"jay jay" wrote in message
...

Dear Gail

I do wish you luck, but I'm worried that you are transplanting a rose
into a position that contained a sick rose.

You must have missed this sentence in my
original post:
"First I dug out the dead rose and replaced most
of the soil with fresh soil, then watered well."


I am not an expert but I
have read you should never plant a rose into an old site that contained
roses, in case they inherit disease. There are lots of sites online
that discuss this subject,

Such as? It's a good idea to list a few sites
when you assert such exist. Here, let me show
you how it's done:

What you're referring to is called "sick soil
syndrome" or "specific replant disease". See
http://www.gardenguides.com/articles/rosediseasenot.htm
as one example of the controversy about sick
soil syndrome.

Often the concern is with soil where roses have
grown for over 10 years. I have only one rose
that meets that criterion; all of the other 150+ roses
in my garden are seven (7) years old or younger.

Here are more helpful sites on the subject:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0205/replant.asp
http://www.bmi.net/roseguy/pnw/replant.html

[Most research I found appears to relate to fruit
trees and other food products. But the principles
are apparently the same. See, for example:
http://www.ncw.wsu.edu/treefruit/biolcal.htm ]

so I would urge you to do a little research
before settling on such a site.

Best regards
jay jay

First: I always and I mean ALWAYS remove
old soil, usually out past the drip line of the
original, dead rose, and replace with new soil.
As I noted in my original post.

Second: If one could NEVER plant a rose in
a site where another rose had died, as you
assert above, one's garden would soon be
rose-less - or one would have to find someplace
else to plant roses! Or wait years for the old soil
to "heal", whatever that means. I don't
have years.

As the websites above mention, there might
be many reasons for "sick soil syndrome".
Replacing the soil before transplanting, as I
mentioned in my original post, is generally
considered to be a solution to the problem (if
indeed there is a problem). To quote from
the gardenguides article:
"For the day-to-day rosarian, the best counter for this disease is to change
out the soil when a new rose is planted in the same location of a previously
planted rose. Since this malady does not affect non-rose family plants and
trees, moving the old soil to another location in the garden and relocating
that soil back into the newly planted rose’s location is merely a matter of
muscle power and a wheel barrow.

The other option is to let the soil remain fallow for one to two years
before replanting with a new rose. This procedure is used by many commercial
rose growers and some home gardeners, who fill the empty space with a cover
crop or companion plantings."

Thanks for your concern and I hope you find
my research useful. I recall researching this
topic years ago but had lost the links. Now I
have them again.

Gail
near San Antonio TX Zone 8