April Rose Growing Notes

by Marty Reich, Master Rosarian, Editor of the Rose Leaf

So you have pruned your roses and cleaned up the beds some time around now. It is still too early to pull the mulch very far away. We could have a freeze until the middle of April and did last year. If you spray, you have done that as well, soaking the mulch as well as the almost bare bushes. It is so much better to get ahead of blackspot and spray routinely than to let it get ahead of you.
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Roses: Back on the Menu with Insects

by David Cook, Davidson County Extension Agent with the UT Extension office of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture

 

Roses_Back_on_the_MenuDavid Cook’s presentation to the Nashville Rose Society is an excellent resource for the types of insects that attack our roses in Tennessee. He explains how to identify the culprit based on the damage to the plant, and gives organic solutions for dealing with them.

Click here for David’s presentation, “Roses: Back on the Menu”.

Combating Rose Rosette

Rose Rosette Disease is a devastating disease of roses. It makes the rose unsightly because of abnormal growth of the rose plant tissue. Symptoms such as witches’ brooms, excessive thorniness, enlarged canes, malformed leaves and flowers are associated with this disease. This disease has been reported since the early 1940s but only in 2011 did research demonstrate that it is caused by a virus, aptly named the Rose Rosette Virus. Continue reading “Combating Rose Rosette”