IMO its sunburn. I have a few doing that in my back yard at my grooming shop. Increase the water going to them. they need more water in this heat. The sun will still damage the leaves, but it will be less stressful if they are well watered. DEEP watering, not just on top. I increased my drip system to twice a day, 45 minutes each, instead of an hour a day once.

If you have the patience, you can pluck off any obviously dead leaves (brown leaves), maybe even some of the damaged leaves that still have some green on them, if they look too bad. All that is cosmetic, of course, but it might make you feel better.

Other than that, all I can advise is to follow parti's advice above.

Good luck.

Kate

I do have some burlap covers over some of my ore tender (or young, or recently transplanted) roses ate home including the ones I just got from Cliff. No burn on any of those. the ones at the fenceline without protection have those burn spots. Nothing to do cause I am not tenting 100 roses (or more).....just the ones that need it to survive. Bands, newly planted ones from Cliff and a couple of my new bare roots. My Grandma loaded me up on potato sacks! LOL Good thing too cause Cliff opened up some Hybrid teas.....and I said I wasnt gonna look! This year the sun and heat are overbearing with no relief in site.

Had you fertilized shortly before this episode? Fertilizer of any kind can reduce the plant's ability to take up water, and too much nitrogen can directly burn foliage. There was probably some sudden loss of hydration. (I assume you haven't been spraying chemicals.)

I'm pretty sure the rain shower had nothing to do with it.

I got that kind of damage a couple of weeks ago - on roses, and many many other plants. It had been amazingly cold (low 50s) and rainy, and it went from that to 95degrees in 48 hours. The plants had all been in "got to get more light" mode, and suddenly it got so hot hot - sun damage was the result. I think they are better able to protect themselves if the heating up is gradual.

Anyway, the good news is that it isn't a disease, and your roses appear to be putting out healthy new growth - just cut off the damaged leaves (or not).

Jackie

Looks like sunburn to me. I'm in Phoenix and that's what happens to my roses every summer when we're in triple-digits for weeks on end. Shade cloth helps ward off the worst of it. Taking off the dead leaves - even a dead leaf casts shade and it's the canes you want to protect. Leaves come and go every year.

They say you can't burn a leaf by watering during the heat of the day. I try not to argue with experts and hosing down a hot rose bush will cool the air and soil around it.

Since so much of the US is experiencing the blast furnace heat we encounter year after year, I would adjust your gardening practices to mimic ours while it's so hot. You can expect fast-blowing blooms, no scent, some dormancy, a lot of dead leaves and weird cane and leaf discoloration. If the leaves were already stippled from a pest or disease, those leaves will be worse than the newer ones.

Increase water; decrease nitrogen substantially. Nitrogen in warm soil will release faster and that new growth will burn and be stunted. Better to have a healthy underfed bush than a well-fed one stressing in the heat. Mulch heavily and water frequently. We don't have a great deal of blackspot here but I'm guessing a bush that defoliated with it and has no new growth is going to suffer badly in triple-digit heat.

Seems weird to see both two weeks of freezing temps down here this past winter then see it hotter in KC than Phoenix.

Thank you for the advice. For the last few days (before 8:00 am and after 8:00 pm, the only time I can work outside because it's so hot), I've been installing a drip irrigation system. I put adjustable drippers on the roses and have them set to .5 gph. I've been running it for two hours each morning. Does that sound like enough water? I can turn the adjustable heads up to 10 gph, and anything in between.

Our forecast for next week is 103, 104, 104, 104, etc. It's crazy hot. My next project is to get a shade cloth fixed up before next week.

Thank you again for the help!
Melanie

7 gal. per week sounds like an appropriate amount if you want to try to keep the roses in active growth. Some would say you should be giving that in larger doses at less frequent intervals, but I have experience neither with drip nor with > 100 temperatures.

Also get out there and feel around with your hands that the entire area around each plant is actually getting moist. Drip systems are awesome, but every once in a while it is wise to make sure they are working as intended. They can clog, a critter can bite through a line, the lines get moved accidentally, etc.

Looks like sunburn and heat stress to me- many of mine look the same. I have been watering daily to every other day to keep them hydrated.

When I went to twice a day watering my roses took off like mad. All are b looming again and they are putting on new canes and new foliage. My leaves look awful on most of my plants right now from heat, but the new growth is coming in nicely and they are doing much better having had their water increased. Twice a day for an hour, at 1 gallon drip rates.

Yesterday my yard guy came in and told me that the line in the back of the shop was leaking, so you do need to check. the end of the line plug had come loose and water was just pouring into the jasmine (which it needed BTW). the roses had to be watered by hand as a result. :)

I might wait to strip the dead leaves. Even though they are dead and not providing nutrients to the rose they are still providing some shade for the canes. If you strip off the leaves the canes may well burn instead. They will eventually fall off on their own when the rose begins to push out new growth anyway.

I live in Phoenix and have a climbing rose bush called "Compassion" The leaves get ugly every summer then I get a nice flush of new growth and fully-formed blooms in fall and spring. Have had rose bushes killed by cane borers.

This bush has produced large arching canes with no foliage at the bottom and a clump of branches at the top. Would like to try "air-layering" of those nearly-straight canes to try and make "rose trees" Plant is not grafted, it's on its own roots. I think there might be some damage from cane borers, but there are large areas of the cane which look like they have been blackened by sun damage ..where there are no leaves..2 questions...insecticide which will kill can borer larvae without poisoning bees? I can seal any obvious deep damage to the canes with glue, to avoid the cane borer moths from laying more eggs. But I don't want to sweat blood trying to get roots by air layering and then have cane borers kill the top of the cane..s. I plant to cut off the heavy thorns on the "stem", sand them down and paint the ":trunk" of the tree to keep out insects. Any thoughts, suggestions? The rose trees would be for my own use, not for sale.

I read that cane borer moths are attracted to the scent of rotting wood. So if you cut off a cane, take some wood glue and seal the end of the cut with it. That way the cut wood will not be exposed to the elements and will not decompose. I had a beautiful Mr. Lincoln rose tree killed by cane borers. It was on grafted stock, so when borers killed the main stem the whole top of the tree died. They even killed the grafting stock down at the bottom. They killed my "low frost hours" apple tree too. The apples were small and didn't have much flavor anyway. I knew a woman who had a huge tree of that hybrid..?? But she fed the apples to her horses.