@Moses, Pitt PA, cold W & warm/humid S z6

Thank you, Moses! Disease resistant is what I've been aiming for over the past few years but even those get black spot.

I have Olivia Rose and the first year was great. This year, however, it lost almost all of its leaves over the summer but now at the start of fall it grew them back mostly, but still naked towards the bottom.

I also got Knock-Out double pink this summer. I love the color , it looks great against the black mailbox and I can't wait to see what it does next spring. I just need them to keep their leaves on and to bloom profusely. That's all I am asking. :)

Easy Does It was supposed to be all that and a bag of chips in terms of BS and it still lost all of its leaves this summer, then - like the others - grew some back towards the top in September.

I AM tempted to replace Julia Child with South Africa. JC was another one of those touted as disease resistant, yet it was never great for me, plus not as much bloom as I was hoping.

Plum Perfect Kordes did the best this year for BS but not that much bloom. I wonder if these very disease resistant roses are bred at the expense of bloom count.

The only ones that did truly well were the Coral Drifts. Didn't lose leaves but some got yellow foliage.

It seems as if regular spraying is the only way to prevent defoliation here, in addition to having BS resistant varieties and the good watering/fertilizing regimen.

Hi @Artist-FKA-Novice Zone 7B GA

Would you be interested in rugosa hybrids? Most of them are extremely disease resistant: Blanc Double de Coubert, Roseraie de l'Hay, Hansa, Fru Dagmar Hastrup, Jens Munk, the Pavement series and the Roadrunner series should be blackspot free, fragrant and floriferous.

My experience of rose BS is quite contrary. The two knockouts are the ones that get bs. The common red knockout is planted in the shade, so that might account for getting bs. Last weekend finally I removed it. The coral knockout is worse, even though it takes the best sunny spot. I have been thinking removing it, but every year it is the first to bloom and gives beautiful spring flush.

Julia Child is my only other older rose that is in its 4th year. It never has issue with bs. So I assume location makes great difference. The Paradise, an noid, and fun in the sun I got this year all grow to 5 feet and have been bs free. The 3 band size PW roses are also good but they are still small.

However, my friend’s DA roses all get serious BS this year and she had to strip all the leaves 2 months ago and started to spray.

@seasiderooftop

For landscape rugoas can be nice but I already have some for that purpose which seem fine (the coral drifts). I am looking for some "rosy-roses" that I can take to the vase too. I found this is a very tall order in my area, or maybe just my yard or whatever I am doing, despite following all the growing recommendations to the best of my abilities, minus the spraying. I do spray sparingly maybe once or twice a season but even then it's not enough.

It seems to me that without a rigorous spraying regimen you can't quite get the "rosy-roses" (not hybrid-T-s and all others) stay lush and continue to repeat well throughout the season. Somewhere in the middle of the summer I have to accept they will lose almost all their leaves if I did not spray and if they bloom again, the blooms will be ridiculously small and unimpressive.

Plum Perfect did fine this year but then again, so did Easy Does It last year only so it will become almost all naked this year.

I may have sprayed more last year, I can't remember.

I love my ground-cover Coral Drifts but I am looking for larger ones with a more classic rose bloom for the vase. In the South this seems tough. The Black Spot is an absolute B**ch.

Another point to bear in mind is that black spot pressure is not universal, even among gardens located in the same zone, and even still between the same rose variety growing in your neighbor's garden next door, and yours growing just a few feet away from it.

Another fly in the ointment is the variability in black spot severity from year to year. This year, 2022, is the worst black spot year I have ever experienced. Also, the intense heat here during June to August caused my roses to stall, making essentially no lateral or basal growth, fortunately there was a decent spring flush.

Moses

My experience with Hybrid Rugosas has been borderline positive, although I no longer dedicate my one and only rose bed to them for the reasons below.

Having trialed about 30 named varieties I settled on : Roseraie de l'Hay, Schneekoppe (Snow Carpet), and Henry Hudson as my best performers.

All in all, my HR rose bed never looked, 'lush of bloom,' to me.

Hybrid Rugosas are pretty black spot free. They also are rarely bothered by the dreaded Rose Midge Fly. However, they can get spider mite infested very easily. Very little can be done to control the mites chemically/spraying because HR foliage is delicate. HRs cannot withstand any chemicals placed upon their foliage other than water!

Their thorns are brutal, so great caution must be exercised when working them.

