Where to begin? I too, would have to put Crimson Bouquet at the top of my list.I just love the red of that rose, but a real diva. Next would be Paradise,followed closely by Abe Darby. All three will be watched carefully . I do spray and am pretty faithful with it. Lesley

I would nominate Osiria, Let Freedom Ring, Fisher Holmes, Empereur du Maroc, Eugene Furst, Rokoko, Rosemoor, Melodee Parfumee, and Floradora. That is with my spray program. There might be some others, but these are the worst I can think of off the top of my head.

That would have to be Mrs. John Laing, but then again, I just use Safer's defender in the spring. Didn't quite do the trick for her.
Judith

The garden was wonderful this year. It was everything else that was the problem. Well, almost everything else.

White Austin, Glamis Castle or Fair Bianca. A terrible mess of BS. I'm not afraid anymore of getting rid of undeserving ones.

Carla

I had virtually no BS of any consequence this year and I am amazed.
I don't have as many as I did at my old house but I seem to be headed that way.
Perhaps it's the choices I've made because it sure isn't a consistant spray regimen.
I had health problems from Spring to Fall so I did minimal spraying.
Things have improved drastically so I'll see what works this year.

Prairie Stars, Distant Drums, and Sharifa Asma head my list. Honeysweet, Europoeana, Olympiad are close behind as are Mister Lincoln, Opening Night, Prairie Sunset, and Breathless. Finally Abe Darby thought he would be sprayed.

These will not be a problem next year since they are gone. It was difficult, but it's done, and I can move on now without spraying.

This is a good thread.

Sammy

I'd have to say Bishops Castle. Or maybe ZD. I spray so it's hard to tell. Some roses that never get BS got it this year and some that usually do didn't. I think it depends a lot on weather conditions. We were dry for the most part, and I think that helped.

Majority of my roses are selected with resitance to BS in mind, so I don't have too many divas and even my divas are usually not the most BS prone varieties, but here they are:
Mme Berkeley
Gloire de France
Parade
Star of the Nile

I know some of these roses are often mentioned as resistant, but for me this they are not.. So Mme Berkeley and Gloire de France already found a new home. Both were big bushes older then 5 year old and more then 7x7 feet. This was really difficult to dig them out. Parade is to big to do anything with it, it is rambling up the neighbor's tree. Star of the Nile is too Beautiful, fragrant and hard working to part with, so I will tolerate BS from this one, really goood rose otherwise.
Olga

Hey, this is good--a convenient list of all the roses we should avoid. Some are regulars on BS lists, but a number are being mentioned for the first time. Very helpful.

Judith, I hope Mrs. John Laing likes my garden better than it does yours. I got one last year and enjoyed it so much that I just ordered another one the other day. Guess I better cross my fingers and hope for the best.

chuck_billie and hoovb--I hope you realize that everybody is glaring at you right now. No disease in your gardens? It's not fair!

Olga--I hope your Star of the Nile toughens up. Such a beauty!

Keep those BS losers coming. Our gardens need this information. LOL

Kate

I don't spray so all of my 50+ roses took some kind of a hit. The worst of the whole lot was Wild Blue Younder which was totally defoliated and really didn't bloom all that much. It will get one more year to prove itself otherwise it's gone.

Intrigue, the mauve/purple blend. Although HMF says very disease resistant I had BS as soon as the season started, and each spot was the size of a nickle. I don't spray and I think that this would be a beautiful rose if it was sprayed for BS. I think alot of the purple/lavender roses are prone to BS, and so many of them have great fragrance. I am hoping that my new Lilac Dawn has better BS resistance.
Diana

Again, 2008s worst was little moss rose Lemon Delight. It should have been taken out ages ago and I did remove it this Fall :( I hadn't even planned to, but I was nearby with a shovel and hollered Enough!, then dug.

Worst-- Golden Celebration and Night Owl Memorial Day, Peace, Sweet Freedom and Veterans Honor-- all banished. Climbing Peace is still there, only b/c its too big for me to get out. Am thinking of "free to good home/ u dig" strategy for that one. Best performance from a mauve/purple: Ebbtide and Basye's Purple. I'm not having much trouble with Distant Drums but I strip all the lower foliage and pick at it every day-- I wouldn't be without this rose!

Most amount of blackspot during 2008: 'Rise-n-Shine'.
It redeemed itself in the fall however ... it looked great in the spring and then again after summer. It's still the best miniature rose I've grown.

Least amount of blackspot during 2008: The antique china rose, 'Spice'. Like most china roses here, it had beautiful foliage at all times during the year.

