Cass wrote in message . ..
Kevin Eberwein wrote:

Hi all. I'm new to roses and I seem to be having a problem. ....

I've put pictures of them on my web site at
http://eberwein.dyndns.org/roses for you to look at. Note that the
pictures range from 450K to 800K in size so they may take a long time
to view. Can anyone tell what the problem is by these pictures and my
description.

Hi, Kevin. The cane disease on your rose Gina Lollobrigida could be
canker, which is bacterial, or could be fungal. Roses can contract that
stuff during the pruning and cold storage process. Try to buy only
perfectly clean bare root roses. Get a good pair of pruners (shell out
the money for Felcos) and prune off those diseased canes and throw them
away. Cut at least an inch below the yuck. Next time, prune off the
yuck before you plant the rose.

Next time, try growing your bareroots in big 5 gallon pots (free
discarded black plastic pots from the nursery) until they get going and
look nice and healthy. You also should mulch the canes until they leaf
out with about 2 inches of new growth. Then you slowly remove the mulch
by washing it off with the hose a little bit every day. It's easy to
do in a pot with a cardboard collar. I mulch up to the cane tips.
Here's a photo of what I mean:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cbernstei...ulchCollar.jpg

Taboo is different. Is there any fungus on the reverse side of the
leaves? The spots are unusual. Do they look like holes? Might be spray
damage, tho I've never seen anything like that because I don't spray
often.

I'm not sure which rose is Stainless Steel - the one at the back of the
picture (showing lots of cane disease) or the one in the front. If you
see leaves folding, it can lack of water or early signs of powdery
mildew. One very good spray for powdery mildew is jojoba oil based and
is called Erase. It gives the foliage a nice shiny look and is quite
effective here. It is also not a harsh, dangerous chemical.

I see you are using micro-sprayers. Spraying water on the foliage while
you are trying to fight fungal disease (tho I don't see much evidence
on the foliage) is self-defeating. You might be better off using
shrublers or pressure compensating dripperline that water the soil
only. If you need the wash the foliage, you can control when you do it
and just use the hose. Whatever you use, you need to supervise water
coverage in a new bed by raking that nice mulch over to one side in a
number of places and checking the soil for moisture.

Nice raised bed. You're doing good stuff. Get a good rose book, like
the Ortho book, or read about rose care online. The American Rose
Society has a lot of information: www.ars.org

Thanks for the info. I spent some time last night pruning the canes
and removing the dead leaves from the roses. I'm also planing on
watering more often. Hopefully this will help.

As for the misters, I had read that you don't want them to spray the
roses so I bought the ones that spray downward. I'm going to try to
get some jojoba oil based spray this weekend and look for signs of
mildew. If things get worse, I'll be asking for more help.

Look for pictures when/if the roses survive.