Learned Something about my Rambler

[digitS']

You might think that I'd know a little something about roses after working for several years in a rose greenhouse. I just feel lucky that keeping a few of them alive and blooming is possible! Outdoors here is nearly a polar opposite from greenhouse conditions!

I have a pink rambling rose that was here when I moved in nearly 20 years ago. I built a picket fence and tied it up above the driveway gate into the backyard:

The plant is blooming okay, color is nice. However, I've learned something.

After all these years, and who knows how long it was here before I got here (?!), the rambler had it's best year of growth in 2012. Still, it had some severe mildew problems by fall. It came thru the winter and looked even worse in the spring. I sprayed it 3 times in May and June - with a combo spray twice and a fungicide spray between. It didn't bloom at all one year when I didn't spray, with half that much mildew - the blooms never opened! I didn't want a repeat of that since it had some potential to be nice :/.

Well, it came thru okay but what I learned is I'd better make a plan to spray the plant in the fall. Looks like I gotta do some preventative care and not resort to emergency measures in the spring. Do you think a sulfur spray is an okay choice for a rose?

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

Beautiful rose Steve, I love the picket fence and gateway arbor! My favorite treatment, or more accurately pre-treatment for roses and other ornamentals that get various maladies is an organic oil spray called..... and my brain will not conjure the name up for me...
But anyway they have it for pretty cheap at the Big Orange Box.

I apply it with one of those dial type hose end sprayers and it works like a charm. But it makes a serious mess out of my sprayer since I use it only for that spray the whole season and never clean it out.

I haven't used sulfur, but it would seem like it should work too.

 

[bj taylor]

that's a beautiful rose. wish you knew the name. does it have scent?
I don't do any of the spraying for my roses. I try to feed them a couple of times a year. if they get black spot very much, they're in the wrong place & I move them - or - they're gone for good if the move doesn't solve their problem.
I do have an old blush rose that has been very sick this year. she's never had any issues. i'm hoping she'll survive it.

 

[digitS']

No, not much fragrance, BJ.

The roses sometimes have black spot but that is kind of a thing of the past. They always have aphids and after I started using the combo Bayer spray, there were never any black spots on the roses or the zinnias, which also had that problem.

The Bayer spray also stops the mildew on the few tea roses I have. It used to be frustrating to see the roses have so many problems and then, so often, die during the winter - or come out of it so damaged that they weren't worth keeping.

This old pink rose has always had mildew problems. You can't really see about 2/3rds of it, heading off to the south down the fence. That part doesn't have very many flowers. I'd really expected more from it because it made so much new growth last year but the mildew just came on too strong.

Steve

 

[dewdropsinwv]

That is a very pretty rose Steve. MontyJ wants me to get a few of them, but I don't have the "right" spot for one yet. Maybe when we get the island expantion done I will put one in the island.

 

[so lucky]

That is beautiful, Steve. There's something about a rambling rose on a white picket fence that floats a person back to a simpler, more peaceful time in history. I guess it is just the knowledge that, as weird as the world gets, as long as we have the time and the inclination to do something just for beauty's sake, there is hope for the future. (Ooh, there's my one "deep thought" for the day. :/)
My roses have not been sprayed this year, and right now I'm battling Japanese beetles on them. I am trying to avoid spraying anything that might hurt the 3 honeybees I have left in my yard, but the JB's have taken advantage of my attempt.

 

[Jared77]

Have you tried bait traps in another spot in the yard to lure them away from the roses?

Steve that is a beautiful rose and yes there's something about that white fence and a blooming rose on it.

 

[catjac1975]

That is my idea of a perfect rose. What about one of those systemic rose insecticides?
I don't know if it controls mildew and such.

 

[digitS']

Cat', that is what I used twice. Not so much for the aphids, which I could kill with insecticidal soap, but because of the fungicide in it. It really has made black spot a thing of the past.

I should probably do the one-two punch with just a fungicide but she will need it in the fall or sometime in the winter. The poor thing was gearing up last year to knock everybody's socks off in the neighborhood. I'm not quite sure if mildew would kill the rose but it sure looked like it tried!

Yeah, I can deal with the aphids in a less aggressive way but it would be good to not see black spot on the tea roses and that creeping white crud on Old Rose needs to be stopped. She is tries her best but can't do it on her own.

Steve