USDA Zone 8a
Oak trees are around the property but not on it. One of them is >200 years old and has a huge canopy, so the acorns and leaves go everywhere. I feel like I do an okay job of keeping the leaves off the rose plants, but it’s probably impossible to do a perfect job.
Okay, long post incoming…
TL:DR; 100% defoliation of every rose in my garden in 2025, also yellow canes on 3 plants, and a few pics of Chicago Peace just as a focus.
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In different areas around my house I have America (x2), Chicago Peace, Julie Andrews, Nicole, Morden Blush (x2), Knockout (x2), Don Juan, and Miracle on the Hudson. I also have an unidentified cultivar that was probably planted when the house was built, and there are a couple wild roses near the edges of the property. Don Juan, America, and Knockout are in their 3rd years, the rest of the ornamentals were planted in early 2025.
In 2025 all of my ornamental roses got completely 100% defoliated by about May by Blackspot. Afterwards they would try to leaf, but the leaves would instantly become infected again and die. It rained basically every day April-June in 2025.
Don Juan had what appeared to be the same problem, plus yellow canes in 2023 and 2024 - it’s never been healthy. It might also have had a drainage issue which I mitigated as a last-ditch effort in the summer last year. But it’s about 10 ft from the nearest rose (unidentified one that came with the house) and 15 feet from the next nearest. I thought Don Juan was going to die entirely, but so far it’s putting out new growth this spring.
Knockouts seemed the hardiest, but even they got defoliated by early fall.
Anyway, last year I ended up buying some mancozeb powder to be used as a spray, and also the bio advanced 3-in-1 liquid mix-in, and I applied those a couple times each in the summer and fall but it was of course too late for flowers. Fall 2025 I pulled off every last dying leaf of all the plants and cleaned up around their bases. Local oak trees dumped their leaves Nov-Dec, but I’ve been trying to keep those away from the roses too. Towards end of fall, after the last application of the mancozeb, the leaves the roses put out did manage to survive a few months until we had two hard freezes in January, and they got frost damage. But I feel like that was a success for the leaves to last more than a few months with no black spot! But as a fungus, I think it also got suppressed by the cold.
About 1 month ago all the roses started putting out new growth. I mulched with pine bark from ACE and I did an application of Mancozeb about 3 weeks ago.
Chicago Peace had some yellow canes, here is a photo:
I cut this off at the time, but just wanted to show the picture I took.
Now it’s 2 weeks later and the leaves are coming in, but I’m seeing the very very beginnings of blackspot once again. About half of its leaves already have little tiny black dots. I’m afraid they’ll grow and defoliate it again. Forum says I can only post 1 media item per post, but I do have more photos.
My plan today was apply the liquid type bioadvanced 3-in-1 to the roses, but seeing the start of black spot on Chicago Peace just 3 weeks after spraying it with mancozeb got me so disheartened that after I did that I came here to look for any advice y’all can give.
Sorry for dumping so much info, I just wanted to provide as much context as possible.
