"Unique Too" wrote in

Allegra, It's good to see you again. I've missed your posts. I want to
thank
you for suggestion to someone else the diagnosis of cersospora. I started
looking and it fits what ails my Pink Pet and White Pet. It isn't the
problem
that blackspot is here, but at least now I know the disease. I knew it
looked
different, but could quite figure it out.

Hello Julie,

Good to talk to you as well; I am sorry about the
cercospora. It is a real trial around this year. We
had just about everything including the blue ice ;)

Things are looking up tho. The back beds are almost
done and our friend Paul Barden has given me a couple
of gorgeous roses he has created to study which makes
my days all the more pleasant out in the garden. The roses
are recuperating slowly from the attack and some are
beginning to bloom again. Today we were mesmerized
by Jude the Obscure, Mary Magdalene and Arrillaga.
They are close by together and the combination, albeit
accidental turned out to be one of those Flemish paintings.
We ended bringing Jude inside, with some old fashion
sweet peas and the house smells like heaven must.

I agree with you about leaving the rose be. Once I heard
an old rosarian in Scotland say that when a rose "knows"
she is going to die she blooms to exhaustion and then she
goes. It may be the case with yours, and she may give you
a year or so of good blooms still. The problem with gall is
that eventually, literally it chokes the plant to death. It girdles
the canes till no auxin signals can be found anywhere within
the tissue and naturally the plant dies.

Some people have found that Agri-strep or a copper
compound like Kocide can help if you can get rid of the
gall early enough, but in your case if it is so far gone
I will do what you are doing. That said, I will try and
clean the soil as much as possible where the rose is
planted. The bacteria has been known to have a life
span of two to four years, and if you do anything to
the rose, buy a cheap set of secateurs to do it with
and leave your normal pruners out of the mix.

The reason I am suggesting this is because the bacteria can be
transmitted when using contaminated pruners as a vector
to your healthy roses. I have found that having to continually
clean the Felcos with Clorox renders them dull and flat. I
assume it would do the same to any other tool.

For that reason I am suggesting just in case you forget where
your pruners have been to get one and keep it by the palm
tree somewhere hidden there to use only with that rose.
What a pity! and what a waste...But you are wise not to
plant another rose there. In our group we had a discussion
not too long ago when I described getting our two New Dawns
back into the fence after the fence was re-stained and I compared
it with wrestling alligators in the nude. That was a couple of weeks
ago and I still have the scars to prove it!

Will the bacteria travel through the ground? Should the rose be removed
to
prevent the spread of disese to the other roses? I assumed it was pretty
location specific, but I could be wrong. (Certainly won't be the first
or
last time!) If it won't spread I'm going to leave it. Let it decline and
then
start working on removal.

This has been a matter of discussion and/or dissent ever
since I started growing roses. There are those who swear
that it does, and others who swear that it doesn't.
That the transmission is only effected by manual vectoring.
I have a tendency to believe that it stays within a radius of
10 feet from the affected rose. Nothing scientific here, but
I dealt with a bad case years ago where a gorgeous Anna
de Diesbach got it badly. She sat rather regally in the middle
of that bed, and only the closest to her ended showing symptoms.
Both ends of the bed were clean, never a problem, nothing shown.

It may have been a fluke, but only four other roses began to
show the problem and so I ended cutting the galls, painting the
whole thing with Clorox and washing the roots (the galls were
only on the canes, none on the roots) uprooted every rose in
that bed, and disposed of the soil in a non-planting area after
dousing it consistently with Clorox six or seven times in one
week. I guess it was the cleanest, safest pile of dirt in the entire
West Coast for at least that week ;)

Good luck my dear; I am sure your rose was a thing of beauty.
There is something so romantic and wild about a rose climbing
a tree! Our E. Veyrat Hermanos is now approaching the old
12 foot stump from the upper deck. Nex summer I am sure it
will descend like a curtain of petals to our delight and that of
the hummingbirds that feed right next to it.

I will send you a photo when it happens, I promise.

Allegra