What does the foliage look like? What sort of "white fungus"??? Powdery mildew??? How old were the plants? What roses were they? Where are you located? Jeri Coastal Ventura Co., SoCal

Jim, I don't think American Pillar would die from too little water. My garden has been in drought for the past two years. I have two large American Pillars. One is along a fence line and only gets rainwater. The other is in a potentially worse situation; it grows at the base of a mature walnut and up into that walnut about 35'. That walnut takes up available moisture. Last summer my place was in the exceptional drought catagory from July through October. Both American Pillars came through last summer with no cane loss. Verticillium wilt can kill roses quickly. If the rose appears not to have rotted in place (and that would bring in a whole lot of different saprophytic fungi), if I were you, I'd contact Cornell and ask if they could check for fungal or bacterial problems on both roots and stems.

Did the canes just go black and start rotting? That has been the most common way for me to loose roses in the last few years. They just seem to rot for no reason. Could be me but I have heard of others with the same problem. Best of luck sorry I can't offer much advice without a picture. Regards, Andrew

I tend to agree, nik, and I don't use mulch -- too much of a hinderance with the type of irrigation I use, not congruent with this climate, and, most likely, not water-conserving enough to offset the downsides (and effort!) of using it. At some point I do need to seek out the literature on this question and try to justify this personal prejudice of mine... My own Armillaria disaster didn't involve mulch, but root contact with a decaying stump that was infected with it, then root-to-root transmission through the rest of the bed, aided and abetted by irrigation.