We need to know where you live to give you the right advice. Jeri is right, neem oil is only for the cooler weather. It's too hot to use it now.

Unfortunately most Austin roses are prone to blackspot. So depending on your location, you will have to decide how to treat it.

I just came back from my garden and spotted bs on one leaf on my newly planted Julia Child. I just snipped it off before it spread. Since I try to be as organic as possible, I don't use any chemicals. As for me, I try to shovel prune those ones that are very prone to bs and choose the ones that are not.

Thanks for your responses. I am in Ann Arbor, Michigan (zone 6a). We've had all kinds of weather the last few weeks. It was very rainy and humid for several days. It's been chilly one day and 20 degrees warmer the next. I used neem oil all of last summer and didn't have a problem, but I think I made the mixture too concentrated this last time. It will be in the 80s for the next few days. Should I try to spray off the neem (in the morning) with a blast of water? Or will that make it all worse?

I suggest that you only use the Neem products that still contain the azadirachtin.

Neem breaks down in a couple days. The copper is kind of toxic to everything living. Bayer fungicide kills frogs. If birds eat the frogs it will kill the bird too. The bayer will work but will kill your soil . If your soil is killed you need synthetic fertilizer. I like Jjpeace post about as little chemicals as possible and shovel pruning.

If the leaves are wet longer than 6 hours the spores can do the damage. Ohio State horticultural dept says the spores can come from the mulch onto roses. Try using a mulch recommended by the Ohio state University mulch study. There are other mulches better than wood bark . Ohio is close to you. They have done a study on diseases on roses and the wood mulch.

Feed your soil.

I put down a few inches of yard waste compost. I mulched with shredded leaves the past few years.

Half the plant is above ground.

It is important to consider the below ground half of the plant also. The soil is 50% solid and the other half is air and water where organisms live that control the ecosystem.

Half of the plants are for you.(The Roses). The other half of the plants should be for the soil. (Legumes vetches clovers is ok). Healthy soil and health roots would give you a healthy plant. It is better to grow a healthy plant. I grow soil. Soil grows plants. This forum used to be full of gardeners who used the Lasagna sheet mulch method.

I don't start worrying until too many leaves start turning yellow and dropping, so yours look reasonable enough to me (except the full-leaf discoloration does look like burn). I think I get a lot of cerco instead of BS, so those leaves do hang around and help the plant much longer.

But I do spray occasionally for BS. I use the Bayer product for shrubs that is just the fungicide -- none of this 'in one' stuff (I'd like to use a harsher word there, because those insecticides are so bad when not necessary ).

You don't have to use it like I do, but it works for me, so here goes: The Bayer can kill existing infections. I don't treat until the case of BS looks to threaten the health of the plant (about to start losing too many leaves). Then I do the spray schedule to clear an infection. I don't spray with it preventatively, as many do. I do this for environmental concerns and my own peace of mind. It also works really well if you do spray preventatively, lol.

In my garden, the bad cases are random and don't necessarily occur again the same year on the same plant. So I like treating them as they come up instead of all the time. If you are totally organic, my apologies! When I was, I used copper and sulfur, but those also have problems with too much heat, and I was using much more spray than I do now (for less bang by far, too).

Stop using the neem oil. It's too hot. you can use that in early spring, but not now. Honestly the spots on your leaves don't look that bad. You should see a real BS outbreak (check out the Iceberg thread). Most of the damage is from the neem oil. If you want to go organic, you can try one of the natural products that are now being sold.

You don't live in a real blackspot hell like Meredith and I do. And once the weather gets hot and dry, the black spot will stop. But it may come back again in the fall.

Thanks everyone. I am kicking myself for using the neem oil and burning the leaves. The leaves looked quite good before I did that. :( I think I am going to return the Bonide Copper Fungicide (is Bonide a Bayer company?) and not do anything right now and see what happens. I really want to be as organic as possible. When I told the guy at the plant store that, he recommended the copper fungicide. On the label it says "for organic gardening", but at the back of the pamphlet it says it's toxic to aquatic organisms.

I think waiting might work well on just those spots :) I wait all the time!

I never tried Serenade fungicide, but that's a cool idea for an organic that might work on roses.

Whenever I see the word "organic" I just roll my eyes. The word seems pretty meaningless, and I suspect that it is a cheap marketing ploy. I mean, technically, anthrax is organic. Yeah, I'm a cynic.

Everything the plant needs is in the soil. Waiting is good. Replacing the biology with a layer on compost would be good too. Making aerated compost tea you can spray.

Organic just means that it's not some chemical developed in a lab. Organic substances can be toxic. It's not a ploy, but people need to understand what it means. I've never used copper but some people who have light blackspot pressure say it works.

As buford said, "organic" doesn't mean non-toxic. Since all things are made up of chemicals even organic solutions are chemicals. You still need to be careful and use proper precautions to use them.

I have used Green Cure and Serenade with varying degrees of success. The sooner you catch it and use them the better. Maybe preemptive spraying would be even better. In either case use the formula for "cure" and not the prevention one, which is weaker. I have tried that one and it didn't seem to do much at all.

Also, an observational warning, right after you spray don't be surprised if it seems like it got worse. The spray does not cure already infected leaves and what you are seeing are leaves that had already been infected, but were not showing symptoms yet, showing the spots. The spray will only prevent leaves that are not already infected from getting it.

When I first started with roses, I remember getting quite upset about any disease or bug issues, concerned that my new roses would die. After a few years, I saw a pattern develop here in rainy Oregon. After the roses leaf out , it is still raining quite a bit and bs runs rampant. If the bs reaches the top leaves of a plant -- that rose does not have sufficient disease resistancy for my garden. I don't generally spray, but "proof" roses to determine which are most disease resistant. Once it gets the end of June, warmer, drier weather arrives and the only thing I do is pick off the bottom leaves with bs. Rust is another matter. If a rose is prone to that, it's gone. Haven't sprayed for years -- determining which roses are more disease resistant and enduring a month of bs is all that I do.