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Forensic Science for Rose Deaths?
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. |
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