And BTW, posting here was fine. People here are always helpful but I wanted you to know that there is a regular rose forum too that you can post more questions on about all types of roses.

Rose forum

Yup. Seil (as usual) hit all the right points. You'll be welcomed in the "ROSES" forum as well, but we in the "Antique Roses" forum are happy to help.

I compost & am very picky about what goes in it, never any rose material nor certain weeds, Mother Nature provides me with enough diseases, I don't need to spread more!

Thank you so much folks! So I'm kind of ticked off at my local nursery. I specifically asked for hybrid tea roses and were informed my purple and yellows were. My mother was here yesterday and said they are floribunda--grow in groups of three buds close together. Oh well I guess.

When I have time I will post pics of my roses.

About composting: I of course don't want to spread disease, but 1) I don't know how to recognize it and 2) don't know what it would do? Sorry for the vagueness! Just wondering what the worse it could do is? I plan to put the compost in my garden next Spring and possibly around some fruit trees?

Thanks!

I usually burn most of my rose clippings. I then use the ashes in compost. I now only compost food waste, leaves and lawn clippings (we only do organic lawn care now).

The thing I worry most about spreading is blackspot & everything I've read about roses says not to compost them.

Where I am, blackspot is everywhere in the air, so removing pruning debris to prevent spreading the spores is somewhat pointless in my opinion. So I snip them into tiny bits and drop them into the beds. As I continue my daily used coffee grounds collection from Starbucks, they'll eventually get buried where they fell. And as they decompose, whatever nutrients the plants pulled from the soil to make those bits will then return to the soil.

:-)

~Christopher

Also, when you get a chance, post photos of the blooms. They might be hybrid teas after all, but we won't be able to tell until we see them. Some HTs do bloom in clusters. Welcome aboard!

Not knowing where you live, mind you, I can't say for sure but two very popular roses that your nursery may carry are the yellow, Julia Child, and the lavender, Love Song. Both of them are beautiful roses!! They both have relatively good health and hardiness, lovely fragrance and are bloom machines in the garden. I think you'll like them both if that's what they are. We really do need pictures to verify what they are.

Christopher is correct. The spores for black spot and all fungal diseases are already everywhere in your garden. They only need the right conditions to begin growing and impact your roses. Often times that is the right weather conditions, warm days, cool nights and high humidities, and you won't have any control over that. Do your best to keep them healthy otherwise and you shouldn't have any severe problems with diseases anyway.

One thing to remember. Fret less about them and take more time to enjoy them! Most roses are survivors no matter what we do so don't spend all of your time worrying about every little problem. Find some time to stop and smell them too.

Thank you all! Seil you are a wealth of information. :) I will actually take a little video if I have time I think it will be better than photos--we'll see how that goes. I honestly doubt blackspot can survive here. Our summers are average of 105-110 and we get about 7 days of rain per year. I'm in southern Utah right on the border of Southern Nevada. Very very dry heat no humidity unless it's actually raining usually. :)

I definitely enjoy my roses!! They bring me so much joy but I hate to think they might be diseased so I just want to make sure I take care of it early if I can to avoid more problems later.

Ruth, in your climate, blackspot is pretty unlikely.

You might see it occasionally, under fairly rare circumstances, but it will be minimal and transitory. Not really worth the expense of spraying. You won't see much powdery mildew, as long as your roses are well-watered (harder and harder to do, of course, in these days of diminishing water). Rust might be an issue -- but I don't think you'd see it with either Julia Child or Love Song. (Breeders like Tom Carruth put some effort into breeding for disease-resistance.)

We live very close to the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. We quit spraying long ago, when our dog began to seizure, every time we sprayed. Control of rose diseases just wasn't worth that to us. To our surprise, we found that very few roses had disease issues here -- and the few that did were easily replaced with more resistant varieties.

As Seil said -- Worry less about your roses. Enjoy them more. Life's too short to fret.

There are no disease problems as far as I can see. Sometimes leaves just die. The form of the flowers is probably normal for those varieties.

I agree with Seil that you should get rid of the combo product. Although your roses are doing well, the insecticide Merit that is unnecessarily included could cause spider mite problems. Shop for a mixed organic fertilizer (doesn't need to say "for roses") that is relatively high in nitrogen (first of three numbers in the NPK analysis). Espoma Rose Tone or Plant Tone is good, but may not be available in the West.

Thank you! So the "black spots" shown in the video on my America rose isn't anything? Also, any guesses at my three unknown roses? =)

I really didn't see any disease issues there. The occasional leaf will yellow and fall off just from old age. The roses will also shed any leaves that are no longer earning their keep. If a leaf is using more energy than it's producing it will yellow and drop. A lot of times those are on the interior and lower branches as the rose grows. The higher leaves will shade the bottom ones and they no longer produce food so the plant sheds them rather than continue to supply them with food and water. Plants are very smart and efficient like that.

Those yellow ones are just fully open and faded blooms. That's normal. Just dead head them by snipping them off either just below the base of the bloom or, as is often recommended, cut them just above the first 5 leaf set. Both ways work just fine. It does look like a floribunda but there are several it could be. We would need more photos of the blooms in all the stages to see if we could come up with an ID. Your other option would be to check back with that nursery and see if they can tell you. They should know what stock they ordered and carried.

I'm not sure what the purple one is although it is a floribunda or shrub rose. Maybe one of the "blues", like Wild Blue Yonder or it could be Ebb Tide. Again, we'd need better photos.

Your first lavender one does look like a hybrid tea rose. Maybe Neptune, Poseidon or Blue Girl.

All of those are just guesses based on roses that are fairly easily obtainable. It would take a lot more study to be sure about any of them.

Thanks so much for info and ideas. The yellow rose actually blooms like the weird ones, some come out normal, some don't bud normally and come out like that, those blooms were new not old. But I guess it's just a genetic deformity? I will take more pictures.