning the whole area.

Wow, the winter of 2012 and the spring of 2013 must have been stupendous! Here it is July and that area barely has any vine and the rose bush is scraggly. The rosh bush is somewhat my fault though...I pruned it and apparently you don't really prune tea roses.... Of course, I should admit that my pruning is akin to almost killing anything.

Thanks for the advice, as if my neighbours don't think I'm eccentric enough, I've been out with the salt grinder as if I'm marinating the rose roots! Let's hope they dies as it is right where we want to put the patio!

This is Judy in CA: I just got the biggest laugh read all these rose Bush stories!! Been there done that! In fact one of my sons is coming over tomorrow with his chain saw to hack my four Cecile Bruner roses off at the ground. Then I will use the salt and boiling water trick and see what happens. I planted them seven years ago as a pseudo fence. Used poles and wires and they were beaut the first three or four years. Then I had to trim them sever times a week so they didn’t slap us in the face and stab us with thorns! Plus they were no blooming as before and grown over and into my neighbor’s shed( the pruning got away from her)!!🥴. So my project last sunmet was to cut them to fence height and keep them as small bushes. They had other ideas and I was pruning all the time again to keep them “in shape”! So this year it is bye bye. After the chain saw massacre, I will do as I’ve said plus use the black trash bag on top and pit a barrel with a different rose bush in it that is very well behaved and sm divine! I paved over one at my other house but lo and behold I noticed a “weed” growing up about five feet out from the paving in the middle of my ground cover and yes, it was the pesky rose bush trying to reassert itself. Don’t remember how I dealt with it but I did get rid of it without much trouble. I must have caught it early before it got too much of a hold. At least I feel better that I’m not the only one having this problem. Best thing- use pots for roses!!!

Hahaha I love reading all these roses nuking. Now I’ve got problems getting rid of pecan trees.

Salt has a nasty way of going places where you don't want it. It migrates through the soil, affecting everything in its path, even desirable plants. Dig out as much of the stump and roots as you can. When a shoot pops up, remove it immediately. Eventually, the root system will run out of energy. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. Just be persistent. I'm dealing with about a dozen old rose bushes right now on my property. Nasty, thorny things are a nuisance. You want roses, go get them cut from a florist.

I don't have any roses. Never did. I don't have any idea why I clicked on this thread. But thank you all. Fun stuff!

LOL! I really enjoyed reading these posts! 😅 B But HOW do I get this darn rose bush to stop???!

The ”contractor“ (Word used loosely) who built our deck was supposed to dig up the rosebush. Instead he built the deck over the rosebush. He enclosed the underside of the deck so I can’t get under it to cut the bush. I have sprayed it with weed killer, but it keeps coming back. Please help.

I must be be a special person, all I have to do is plant a rose, it soon dies on its own.

Oh, Brigette, thank you for bringing up this thread! Many people we haven't seen in years.

I'm assuming the rose comes through the deck between planks? Maybe a heavy rubber rug that would block any light? Good luck.