The sweet peas:
Below is the back bed with petunias, foxglove, and hellebores finding their way through the old daffodils. Trying to restrict the color palette to whites and muted tones- a lesson I've learned from working on the front yard. The wildflowers I sowed are a bit too varied, making the front look cluttered and undirected.
First bloom on my JFK rose: 
And now my sweet sad rose. It was lousy with leaves and buds before I hacked away at the black spot. Just a twig of a thing now:
And despite my best intentions, the black spot has returned:
I'm letting the leaves be from now on. Gave her some fertilizer and hope she bounces back.
OK...Here's my unsolicited advice for this rose. Do some serious pruning of this plant back to the canes coming off of the main canes. The plant will look like it looked when you planted it. Dispose of any leaves and canes. It's OK not to have any leaves on it at this point. Spray the canes and the ground around the rose plant with a copper based fungicide. After a few weeks you should see new buds developing on the leafless canes. Keep applying the copper based fungicide. Here's the thing. Flowering takes a great deal of energy from the plant, and since most of the leaves are gone the plant is living off of stored energy in the roots. This can weaken the entire plant and continue the downward spiral. You may also want to look at a limited regimen of applying a synthetic fungicide like Funginex by Ortho. Funginex is extremely effective to stop black spot. Once the plant resumes leaf production and you have the fungus under control you can give it a little fertilizer to stimulate further leaf production. I think this is a Double Delight rose? They have a reputation as being suseptable to Black Spot. To stimulate buds after the leaves re-establish themselves you can prune back to leaves with at least 5 leaflets. This signals the plant to set buds and not more leaves.
ReplyDeleteThank you Don! Heading outside with my clippers now. The two fungicides I currently have are NEEM concentrate, and Safer brand Garden Fungicide. I don't know if either has copper in it (not specified on labels), do you think they'll do the trick? Trying to figure out if I can use what I have. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing a bit of your knowledge with me!
ReplyDelete(and this was the rose that came with the house. I think I'll only buy David Austen strong guys from now on)
ReplyDelete