Finally, as a cut/vase flower, HRs have no staying power what so ever! Expect to find only very short stems making vasing the bloom difficult. Cut a particularly lovely bloom, and watch it drop its petals before you reach your house with it.

Moses

I am in central FL where humidity is 95 % with temps range from 95 to 110 all summer , all of my roses stop blooming and defoliate too .I used to cry when I started growing roses when they were in a such terrible state .now I have gotten used to it but still feel sad . I think of this as the winter months up north when everything shuts down .

they start to perk up in Sep/Oct though . I prune half the bushes at this time and feed them . I have tried tens of so called healthy roses , only Kordes roses stay somewhat healthy for me (gets Downy Mildew and anthracnose ) .

for myself I can not stop spraying because even if I dont have Black Spot , I am fighting chili thrips and spider mites all summer . I spray around every 3 weeks in the early morning or before sunset , to avoid the heat . Even then my roses die eventually in 3 or 4 years and need to be replaced .

@Pink Rose(9b, FL )

Waow. That sounds brutal...but honestly, not far from where I stand.

I just can't imagine changing the roses every 3-4 years. They must be sprayed...although I know there are people in my larger area who grow what looks like beautiful rose gardens without spraying. Then again, I see their gardens on You Tube in April and May, not so much in the summer.

Well, at that glorious time mine doesn't look shabby either.

The question is AFTER that. As in "how about the rest of the summer?"

During the summer they are vitually equal to zero. By the time they begin to perk back up in September (that provided it is a cooler than usual month like now), the season is almost over and the new late blooms are nothing to write home about anyway and much, much fewer.

Never mind the bush is half defoliated if not more.

It's a constant struggle...all for those couple of months in Spring when they look amazing.

Otherwise Moses must be right: I must have the most Black Spot-y yard ever, even for my area...or I am just not watering and fertilizing enough. I still don't know.

Although I heard it is good to slow down the fertilizer in the summer because there's no point in forcing them to bloom when they fight the heat and humidity anyway.

It's just mind blowing to see people posting amazing roses during the summer when my rose bushes look like it might as well be winter, as you put it. So true! :)

Do you still fertilize in September? They say stop in early fall but this doesn't make sense here in the South as they still have a lot of warm (enough) season ahead of them.

So I am off to add some Rose Tone to the pots and around those in the ground. Maybe something will happen from here on as they are beginning to come back.

I've been watering those in the pots with liquid fertilizer too, hopefully often enough, but summer is summer. Not great, no matter who we are talking about.

Summer months seem to be just awful for roses here. Unless they are Drifts or other landscape-y stuff that the commercial people seem to know how to force them into constant bloom...then no.

And even those take a break at some point.

Artist

MY yard is full of every rose disease or pest you can imagine ! with our high humidity everything thrives here except roses . No one I know grows roses here , in fact The Central FL Rose Society shut down a couple of years ago !

I spend hundreds of dollars on replacing roses every year plus I do fertilize and take care of my roses a lot ( not that it shows if you walk in my yard ! ) . It is a hobby , I am always on the lookout for that perfect rose & bush .

I do fertilize my roses every month all year except the three summer months . I actually burned a lot of roses even using organics during summer .

There is a poster on this forum Hoang Tom . He is in North FL one zone higher than me with clay soil vs my sandy soil , his summer temp & humidity are much lower than mine . His roses are so gorgeous that I have tears in my eyes when I see his pics/videos .

@Pink Rose(9b, FL )

There must be something. The Atlanta GA area is probably about one zone higher than yours too and I have clay soil. Maybe it's my yard.

I wonder sometime whether people who grow many bushes (50+) always have to rely on an irrigation system. Otherwise, I can't imagine watering so many by hand. Same with spraying and deadheading.

I see people with large collections and wonder how they stay on top of it - unless this is what they do at all times. I imagine there must be some automation beyond a certain point.

Artist

Maybe our yards do not have enough air circulation ?

For your clay soil watering l think once a week is enogh .

My sandy soil requires almost daily watering during summer unless it rains .

I do have an old irrigation system which l use during the dry months . The pipes & heads keep breaking and need to be replaced frequently .

Maybe you can ask Hoang Ton about his rose care routine as he is in Zone 9A nearer to you . I didnt see black spot on his roses in the videos .

As for people with large rose gardens , I think they are dedicated and spend hours every week. I had 60 roses ( one third died last year ) .I spend daily anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour . I do a "rose walk " daily , to deadhead and prune dead canes and sometimes to water and to see any new problems .