I cut through roots all the time. I stopped worrying about things like that because I think gardening should be fun, and even if you kill something by mistake you can replace it but the goal is to enjoy your plants. I planted a rose in my HT bed recently next to an established one and dug out a bunch of what I am sure were deseased roots from that established rose. I was sure it is gall and worried and worried about it thinking maybe I should do something about it. But then I looked at that rose, it is probably about 20 years old, it is taller than I am and some winters when I prune it to reduce cane size I have to do it with a saw. So I stopped worrying about it and it is still there blooming very well, gall or not. And if it dies, I will have a great excuse to go shopping for more roses!

The bacteria that produces crown gall exists in soil around the world. Ann in TN said that it is more prevalent where tobacco was grown. Whether or not it exists in your bed is something you cannot know until it occurs. Or maybe a soil test will reveal the bacteria-not sure. County extensions agents will help you there. In essence, your particular care is kinda like not wanting to go outside in cold weather for fear of catching pneumonia-IMHO.

I lost two roses from crown gall in one particular bed and here I am careful about digging around the roots. Still when weeding, it is difficult to be careful. Stuff happens. And the bacteria that produces CG attacks the roots but can also appear on the stem above the soil line where whole canes were pruned at the soil line. Nasty stuff, crown gall, but there is very little one can do to prevent it from occurring. I just do what I have to do and hope it won't happen in other areas of my garden.

Barbara

Thanks for the perspective. I've just recently lost a couple or roses to gall, not in this bed, and I'm kind of sensitive to it...just a little freaked out. I figure stuff happens too, like what if some animal chewed it? I'd have no control over that. I was just kind of kicking myself that I might have caused something myself. I'll get Zen about it :)

Eric

Eric,
I now have two areas on our property that are crown gall potential problems. The one, where there was a tobacco field for a hundred years is the worse. I don't put bands in there. (I put in an Eva Teschendorff, it did nothing and then died and when I dug it out, there was a cheerio sized gall just below soil level that had strangled the plant.) Other, larger roses have died there of gall. Right now, real Tea Roses seem to be more resistant that HTs. (Own roots)
The second location is in my better soil that's sandier and at the bottom of the hill. Possibly because it's better soil, the roses there seem to grow better even with crown/stem/root gall. But I've been hyper careful the few times I've moved roses from there to other beds in the garden.

At a certain point, the numbers just hit you in the face, that there's a problem that needs to be taken into consideration. Not a biggie, but not to be ignored, either.

We've been dealing with crown gall in the Sacramento cemetery. We seem to especially get it where roses have been infested with grass, and men have trimmed carelessly with weedeaters. But that's not the only place. I do believe that damaging roots can increase the risk of entry, and sometimes you only discover the gall when you dig up the plant and find out how infested the roots have become. It isn't always evident on the crown.

However, we have dug up roses and moved them, with no visible problem. We try to leave the planting spaces where we've removed gall-infected roses fallow for several years, although I've heard that doesn't really assure that the bacterium is gone. I've also been told that it is systemic throughout the plant, so propagating a gall-infested rose is not wise. We try to practice good hygiene with our pruners, and to avoid getting dirt in contact with a pruning cut.

Since our roses are planted fairly far apart, we have watched roses with crown gall and not removed them until they begin to decline. They sometimes seem vigorous for years but then suddenly die back. I've learned to look at roots of a sickly rose when we are removing it, because I often find gall or rot of some kind.

In California, Cooperative Extension doesn't test soil, but we do test galls or other diseased parts of plants. I've had the crown gall confirmed on several of our cemetery roses, and think now that I can recognize it when I see it. Some of the apparent galls on the canes have turned out just to be proliferating growth that can develop when a cane is sunburned or damaged otherwise.

No tobacco was ever grown in the cemetery, I guarantee it!
Anita

Thanks for the additional replies.

Ann, the area I planted the new rose in has 3 other roses, none with signs of gall. Keeping my fingers crossed. I won't be planting any more in the area, at least not planning to. The area used to have a large juniper shrub covering it for decades. A good side effect of this being that years and years of debris falling from the shrub gave me a nice dark layer of organically enriched soil.

Eric

Eric,
Sometime we need to start reading about the biota of mature, organic rich soils. I surmise that it's a lot more complex that what's in my red clay (that isn't a soil but a subsoil, left after centuries of cattle grazing.)
There are supposed to be beneficial soil microorganisms that can ameliorate the deleterious effects of galls. (I've been reading way too many scientific papers this week.)

No, Ann, please read on. My lot was used for cattle grazing and all new beds were prepared by mixing in that thick dark clay with organics as much as two feet down. I wonder if I went far enough to reach the "sub-soil".

Barbara