Hello all,

I've been growing roses for the past 10 years and learned a lot of
what I know from my mother who when I was growing up was a rose
fanatic.

Now onto my problems... I've got 25-30 rose bushes from climbers to
antiques. I even found a forty-nine and a doctor this past Spring but
all my roses for the first time in years seem unhappy. Some I've had
for as long as 10 years but some of my roses have been purchases
within the past year. I have them planted far enough apart, added
Epson salt at the beginning of this season and add my used coffee
grounds to the soil. I've been told this is wonderful for roses and
up until this year I would've agreed but now I'm not sure what's going
on. We live in KY and this Spring was unusally rainy and cool. My
roses have good drainage but most of our soil is clay so I don't know
if this is playing into my problems also. Earlier this Spring I had a
lot of black spot but I stripped/cut the infected leaves and
surrounding leaves, cleaned the ground around the bushes and have
sprayed for black spot numerous times. Now, I'm dealing with rust and
Japense Beetles on the few bushes that have buds. Most of my roses
are "surviving" but not jumping up as usual and many have produced
only 1 or 2 buds, while some have foliage but no buds. The weather
here is due to get hot in the next few days but I'd appreciate ANY and
ALL advice on what I could be doing wrong and I can do to make them
the happy roses they were just last year! If anyone has any
suggestions of organic remedies I'd love to hear them. I can use
other sprays or fertilizers but we young children and pets and I don't
want to put anything in the gardens that would endager them. I'm not
sure if I mentioned this or not but I did put down a good mulch, (far
away from the bases of the roots though so water wouldn't bounce up
and hit the bottom leaves and start any new black spot) but after that
I'm at a loss.

Again any help would be greatly appreciated!