In my hot and dry summers, even tho' I do deep watering of the roses on a regular basis, I still wash down the plants mid-afternoon because I believe it makes the plants more heat tolerant. Plants absorb moisture through the leaves as well as from the root zone. Washing the plant allows the leaves to be more effective, reduces insect damage and creates more humidity in the garden. At least once a week I will use the sprinkler to water the whole bed to simulate rain so that all of the soil in the bed is watered and any extended roots get watered too. Generally, I do all of my soil watering tasks in the mornings simply because it is too hot to work in the garden in the afternoons for long. It takes less than half an hour to wash down the plants in the afternoons and I have noticed that the plants seem to perk up after hours of intense heat and the blooms last longer. The temps in my garden can reach 100 degrees by 9am. I don't need to worry about bs once the summer heat hits, but I do have to worry about spider mites. Smiles, Lyn

Corn meal is the easiest and most full-proof method of getting rid of blackspot, powdery mildew and even the more serious and debilitating downey mildew. 3 cups regular cornmeal you bake/cook with at the base of each mature size rose - fluff it in the dirt and water the cornmeal in. There's something in the corn meal that will encapsulate mold spores. A fun way to experiment with the effectiveness of this "fix" is to leave all affected leaves on a plant, hit the surrounding soil with corn meal, and watch all new growth come in perfect, healthy and green. It's an amazing show of how well it works and usually impresses even non-gardeners. Corn meal used in spring and a time or two (when you start noticing a problem again with the plant; usually a couple months or longer) will keep the problem from appearing at all. Turns out this works on downey mildew very well. In a yard where several roses had completely died to this fungus, I used heavy doses of corn meal in the fall. We weren't sure how it would work on such a notorious disease, but this spring all growth is very healthy and not a trace of powdery mildew even with the warm days/cool nights of spring. The cornmeal you want is the baking/cooking kind, but you can find this much less costly at an agricultural feed store in 40 or 50 pound bags - split it with a buddy or just keep it 'round to use a couple of times a year if need be. The great thing about corn meal is when you see a problem starting again, you just add a bit more to the dirt.

I had a sweet chariot rose that didn't have ANY scent for a long while after I put it into the yard (and it arrived with scented flowers so I knew it wasn't the plant) Some extra nitrogen and some really good compost was the only thing I did and the scent came back. Now I just put some coffee grounds around for a bit of nitrogen every so often and have had scented flowers from then on.

If you follow the link below, it takes you to the tomato tone contents anaylsis. It shows TT to be a 4 7 10. This is quite a different ratio of Nitrogen in particular from the PT. I've never used Plant Tone, but my guess is with more nitrogen in PT, you will promote more leaf development and growth as opposed to promoting flowering. (This is a guess based on what others have said to similar posts in the past.) FYI, you can order TT on line from Espoma and probably other vendors. Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: tomato tone