Greetings! If you have not seen the JB's on your roses then chances are it was not them that defoliated them. The problem is that now it is likely impossible to tell what caused the defoliation.

What area of the country is your zone 6? A likely culprit, depending on where you live, is blackspot. Some roses stay clean of it, some get it and hang on to their leaves while they fight it, but a few, the most susceptible plants, can get it and drop their leaves in a matter of days.

Give your roses a light-to-moderate dose of a good organic granular fertilizer like Rose-Tone, or some alfalfa meal, or a drench with something like fish or seaweed tonic and you will likely see regrowth soon. :o)

Japanese Beetles like the blooms more than they like the leaves. If your blooms are intact, I doubt it was beetles. Like Greenhaven said, you'd have seen them. They're brazen critters and don't hide one bit.
Another critter to look at is rabbits. They'll strip the leaves off a bush overnight.

Deer can do quite a bit of eating too!!! grrrrrrrrr

Don't deer eat the blooms also? rksdad01's blooms are intact.

Oh yeah, they eat blooms, leaves, and all! Missed the part of the blooms in tact. Sorry bout that! So do rabbits not eat blooms too? I wondered sometimes if rabbits were getting my roses sometimes instead of the deer. I don't have many rabbits due to the beagles but theres still a few brave ones that come hopping around.

If it was Japanese beetles then they'd still be there. And as everyone said, they prefer the blooms. I'd suspect rabbits, they usually leave the blooms because they can't reach them. The plants will survive if you can prevent the rabbits from eating them again.

If it was blackspot then the leaves would have had black spots on them before turning yellow and dropping off. If that was the problem then you'll want to spray with a fungicide to keep the leaves healthy.

Thanks for all the responses. I haven't seen any rabbits since the fox moved in under a neighbors deck. Deer are unlikely although they do come for the apples, the roses are inside another fenced area near the house. I guess I will have to go with the blackspot premise and take the actions you have all recommended. Thanks again.

djs

Since you only have 3 roses, you may want to consider discarding them and purchasing 3 winter hardy, virus free, disease resistant roses. I would guess that if they lost all of their leaves this early in the season in zone 6, that they will be nothing but trouble.

Ok, so I am new to roses also, but I do have a thought. Are you roses new this year? If so, could it be transplant shock. We started a rose garden this year, and one of our six roses did the same thing. After the blooms from the nursery faded, so did most of the leaves. However, I soon notices tons of new growth from where the leaves once were. This happened on Opening Night. Now it is full of leaves again, with numerous buds waiting to flood my backyard with gorgeous red/red pink blooms. (I know the bloom description is tacky, but I am totally in love with spray of color from our roses)