It would be nice, wouldn't it, if more specific information were available?

Because we have gotten "disease-resistant" roses which, as it
turned out,
were resistant to BLACKSPOT, but suffered terribly from rust.

Jeri

I take these discriptions with a grain of salt.
Disease resistant usually means a general resistance to most fungus diseases under normal disease pressure. Blackspot resistant usually means it's got a higher resistance to blackspot than other fungus caused diseases. It could also mean, as Jeri said, it's a powdery mildew or rust magnet. Under heavy disease pressure most any rose will succumb to blackspot, powdery mildew, or rust. Much depends on your growing practices, such as watering schedule, and/or microclimate.
Understand much of this is advertising hype meant to sell roses and like the word "fragrant" may not mean much of anything.

I'm always amazed when any vendor offers "disease resistance" as a plus for any cultivar. I read once that there are over 50 strands of black fungus in this country and further more the fungus mutates. This quite literally means that a rose that is disease resistant in my garden may fail miserably across the street. Well, that's probably an exaggeration, but you get the point. I think some of the big producers put their roses on "trial" in different regions before releasing them to commerce and based upon the findings in those gardens will label them DS or BSR. This only accounts for the newer cultivars, not the ones that have been around for centuries. Really, it is a crap shoot when you place a rose in your garden. Your best criteria for a disease resistant rose comes from your neighbor or a local "no spray" public garden, which I find very difficult to find.

Sorry for this negative post, but forewarned is forearmed.

Barbara, who is growing a black spot garden in this my first "no spray" year.

a rose that is disease resistant in my garden may fail miserably across the street. Well, that's probably an exaggeration, but you get the point.

*** Not MUCH of an exaggeration, tho.
All sorts of immediate conditions contribute to whether a rose is subject to disease or not.
And let's not forget that a rose can have disease problems when immature, which it outgrows with maturity.

Sometimes, all you can do is plant it and wait three or four years, to see how it really does.

Jeri

I don't really know if a rose is disease free until I grow it in my yard for several years and through different types of winters/weather...

One year it might be totally clean and the next spring it's covered in PM... (in which case it goes...) Same thing with BS, totally clear for a couple of years, and then all of a sudden we get a spell of humidity and BS pops up on several roses and there they go...

It takes YEARS to get a totally disease free garden because each rose has its' vulnerabilities and they just don't show up unless the weather is just right...

Now of course some show PM or BS or whatever right away and are easy, but it's the sleepers that you have to watch out for...

So I guess you get a general opinion from the Forum and then see...outside of popular HTs and Floribundas, no one in my local area may be growing something I want to try.

Redsox, you said: "...get a general opinion from the Forum..."

I would amend that to say get a general opinion from the Forum from folks close to your rose growing area. The closer, the better. I look for folks who grow roses in PA. or Md. There are no guarantees, but Gean's list of disease resistant roses is of very little use to me. Olga's OTOH, is helpful and my friend, Lorene, in Pittsburgh is even better although her zone is one level lower than mine. If I want winter harder, I look to Olga or Lori Elf. You get the picture.

I know what you mean by local area rose growers. Most of my neighbors think I'm crazy with so many roses. They are probably right. The local rose society is more a gossip circle than a rose society.
Barbara

Personally, I've found disease resistance information from people with similar humidity conditions to me to be quite reliable. There is definitely a point where anybody west of there just isn't relevant, and it's best to ignore those posts. So it's fairly common to have a long thread, with only two or three relevant responses, and to have those responses be in total agreement with each other, and disagreeing with everybody else.

Unfortunately, in Kentucky a big problem is going to be that most of the internet rose growers I've known over the years from that part of the world have quit due to RRD pressures. That in itself is a useful piece of information. Voids exist for a reason.

Talking to local rose growers in my area is a real challenge. Like Red said, most people don't grow the ones i want to try. If they do then almost surely it is a 'wild rose'-no one knows the name of anything! And with all the many diverse microclimates here just because a rose does well 30 minutes away doesn't mean it will do well in my garden. OTOH i've gotten some great suggestions from this forum. Roses that do well in the southeast and Florida will probably do OK for me and roses that do well in CA might do OK for me but roses that do well in both locations are worth trying! I also like to hear about what Melissa and Maurizio are growing.

Some roses seem to be just great in a lot of different places. Take a look at Rose de Rescht for example. Nice rose in my garden and gets good reports from gardeners in many other zones.

i have my own beastly little insect problems here but RRD is in a whole 'nother league. Growers in RRD country have my admiration and my sympathy.

And none of this was about dz resistance v. bs resistance. Sorry.

Depends where you live and where the person making that statement lives. I never believe disease resistance claims/ratings made by rosarians living in places like Sonoma valley California. Their Mediterranean-like climate is nothing similar to the humid temperate climate I garden in. My problem is black spot, theirs is mildew and rust. Then there is the term "disease resistant" itself. In my book "disease resistant" means that the rose can keep clean foliage with infrequent spraying (approx. one application every 3 weeks) with a fungicide. Frankly, there are only 2 repeat blooming roses I know of that can be grown no spray here in black spot hell: Darlow's Enigma and Knockout. The rest, including all Hybrid Teas and English Roses, will defoliate from the fungus by early to mid summer. In my mothers coastal VA climate, which is a complete zone warmer, some more shrub and China/Tea roses are possible because the summer temps stay consistently above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for long enough periods to slightly inhibit the black spot fungus.

It really is all about location-Location-LOCATION.

