On Tue, 18 May 2004 17:07:48 -0400, Orchid
wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2004 04:52:24 GMT, "JimS."
wrote:


"Orchid" wrote in message
. ..
Hi all. This is my first time planting roses, and I'm a
little nervous. I live in Northern Virgina (Zone 7/6) and I ordered
three bushes and a climber (Joseph's Coat, Robert Clemens, Laura, and
Compassion) from www.heirloomroses.com, primarily because I am an
organic gardener, and I've been told that the own-root heirloom
varities do not require lots of synthetic sprays.

Don't know about the other three, but you may have a bit of trouble keeping
Joseph's coat blackspot-free if you're going all-organic. It is a very
pretty rose, but it does tend to blackspot pretty badly, even using
synthetic sprays. I've used neem oil and truthfully it doesn't work all
that well, though it does give a nice shine to the leaves. On the other
hand, if the blackspot doesn't make you all crazy, the blooms make it worth
tolerating a little blackspot.

Is blackspot fatal or just 'not pretty'? Fatal is not good,
'not pretty' is not a big deal to me.

It's somewhere in between. It's rarely fatal, but losing a lot of your
photosynthesis engine can't be great for the general well-being of the
plant.

And ugly is ugly. I know. I've got a lot of the damn stuff
myself...I've got a friend in your area (Sterling to be exact) and he
and his wife are struggling with blackspot at the moment as well...