How to Treat Rose Blackspot & Rust Issues
If your roses are suffering with rose blackspot issues or rust there are a number of reasons for the annual continuation of these problems. Your roses could be being constantly re-infected from neighbouring gardens with diseased roses in or poor hygiene in your own garden has lead to the soil underneath your roses becoming infected with disease spores. These spores which will re-infect your roses with disease every time it rains heavily or lesions and marks on the rose stems can also harbour diseases.
Remove Diseased Leaves
Make sure diseased leaves are disposed of on a regular basis and picked off and disposed off in the bin or bonfire before they fall to the ground.
Feed & Spray Your Roses
Feed your Roses at least twice a year to help keep them healthy and diseases at bay. We recommend the Empathy After Plant Rose Food.
Spray regularly before you see problems during active growth from April, every 2 weeks, alternating different products each time you spray. Sulphur Rose, Uncle Tom’s Tonic and SB Plant Invigorator are very good, safe and bee friendly natural products.
Winter drench, whilst roses are winter pruned and dormant, the rose Stems and ground around roses with a watering can fitted with a shower head using a diluted mix of Sulphur Rose and water or Jeyes Fluid, 5lts per rose, to kill off any overwintering disease spores and give you a clean start in the following year. Be careful to avoid foliage on other plants as scorching may occur.
Still No Luck?
Finally, if you are doing all of the above and still having a lot of problems after a number of years trying, it may be the rose variety itself – some older varieties in particular are more prone to disease. If this is the case we recommend that you dig up your rose with continual disease problems and dispose away from the garden, replace with modern healthy new rose varieties using Rootgrow in the planting hole to avoid problems with rose replant sickness. If you are unsure of what to select, Roses with a Gold Standard Award or a Rose of the Year Winner are generally very good at performing and healthy roses and a very safe bet. The roses we choose to grow are ones which have been proven to have fantastic health.
