Please don't be offended by my comment, but my personal opinion is that any rose or other plant for that matter that has to be maintained by using large amounts of poison is not worth it, no matter how beautiful. We don't know what the effects of all those toxins will be in the long run but I don't see how it can be good. I work in a hospital and can remember when I started in 1978 it was extremely rare to see a young person with cancer there. Now sadly it's commonplace. In a short period of time we've changed the environment to the detriment of all living things, and for that reason I don't use any sprays or synthetic fertilizer. The price we may have to pay for just a few flowers is just too great. The companies who produce these products are getting rich, but what is it doing to the rest of us?

Please forgive me if this offends you in any way, but I felt you asked an important question that I wanted to answer.

Regards,

Ingrid

those are lovely roses, just beautiful.

Maybe there are sprays that don't cause our neighbor's children to develop cancer. I'm hoping the people we've put into position to investigate these things and to give us the facts will do just that.

Anyway, the roses are so very pretty. Good luck with them, I can see why you can't decide whether or not to take them out.

Beautiful!-i can see why u r conflicted.

i have just one, hsummer, but it performs very well for me in shade and in a pot. Mine has no bs so far whereas other, more "bulletproof" roses show spotty yellow leaves. No way i would take out a whole hedge-that's just way too pretty. Plus it sounds like you might be enabling some neighbors into roses which is never a bad thing!!

They are pretty. Perhaps you should try a different fungicide to get better control before giving up on them.

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful input. Yes, I have definitely been enabling some of my neighbors. My neighbor across the street told me last night that her hubby is planting roses in her frontyard beds as a mother's day gift to her. And my next door neighbor planted about 6 roses last weekend. I gave her a bag of RoseTone to further the enablement. Hee-Hee-Hee.

Cecily - I think I will follow your suggestion and change fungicide. This is the 3rd one I've tried. I started with some kind of garden safe product, then I went to Daconil (sp?) and then when things gotta really out of control I started with the Bayer products. The Bayer is working better than any of the others, but still hasn't eliminated the problem. But I've put a lot of $$, time, energy, and water to get this hedge to this point and I would hate to sp them if they will give me this kind of show every spring.

I think I'll give them another year or two, using a different product. By then the knockouts and carefree beauties will be mature and if I'm still not happy with my simplicities, then I'll just SP them or ignore and neglect them.

Thanks, again Everyone. And Happy Mother's Day to all of you who are moms!

Hope

Hope, 2x a week for any fungicide spray is too much. Most systemic fungicides are on a 7 - 14 day spray cycle.

Which Bayer product are you using, please?

Oh, and here, it didn't matter what fungicide you used, Pink Simplicities didn't respond well. The first flush might be nice, but later flushes were not.

diane_nj, I use the Bayer Advanced Disease Control spray. I also use the Bayer all in one soil Drench, but I apply that every 6-8 weeks.

All of my other roses have responded well to the Bayer drench and weekly or bi-weekly spraying.

I thought that someone on this forum suggested that we spray 2x a week until we get our BS problem under control. And then, once it's under control, go back to weekly or bi-weekly spraying. Well, I can't get the BS problem with these simplicities under control even with 2x week spraying, so that's why I like the suggestion to try another product. Any suggestions on other effective fungicide control products (that I haven't already tried)?

My Pink Simplicities have always performed well for me. Although self cleaning, I still dead head them which may be the reason they continue to bloom well all summer. The first roses I purchased 25 years ago, several moved with me and are still growing in my rose beds. I spray little if any fungicide but don't have the disease pressure you have. I believe my early morning overhead watering accounts for that. They've proven to be hardy for me as I provide no winter protection and they come back each spring.