In article m, Shiva
wrote:

Now that it has stopped raining every other day, it is so hot there's
no way I'm going to work in the gardens especially since we now have
skeeter-born illness here! (I'm a wimp, it's true.)

I'm still chewing over what went wrong that resulted in the death of
so many grafted roses, mostly the new ones I planted bare root.

What has been different this year is:

1. LOTS of rain.
2. No anti-fungal or insecticide sprays at all since mid-May.

I wouldn't think either factor could have been involved, since, as you
say, other roses subjected to the same conditions are thriving.

What happened:

I planted around 15 big, fresh, healthy bare roots from S&W
Greenhouse, all Weeks and J&P roses in early April. I babied them.
They all showed growth and many bloomed. Then inside a month they
began dying. They show signs of cane borers, but all my roses with
thick enough canes do and always have. (My usual spray doesn't treat
borers, I guess.) They died one cane at a time, turning brown and dry.

I'm as stumped as you are. This is all guesses. Could have been a
terrible case of the canker that infested so many roses in California
this year. I'd pull those puppies out of there just in case. That stuff
would cause the cane to blacken and die back from any cut ends. It was
bad this year, and it was insidious. When I bought my second Outta the
Blue, it was a big, healthy, fully leafed-out plant with lots of bloom.
But when I was deadheading, I found cankered ends of canes right in the
middle. By then I knew how bad it was and pruned very hard. The plants
grew and grew and flowered non-stop.

I just repotted by my Outta the Blues and found more canker creeping
down the sides of canes. So even with a new long cane 18 inches long, I
found canker on the off side of the basal -- and the canker had
extended below where the 18 in. cane broke from the basal. Once again,
I cut it all out, well below the canker. Believe me, you wouldn't know
a thing was wrong with these roses by looking at the bloom and foliage.
Oh, and I went nuclear this spring and sprayed with everything I could
find that might have some impact on canker -- macozeb, Compass,
Junction, wettable sulfur. I never saw a bit of improvement or even
arrest. The only thing that helped was a hot, dry spell.

Where they were planted:

Nice big 2X2 holes, most in a cultivated bed that I had
professionally dug and amended in early 2002. Permatil all around,
then rich black soil. No fertilizer. Bud unions set just above the
soil surface. The bed is lower than most of mine but drains just fine.
These roses never sat in water.

Cass mentioned that it might be soil related, some sort of nutrient
problem or pathogen, which makes sense--however, in the bed where most
died there are healthy, beautiful own-roots that I planted Fall 2002
that are doing wonderfully and never missed a beat, have bloomed their
heads off, etc. They are Muncy Austins, Roses Unlimited hts such as
Granada, and some Michael's roses. Penelope and Paul Neyron are the
only "oddballs" in the group and are going great guns.

Are the oddballs part of the batch of BR's, the remainder of which
died? I don't understand.

These roses are
planted about ten feet from the dead bareroots, all along a chainlink
fence. If anything, the property slopes toward the healthy roses, so
they might have had the best chance of sitting in water. It is
certainly true that ALL of the roses I planted opposite the healthy
ones were the new grafted bare roots, and all are dead.

So this is one big raised bed? What is the retaining material? Doesn't
NC have a county extension that does free or cheap soils tests? What do
you have to lose? Was soil imported for the bed?

Pull out the dead dozen and see if you find anything of note on the
roots. Or even if they have roots.