I don't spray with proprietory fungicides or insectides. I am trying to encourage wildlife in my garden, insect life and bird life. I do use a homemade garlic spray which seems to work pretty well for a week or so. Good against mildew. Choosing healthy cutivars is certainly the way forward. What performs heathily will depend, to some extent, on your own personal garden situation. I guess if people are rose collectors and want a wide range and old roses it might be harder to leave them alone and not intercede with chemical sprays.

In the UK insect and bird numbers have fallen off a cliff and I don't want to be part of the problem.

I don't spray. Never have, never will. Nothing at all. Been growing and propagating roses for 30 years. The more people stop spraying the harder breeders will have to work to breed disease resistant roses. Rose varieties may be regionally disease resistant. No one variety fits all climates for disease resistance.

This is an own root Distant Drums, photo this morning. It arrived as a small plant, so it spent it's first year in a pot. This is the beginning of year 2 in the ground. It seems like a very happy plant on the West coast of Washington state. Wasn't happy at all, but survived, in North Central Florida. I don't spray.

Photo of Distant Drums from last July

TheGableGarden, thank you for giving clear direction to everyone on this forum about how to recover funds lost to this unfortunate venture. You have repeated the directions thoroughly and often and completely absolved yourself of any responsibility in the matter.

@judijunebugarizonazn8

I feel that I've informed people enough about how to get money back from this particular issue and I hope that in the future that this level of money won't be absconded with so easily in the rose industry. I frequent small business, family owned operations, and the like in the United Kingdom. My particular interest in roses was founded on David Austin and will continue. I have no problem with supporting people starting out in business, what I can't absolve is people not being forthright with the customer base. I hope they get it together for the sake of the 3 children. (I have sympathy for any child in this situation). Outside that I have no sympathy for the adults who haven't owned the mess they made from the start of the problem and pretending everything was fine. Had they made just one different decision they would be in a much better position and that I hope they've at least learned from. Time will tell I suppose.

Andrea, let me explain my response to your post. The soil will have a myriad of good things in it: good fungi, microbes, good bacteria, planaria, all kinds of good protozoans, earthworms, pill bugs, etc. They will g to work on the chicken manure which by itself is very strong, and they will break the manure down to be wonderfully beneficial to your roses and do then no harm. Still, chicken manure, all broken down is very high in its potency which is why a pint per bush is enough, unless the bush is huge or an established climber. Young bushes take feeding in lower doses, giving them just enough to kept them in optimal shape.

So mix in good garden soil from a place that has been relatively untouched. For every gallon of manure, only a pint of soil is needed. Mix it in thoroughly, then store in an old plastic feed bag with holes punched in it where rain can IIhit it and forget about it until this coming fall, just before Thanksgiving. By then it should well mellowed out and safe. Just scratch the prescribed amount in the soil around the bush in a ring about 6" away from the rose's crown minimally, no closer.

My sister-in-law is an Andrea, and she is the matriarch, 'in session,' of my family of 20+ loyal subjects, who love her immensely. She loves almond trees for their very early blooms, which young tree II gifted her some years ago bloomed for the first time this spring, 2024. She was delighted. Thought you might enjoy this anecdote. 😊

Moses

I'd use it without reservations. I'm making the assumption that the only reason that you are asking the question about bagged chicken manure and rain is that the bag is heavier than when you bought it.? Rain soaked inside and outside? If that's true, some of the nitrogen may have leached away making it less valuable as a fertilizer but still useful as a soil conditioner. If it is stinky it might contain some anerobic bacteria but that will not infect your roses.

Roses are just plants. I bet if you treat them like your veggies, you will have great rose plants.

All my roses of any age rely on drip irrigation exclusively. The number of emitters per plant would depend on soil type and gallons/hour per dripper. You might want to trial 3, assuming .5 to 1 gallon/hour, and add more if needed.

Micro drip hose it much better for landscape then drip tape. In the US, micro drip hose is pretty cheap. It is round, robust, bendy and has regular spaced drippers. You install it by punching a hole in your mainline and use a barb connector to the micro hose. End the micro drip hose with a plug. Netafim and Jain among others make the micro drip pipe.

I’ve tested emitters with unknown flow rates by placing them over or in a bucket and running them for a set amount of time and measuring the result. Then multiply time and emitters until you have the amount you want. This is trickier if the flow is variable - I suspect a gravity system will vary as it gets further from the source so you may want to take a few measurements at different locations and adjust accordingly.

Thanks, Heather. I've been doing some research, and, indeed, it DOES seem to be very tricky-apparently even with a "normal" system. Mine is even more complicated by the fact that my garden is on a sharp slope. The areas in which I'm installing drip are relatively flat, considering the site as a whole, but stil sloping.

To make matters worse, I found a forum on which a pro points that if you give plants that famous "one inch of water per week" (or is it two? in any case, I find this profoundly irritating),you are watering them shallowly, which is a BIG no-no. To deep water, you'd have to give them a full 8 inches or so! which I can't do.

For now, my soil is still quite humid, thanks to the rain. My hope this year is to try to keep the soil humid for as long as I can-building on the base that the rain has given me-by drip-watering. I hope to start today.

ValRose, I’m your example. bought 11 knockouts to form a hedge. Loved them so much I bought 3 DA. loved them so much I have a full blown plant addiction . haha