Well Good Morning to all of you who have added your helpful information to me while I slept. I looked out the window this morning at my now very sparse EDF and then came in here and read all of your input and I think I have decided that I will treat her to/with/for another year in place. Today I will gather every possible leaf that I might have missed, put another several inches of soil on top of that and then use Liqui-Cop to drench the canes and the soil. In the spring and summer I will pay attention to every leaf and see if I can keep the disease at bay. If she resists my attempts at renovation, I will dig her out of her current place, put her in a big pot, and see if that helps. I'm really not into giving up on her yet, although I was very tempted at some point in yesterday's conversations. Gee, I may have painted that shed behind her blue just to set off her lovely color....? For the record, the place she is in is not optimal. She's on the south side of a shed with an overhanging roof. She does get drip irrigation, but there are yellow flag iris crowding her roots (I try to keep them out, but they are pushy), and this year I made a tactical error by crowding rather a lot of potted plants around her base. Oh yeah, and the chickens do love to take dust baths in her shade. Poor girl. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to share your experiences with me. I've had roses for too long to be so ignorant of what I am really doing with and to them.

I'm cautious about organic time release fertilizer. I would use only once for cold zone (6 months of growth), and twice for warm zone. Small correction needed there. You are assuming all time released fertilizers work on a 6 month basis. I believe that if you read the small print, you will find that some of them work on either a 3 month or a 4 month basis also. Just depends on which type you buy. If gardeners enjoy fussing this much over their roses, then go to it! Whatever works is fine. Myself, I've been gardening for 30 years and don't put in anywhere close to that much effort--and I'll put up my roses against anybody's else's. Basically, unless you have really abnormal soil, I don't think you need to do all that messing with it. I usually add a couple shovel's full of humus or manure or something like that at planting time. Some years I add a circle of manure around the rose--other years I don't. Other than that, about all a rose needs is regular watering (rain or hose) and an occasional feeding of a balanced fertilizer (10-10-10, for instance). Some springs I've been too busy to get to a spring feeding. Guess what--the roses bloomed beautifully anyway. Like most people here, I like alfalfa--I may spread it once a year -- or not, depending on whether I have time or not. The roses still bloom beautifully, either way. And like most gardeners here, I avoid insecticides. There are usually other ways to handle insects--like, be patient and wait for the good bugs to arrive and eat 'em up. Amazing how often that works quite well! I do spray a fungicide occasionally, but I go out of my way to plant only highly disease-resistant roses, so many of my roses need little or no spraying of fungicide. In other words, get back to basics. Give the roses sun, water them regularly (rain or hose), and feed them occasionally. That about covers most of their needs as far as I'm concerned. Oh, I forgot one other essential--lots of mulch! : ) That's my most time-consuming chore--refreshing the mulch each year. Kate

We use a combination of Nickel Plus and K-Phite. It's working great. We spray with both, using a sticker-spreader we got at Tractor Supply. We also add their blue dye now, because it helps us see where we have missed a spot. It isn't very easy to see through goggles, with sweat pouring down in your eyes. Just avoid spraying any blossoms, unless you are really desperate for a blue daylily. We were advised to spray once a week for 3 weeks, then wait 3 weeks before spraying again. I've only sprayed once this fall, since it has been raining off and on ever since. Occasionally, I will have a plant that shows sign of rust, but nothing like it was before I started using the nickel. I wouldn't use anything else. Well, let me take that back. I am going to try some Actinovate on just a few isolated and unimportant plants to see how it works. The only thing I don't like is having to don all that protective gear, but I wouldn't have it otherwise. I'm very cautious. We use goggles, a special pesticide mask we bought at Lowes, chemical gloves (also at Lowe's), rubber boots and a yellow rain slicker. My hubby and our yardman refuse to put on a garbage bag drawstring skirt, but if I'm doing the spraying, I wear that, too. I'll have to get my hubby to take a picture of me in that fancy outfit so everyone can get a good laugh. When the weather is warm, we get very sweaty in all that garb! We start very early in the morning while it is still cool. We have a big tank sprayer on wheels we pull behind our riding lawn mower. It runs on the lawn mower battery. We got an extra length of hose so we can cover more territory. One of us drives the lawn mower while the other sprays. I could do it by myself, but it takes longer to have to keep stopping to move the mower ahead. We wash the tank out thoroughly after spraying and run clear water through the wand when we have finished. Aren't you cold climate people lucky??? Nancy

You can also use Bonide Fung-Onil. Both the Ortho and the Bonide have the same concentration of Daconil. Some stores carry the Bonide but not the Ortho. ****** YES!!! bcday knows that I'm growing quite a few tomato varieties that are new to all or most b'c I send her the seeds for same and she does most of the seed production for SSE listings, etc. So like a jerk I called my local Agway Saturday not remembering it was a Holiday and also called the local hardware store; they weren't home either. This AM I called Agway and at first mentioned Ortho Garden Disease Control, they had none, Steve called the main warehouse in PA and they were totally out and said they did expect some in in about two weeks. So then I mentioned the Bonide Fung-Onil and Steve actually had a pint of it in the store and NOW! I kept saying thru this whole conversation that I wanted the 29.6% chlorothalonil and he kept asking me to spell it and then said he had copper spray which says on the side Blight and I said no way. he said you really do know what you want, don't you. LOL He was not in the mood to be told that Daconil acutally blocks the LB and fungal foliage receptor sites on the leaves.( smile) Then call Freda, Freda will pick it up tomorrow and then we see if my pump sprayer is still alive, but if not, she can use the 2 gal watering can just as well. Everything will get it, the tomatoes, potatoes, cukes and squash, the latter two primarily for mildew and Daconil is great for mildew. I'm just not willing to take a chance on the special tomato varieties I'm growing but I can't get out there with the walker to even see if anything is going on with the tomatoes. Freda will do that tomorrow, but then there's more rain, heavy T storms predicted today and tomorrow, so we may wait until Wednesday to spray. Carolyn