Clear, close, diagnostic photos of the symptoms, the "hard worms" and a detailed description of everything you have applied and the conditions during which they were applied would definitely help the rest of us try to help you figure out what is going on. Good luck.

To begin with, in what form did you administer the alfalfa?

But also -- What Kim Said ...

I could not locate any helpful info, sadly, Sharon.

https://www.nature.com/subjects/signs-and-symptoms

Is the botanical world different?

Well, I made the tea as well and applied a diluted solution to a few plants. Most of them were not doing well to begin with, I lost 3 and they other two are barely hanging in there. Since they were declining already, I dont know if the tea made it worse or not.

Personally, I would not do it again just to be on the safe side. But I am of no help, all II'm doing to the ones left is keeping them watered and waiting.

Nitrogen burn from the Alfalfa ? I have done that by adding concentrated Alfalfa tea and not watering afterwards .the leaves all turned crispy & fell .

or maybe end of season disease ? a lot of my roses are bare canes now .

i have not done the tea yet but i did put a handful or 2 to every rose and had no issues.

i wonder if our heat has to anything ?

jin

I use the tea and havent had any bad effects but then I water well at least a half hour before I add anything. Many yrs ago, I once burned potted roses to death by putting granular fertilizer on a dry plant then watering it in lol.

I agree with not applying any more tea until you know whats going on.

Re...dying with "black streaks from the bottom up". How good is the drainage in your beds? It sounds like the roots are dying for some reason. I would be tempted to dig down around the base with my hands to see if I can see if the roots look black or mushy.

Jin, I've applied the alfalfa directly before and it did not cause any issues, just the tea. Yes, summer this year was crazy in Houston...

Sharon, if it looks like you are going to lose them, you could do what sultry said and pull one up to see what is going on.

I've had bad results from using alfalfa pellets because they got wet from rain and created an acidic mush that ate away at the canes. I've never had trouble with alfalfa hay and that's basically like any other cellulose type mulch only with more of a "kick". The bugs sound (in the absence of a picture) like the roly-polies that we get that come in to eat the dead or dying organic mulch material at the base and they don't harm the roses at all. If you show a photo of the roses, we can help more.

What you describe sounds like a type of canker. I get this all the time when I plant bare root roses, particularly rampant from some suppliers, and I call it "the black finger of death". It seems to be some sort of wilt (I've heard verticilium wilt or downy mildew hypothesized for my "black finger"), but I don't know specifically. All I've found that I can do is prune off the black bits and hope the rose regrows from what's left. I do lose about 10% of my bare root roses from any given vendor to this process (one year I had 80% from a particular vendor), and it doesn't seem to have anything in particular to do with the location or conditions planted as far as I can tell.

Cynthia

Cynthia, I seem to have better luck with my bare root roses when I pot them up first then plant when they are growing well. Have you tried this? I always do this with bands or smaller roses. Do you think your roses would get this canker if potted or is does it just come with the rose? I lost a few bare roots last year that just never broke dormancy. It was from one vendor, but I do have good luck with most of theirs.

Thanks for the tip, Alameda. Sadly in my case, there's no faster way for me to kill a rose than to pot it and trust me to water and otherwise tend it. I don't even dare pot up the band size roses because it's a death sentence in my hands, and they all do better going directly into the ground for me - own root potted or bare root. In particular, the bare root roses don't like it when I plant then replant them (though they're probably quite happy with this treatment from others, just not me). I have killed way too many established roses by moving them too, so I only dig and replant in extreme need or annoyance situations.

The canker seems to come with the bare roots themselves regardless of where or how they're planted. The trouble is either that they never leaf out at all, or that the leafing out is accompanied by the black finger of death, rather than a failure of the rose to thrive once it's planted (it seems only this last issue would be helped by the potting up). I hypothesize that whatever is happening to them in my yard is affected by how long they've been held in cold storage before they get to cold zones like mine, since people in warmer zones (that get their roses shipped after less time in storage) rarely if ever report these kinds of problems.

That's an interesting point about the wireworms, Perma. I hadn't thought of mine being attracted to the alfalfa decomposing, but it would make sense. I see them all the time in my soil, probably attracted to my leaf mulch too, and I largely ignore them. I hadn't thought that they do much damage to the rose canes themselves - aren't they mostly neutral bugs rather than bad guys per se? I'm a lazy gardener so I'm unlikely to do anything about them anyway, but I'm curious. They certainly don't seem to hurt established roses much since they're everywhere in my soil.

Cynthia

When I pot, I pot into rose potting mix and plants really seem to like this medium. I've used Gardner & Bloome or Dr. Earth. I don't use soil.

Perma..... yes it may be a wire worm...... the pictures looks similar.... do they eat roots of plants. I have lots of them..... I mean LOTS.....

roseseek, I will try and get some pictures..... but I think Perma gave me a clue on the actual worm... but I will still get the picture if I can....

JeriJen... I put the alfafa down as meal.... I do not think the roots got burnt.... I have burnt roots before but that never caused my canes to turn BLACK.... normally I have other symptoms.... doesn't mean I did NOT burn them... but I don't think so

I do think wireworms are mostly neutral, Cynthia, when they have enough other material to eat. They are quite plentiful in FL, with no freeze to kill them back. I really only have problems with them with root crops like potatoes or carrots. That’s how I know beneficial nematodes work to help control them. They don’t like garlic tea or neem either. I’ve combined them into a soil drench with some success.

I‘m afraid if they don’t have much else to eat, they could eat rose roots.

Can you dig down and see what’s going on at the root level? That’s about the only way I know to tell for sure. :-)

I would not look to the alfalfa. Your plants were already in trouble before you applied the fertilizer. If the problem is not lack of nutrition, fertilizer will not help.

Also, the suggestion to water well before fertilizing is a good one. You want the plants to be plump with water because many fertilizers are a kind of salt. Without water they can interfere with osmosis, which is how your plants absorb nutrients. Then water again after fertilizing to wash everything into the soil and off the foliage.

Perma, thanks for the additional explanation. It makes sense that crops with the product under ground are more at risk from wire worms. As for my bare root problems, I don't want to detract too much from Sharon's question and I don't have pictures at present since all the ones that died this summer from failure to thrive are long gone. All I can say is that when I pulled them out, the roots looked perfectly healthy and there was nothing chewing on them (animal or insect). The blackness that Sharon describes (if it's similar to mine) is confined to the canes, and whatever the condition is it seems to originate in the canes and from there kill the rest of the plant, or interfere with it ever being able to leaf out. I can't attribute it to any care or lack of care on my part, and one bare root rose will do fine and another planted nearby in the same bed will show no signs of life at all.

I'll post again next spring as I see it happening if I can catch it before it totally spreads and see if the collective wisdom of this wonderful community has anything to help with ID or prevention. I say "when" since I'm sure it'll happen to some but not all bare roots I plant.

Cynthia

This time of year , I always get cane die back in my roses . A lot of canes start turning black from the top and spreads down . I prune the sick canes down to the graft .