Randy

Kate, because I planted her in the back behind some shorter growing roses, the BS doesn't show that much. Her blooms are just so beautiful and fragrant, she will be staying here no matter what! Hopefully, she will get more resistant as she matures, as this was only her first year and we had a fairly soggy summer. I don't blame you for ordering another one - All the HP's are irresistible. Good luck with yours.
Judith

Teasing Georgia. Pretty rose, but I dug it up due to blackspot.

I've gotten rid of most of my worst blackspotters. You know, the ones that had to be sprayed religiously even when nothing else got blackspot (eg:Regensberg, Amber Queen, Rise N' Shine,Angel Face etc.). I only have two left that I keep on a strict spray schedule during prime Blackspot season and that's Jeanne La Joie and Day Breaker. They will defoliate if left totally on their own. Others such as Rose de Rescht, Yves Piaget, Olympiad, seem to accept my spray schedule and stay reasonably clean. This year everything pretty much did fine even when I went 7 weeks in the fall without a drop of fungicide. So, I can't complain.

Year in and year out it is Heirloom, the HT. It has easily double the BS of the second or third on the list. I just love the color so I tolerate some defoliation.

Are there any purple or mauves that don't BS?

Sheer Bliss, Conundrum and Miami Moon.

Deb, none that I have found, but Neptune held leaves pretty well during my "no spray experiment" (meaning, I was too lazy to speay for most of the season) this year.

Abraham Darby hands down followed closely by Golden Celebration. GC has moved on, Abe is on borrowed time.

Diane you made me chuckle. Pretty much why I missed the last 7 weeks of spraying in the fall - sounds better if I call it my "no spray experiment" though( In reality I kept putting it off thinking a freeze would take care of things for me). It's these little no spray "experiments" of mine that lets me separate the wheat from the chaf so to speak.

Peace and Intrigue both had blackspot even with a good spray program that kept my other roses clean. They live and bloom through it so I can't complain too much.

Ran my own "no spray experiment" last year and for the first time ever I had a case of terminal blackspot. Never have had this happen before - Tigress was the rose. It was a weak grower even with spray - not very happy in zone 4 I presume, but the lack of chemical support did it in and I yanked the dead carcass in September. I wasn't wild about the stripes anyway...

Hands down, the worst for Blackspot this year was Disneyland.

It is a wonderful producer of color as long as I faithfully spray on a very regular basis. I don't do that very well.

Regards,

Charles

Day Breaker, Graham Thomas and Lyda Rose are always my worst. I spray pretty regularly, alternating good material, and these three still black spot terribly.

I generally give roses 2 years to prove themselves; sometimes 3, before I toss them out. BS is the #2 crime for which I'll axe a rose, after #1--refusal to produce attractive blooms. I don't have many bad blackspotters at this point, and even so, I spray pretty regularly (Bayer tebuconozole, occasional banner max). My roses have by 95% clean this past year.
The worst BS offender by far was the mini-flora Peter Cottontail. Blackspot-City, despite regular spraying. I SP'd it after only 18 months; didn't even want to push it off on any friend or neighbor. A shame, too, because the blooms are exquisitely formed and hold very well.
Dame de Coeur has surprised me by having a moderate blackspot problem; surprising because I got it after recommendations from a fellow-forumer in Baton Rouge nearby and endorsements fromt the Chamblees' folks. Its virtues are intensely red color that deepens rather than fading with age, and impressive heat tolerance,--blooms its heart out in the dog days of summer. It seems to quit blooming in cool weather,though, and the bloom form is just OK, not the floral or HT exhibition form I prefer. This one's still on probation with me, due to its strong virtues just mentioned, counter-balancing its BS & so-so bloom form. Oh, almost forgot, no fragrance either, despite what some report.

Athena's comment about Peace reminded me; I haven't grown it in a decade, but I had it in Mobile in the 90s, a cheap Walmart body-bag plant, definitely infected with RMV, which tends to worsen a rose's vulnerability to blackspot. Anyway, the first year mine had it bad. I finally dug it up to keep it from spreading BS to neighboring roses. But I didn't have the heart to shovel prune it, so I potted it, banished it to a side yard and started spraying it extra-diligently. By the 2nd year it was much stronger and suffered very little blackspot. So that was my object-lesson to teach me to give roses a second chance before ditching them.

A few past MAJOR blackspot offenders for me included:
Europeana
Angel Face
Barbra Streisand
Dream Yellow
Scentimental
Graham Thomas
America (climber)
Mt. Hood
Jolly Cupido (striped mini)
Sunrise Cupido
Moore's Striped Rugosa (especially problematic because it also does not tolerate spraying)

Lyda Rose? I have that one on order. We are finding out things we don't want to know. :-)

Oh, Redsox--I'm so sorry. On the other hand, now that I see what a blackspotter Graham Thomas is, I no longer feel bad that I could never find a big enough space in my garden for it.

