I have used soaker hose buried under the mulch and emitters and strictly for ease of operation I would recommend the soaker hose. I currently have the emitter system and it it requires a lot of maintenance whereas the soaker system which I used for many years was maintenance free. It is also easier, simpler and cheaper to use soaker hose. BTW, you don't use sprinklers for roses because you don't want to get them wet and of course sprinklers waste a lot of water. You want all the water to get to the roots of the rose.

Thanks for the great info. We're pretty new to roses, so this really helps.

As long as you water early in the day so the morning sun will dry the rose leaves you can use overhead sprinklers. I've used overhead sprinklers for years. They go on a four in the morning and water each of 8 zones for one hour each. On sunny days they are all dry by noon. On rainy days there's nothing you can do anyway. My roses have little blackspot. The spores must have warm moist conditions for eight hours fo them to germinate. Watering late in the day allows the roses to go into night time wet giving thee spores the time needed to germinate.
Daily overhead watering early in the day keeps the spores washed off the leaves and doesn't give them time to do their damage.

Definitely no sprinklers!!! Soaker hose or drip irrigation (emitters). I don't know why henryinct has had so so many problems with his emitter system. I have used them for years, both for myself and clients (I'm a landscaper) and have never found them to require a lot (in fact, hardly any) of maintenance. Drip is the most eficient form of irrigation for everything but lawns.

I have to agree with Karl. Last year many of my roses suffered from terrible blackspot despite spraying on a regular basis. However a friend less than a mile away had none on her roses and NEVER sprayed. Unlike me, she has a sprinkler system that is set up very similar to what Karl mentioned.

My roses (all 500+ of them) are watered using Shrubbler heads from Dripworks. (with a garden as large as this, I have many different zones.) The folks at Dripworks are great to deal with, and the maintenance headaches on my system are zero ... I do check each head at the beginning of the season to make sure it's still working, but that's all.

All I have to do is turn on the hose for an hour or so and my roses are watered. It doesn't get any easier than that.

You can get started in irrigation by ordering one of Dripworks kits ... I think mine is the rose garden kit. It came with tubing, connectors, filter, shrubblers, goof plugs ('cause nobody's perfect) and some other stuff that I can't remember right now.

Connie

I have an old inexpensive emitter system that may not be as good as newer ones so I would agree that drip/emitter systems may be best for many people. I will argue that overhead watering wastes a lot of water to evaporation and much of the rest doesn't get to where you want it. With a drip or soaker hose system 100 percent gets down to where the roots can get it. Think how much water you must have to waste with a sprinkler system if you are trying to get one gallon to the rose. You can run the drip/emitter system one hour and know that exactly one gallon got to each rose.

I agree with Hartwood. I have a Dripworks system, and it was easy to install. I have no problems with maintenance or upkeep. Installed with a timer it's an easy set it and forget it system.

I have a new question in relation to this. How LONG should I water and how often?

I'm in Oklahoma. Right now it's really nice outside... mid-70's and low-80's. But, in the heat of summer, it can get into the 100's easily.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

You're supposed to be sure that they get a gallon a week but there are many things to consider like size of each rose, how well established they are, how good your beds are, natural rainfall, temperature, etc., Because of all this I water very little overall but I make sure they get watered in extremely hot weather. If you have good beds you can reach down ten inches or so and it will be moist and that is the real secret.

I used to use a product called Spot Spitters. I amassed several hundred of thise little critters along with hundreds of feet of poly tubing line. In the end I discovered that the amount of presure needed to cover all of my roses in my yard was inadequate, leading to the spitters not working right or clogging easily.

I have since converted my yard to raised beds and have run simple soaker hoses down the beds (no zig-zaggin like I've seen books espouse), and my roses are doing great! The only drawback I've noted is keeping the hoses from blowing off with the increase water preasure (screw-tightening clamps (for a lack of a better name) have managed to remedy most of these problems. The other problem that I've been faced with is the hoses busting open it certain weak points on the lines, although this has been fixed without much fuss.

Adrian.