When I'm researching a rose, I generally take "disease-resistant" to mean resistant to BS and other diseases, unless the source specifies that, for instance, it is "suspectible to mildew" or something like that. Where I live, BS is the problem, so that is primarily what I'm looking for, but I don't want to invite a mildew magnet into my garden either.

So far, my roses have performed pretty much like the descriptions said they would, but I always check multiple sources: the catalog description, HMF, this forum, Dave's forum, disease-resistant lists available a number of places online, etc. I like finding gardening blogs where real gardeners assess their own roses.

I start with the nursery description, but I first check out how they rate some roses I already grow. If their descriptions vary considerably from my first-hand experience, then I take all their descriptions, including the new rose I'm looking for, with a grain of salt. Or I do some spot-checking to see if they list almost all roses as disease-resistant--in which case I know it is a lot of catalog hype. I like it best when the nursery catalog rarely makes disease-resistant claims--that way, when they really praise a rose for being so "healthy," I figure they might even actually mean it. In other words, learning how to "read" nursery catalog copy for what it really means is a learned skill (and I'm still working on it). I also check the descriptions at several nursery catalogs to see if there is any significant difference. However, if they all lift the same description from the same source, then I treat them all as just ONE source.

At HMF, I also check the "comments" section to see if gardeners have included their own real-life experiences with that rose.

For places like this forum, I do what most of the above posters do--pay more attention to posters from geographical areas/mini-climates close to my own. Since there aren't that many Kansas Zone 6 posters here, I take a more regional approach (Missouri and Oklahoma, for instance--I live fairly close to both) and look closely at their assessments. However, I don't rule out other assessments. Since I'm not looking for the ONE source that will answer my questions about disease and other matters, I can learn a lot from posters from other areas also. It becomes kind of a balancing act, weighing all the pros and cons based on zone, etc. Like Molineux, I find most California info won't help me at all since many there have no BS to speak of and that is a big question for me. On the other hand, I do not live in BS h*ll, so I don't give as much weight to a comment from a place that has high BS pressures (unless they claim the rose was healthy despite the BS pressures). Like anything else, some evidence is more telling. Weighing the worth of the evidence becomes a major part of the process.

If all the sources disagree a lot, I rate the rose "questionable" and avoid it.

Actually, I think researching the rose is part of the fun of rose gardening--especially in the early winter when I can't get into my garden. LOL.

Kate

Based on what Molineux is saying, there is nothing I can grow without spraying. I thought that was the point of most OGRs but the best I can hope for is somewhat resistant.

I don't grow OGRs, so can't comment on that, but let me say something that will upset some posters. There is a reason why most (?) rose gardeners spray--it's very hard to come up with a nearly disease-proof rose garden.

Being pragmatic, I work on how to minimize spraying, not on how to eliminate it (though I wouldn't object if I somehow accomplished the latter goal--LOL). For me in my zone, I have managed to find roses I love that require only 0-2 sprayings and others that need 3-4 sprayings in the spring time. I rarely, if ever, spray in July and Aug. As fall approaches, again, I have some roses that may need 0-2 sprayings, others that may require 3-4 sprayings. By spraying, I'm talking only about fungicide.

I don't spray insecticides except under the most extra-ordinary circumstances, which means almost never, and then in very limited amounts in very limited areas. Many summers I never need to spray insecticides at all. There are other ways to get rid of most insects. (No JBs here, thank goodness!)

This may not be an ideal, but I find it acceptable for me. I admire people who can go completely no-spray, but I just can't see how it can be done effectively in my garden, so I accept being a minimalist-spraying rose gardener.

Which reminds me--anyone want to come and get my Crimson Bouquet? It is more BS susceptible than anything else in my garden and I'm getting tired of it. Need to start looking for a taller, more vertical-growing gorgeous red rose that has better disease-resistance. Too bad--Crimson Bouquet is a rather spectacular show-off with those flaming red blooms.

Kate

No it is not so bad for you. Patrick (Molineuix) is gardening is MD and it is way much higher BS pressure here in comparison to your area of KY. I did grow roses in both of these places and also in another 6B place (CT, Manchester). All three 6B places are very different. I definitely could grow much more roses no spray in KY, then I can do here. So don't get upset with his comment.
You just have to look at roses that are better for your climate in my opinion.
I could grow Westerland, Dublin Bay, McCarney Rose, Carefree Beauty, Autumn Sunset, Dortmund and some others w/o any significan problems in KY.
I also could grow tonns of once bloomers, of course, but this is something, that I like and you probably would be not interested.
But, honestly Alba Semiplena in this spot will look spectacular in spring, will give huge bright red hips and look spectacular in summer and fall. Primula or hugonis will also make this place beautiful.

Olga

As others have said, you really have to read the catalogues carefully, then check with other growers in your area. I have seen several catalogues recently that listed roses as disease resistant, but when I dug down in the fine print I found they were resistant to powdery mildew and rust, not to blackspot. If their primary customers were from Southern California, their statement about disease resistance makes sense. If their primary customers come from other parts of the country with lots of blackspot, they are inaccurate. The job of catalogue writers is to sell roses, not to be scientifically accurate and precise. You have to do your homework, unfortunately, and not just accept catalogue statements at face value.

Living in the same general region as Olga and Molineux, I have developed my own rating system:

No Need To Spray Rose - Japanese Beetles consume all foliage before disease can take hold

Extremely Disease Resistant - Rose may survive up to three weeks without spraying

Very Disease Resistant - remains free from black spot unless another rose in bed has a spot on it (provided it is sprayed weekly)

Disease Resistant - defoliates from black spot if not sprayed every week while alternating three chemicals

Non Resistant - rose is already dead from black spot when it arrives from nursery