I'll nominate one other bad blackspotter in my garden: Love & Peace. Now that I've given Crimson Bouquet the boot, Love & Peace will be my first rose to show BS. I really love this rose, so we'll see whether I lose patience with it this next season, but it hasn't been very resistant to BS like all the catalog descriptions claim it is.

You are on notice, L&P!!!!!

Kate

The Squire and Distant Drums are tied, but the new spray recommended by Heirloom Roses is helping (mostly because it is so cheap that I can really go to town with it, probably)and I hope to spray it even more often this year and thus have less BS. Great Century and French Lace have been fairly bad, too, but the spray (baking soda and vegetable oil in water) helped it a great deal. Every bush (even The Fairy and Bonica) has some, we're in Black Spot Central here.

Mike said:

"Moore's Striped Rugosa (especially problematic because it also does not tolerate spraying)"

Actually, thats not correct, this rose gets application of any and all Fungicides used in may garden with no ill effects whatsoever. Its a myth that Rugosa Hybrids won't tolerate Fungicides. The "pure" Rugosa strains might not be as tolerant, but the hybrids aren't damaged by spray.

Regards,
Paul

Please don't hurt me but I've never had blackspot, except that a new band of Mrs. Dudley Cross seems to be developing it. Strange since I've grown her before and she was completely clean. We'll see.....

Diana, I also have Lilac Dawn with one beautiful, fragrant bloom on a band-sized plant. No blackspot but of course that doesn't mean much. A good thing too, since I don't spray.

Ingrid

Ingrid, like it or not, we are all glaring at you right this very minute.

LOL

Kate

Yep, we are glaring for sure :-)
I feel a little bit better however in that my Mrs. D. Cross never blackspots.

Randy

I spray so most of those mentioned don't cause me any problems including GC (which did get blight though), scentimental, angel face, bishops castle (which did have BS when I bought it discounted at the end of the season but I picked and sprayed and it cleaned right up).

Even with spraying my worst was my bush that has both Livin easy and Easy Going on it. Spotted terribly all summer and it is supposed to be very bs resistant...go figure.

Glamis Castle was always the worst in the garden I just left but I still loved it and tolerated it. I am not sure if the perennials I crowded it with were part of the problem or hid its sins. I also crowded my Graham Thomas with perennials (mostly heleniums....a great combo!) and I never ever had a problem with it in my garden.

Mr Lincoln was the worst of my HT's but it was my partners favorite and one of the most fragrant roses in my garden so I tolerated it.

Carla, I agree, I have finally gotten to the point where I can get rid of the undeserving, too much disease, too prone to thrips or even I just changed my mind. Life's short and my garden is small. Move em' out.
Sammy, I hated to see your post. I have been wanting Prairie Star for ages, boo hoo.
Maryl, I got rid of Day Breaker last year. I spray every week, no matter what I did it was a mess with BS. My other roses were fine. Also it was the worst thrip magnet in the garden. It kept pumping out loads of blooms, but I couldn't take the mess any more.

For me it was Aychymist. I will be cutting it down this Spring and treat it as a shrub intead of a climber.

Huh. I have a lot of the roses mentioned and almost never get blackspot, maybe just a few freckles here and there. There was some early in my rose growing career, and I almost never spray but I do garden and fertilize organically. Of course there's some susceptibility in some roses, but do you think that it has a lot to do with soil condition? For instance, if the soil doesn't drain well enough, or if the nutrients aren't balanced? Any thoughts on this?

-Gala

PS: the worst case of BS I ever saw was on a huge ZD. ugh, I thought even though I like the blooms, I could never have her in my garden. Yet I think she's the favorite climber on HMF, so some must be taming the shrew.

Funny how different our experiences can be with the same variety of rose. I had mentioned that Moore's Striped Rugosa doesn't tolerate spray, and Paul (Trospero) corrected me by saying it does. OK, MINE chemical burned from it, and I've heard others say the same thing. I smiled, too, when Sunnishine mentioned Livin' Easy & Easy Goin' being bad blackspotters. My Livin' Easy never got more than a trace of it, even growing next to a bad BS'er. Just goes to show the value of taking everyone's advice with a grain of salt. We each have particular growing conditions that can greatly effect health outcomes. And sometimes our particular plants even differ in constitution from others of the same variety. That's why its good to get as wide an array of input as possible, and even then treat none of it as gospel etched in stone.

Mike

I spray pretty regularly, but even so Crimson Bouquet & Pharaoh were in competition for this title. I did a dormant spray before covering the bushes for the winter, they are at opposite ends of the bed, and I will begin spraying early in the year 2009, but I still expect them to compete again this year. Eventually I may give up on them, but the red is just so PRETTY...