Purlisa: I no longer post for the pubic, but I make exceptions when people ask for me specifically. I respect & learn from honest folks like you who share about their garden. I learn more from honest folks who talk about problems in their garden, than gorgeous pics. of roses (with zero details as to type of soil & pH-level & climate & annual rainfall). That's my pet-peeve in HMF, folks just post pics, without specifying if it's own-root or grafted, zero info. on planting zone & type of soil & climate. If you click on my Houzz profile-picture , I updated to include tips on how to tell which own-roots are appropriate for which soil pH, type of soil & climate, just by looking at the leaves. https://www.houzz.com/user/strawchicago I received 8 roses yesterday 6/15 from RU summer sale, they are BIG, and some are over 2 feet tall & with buds & blooms .. very healthy. These roses are bigger & more blooms that the 7 roses I bought full-price early May. My last house was acidic clay: soft & easy to dig, with blue hydrangeas & deep-colors roses. My current house is alkaline clay: rock-hard, need a pick-ax to dig, pink hydrangeas, and roses have faded colors. Roses are much healthier in alkaline clay. My purpose of posting is to help foiks NOT to make the same mistakes like I did in my 30+ years of growing roses, and 110 own-root varieties. My B.S. is in Computer Science, minor in Chemistry, so I want to use my background to help folks. If you have sticky & dense clay, skip the Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate), since it hardens clay further. MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY IS RARE, EXCEPT IN SANDY SOIL (this is from the booklet when I got my soil tested by EarthCo.) My sticky clay soil was tested exceedingly high in magnesium. Skip the molasses, I tested for many years and it attracts rose-slugs, plus sugarly stuff LOWERS soil pH, sugar sours things fast. Azomite is similar to dolomitic lime (both have pH 9), but Azomite works faster. Digging deep, and remove the dense & icky clay & rocks at bottom helps with drainage, so acidic rain water don't sit at the bottom to rot roots. If your clay soil is acidic, COARSE sand (paver's sand) is good on top. BAGGED SAND AT STORES IS VERY ALKALINE, so it will neutralize the acidity of rain. Niels in Denmark, with hundreds of roses, put sand on top of his acidic clay. Skip the alfalfa, it becomes VERY ACIDIC like Kimchi if decays in acidic rain water. Many folks report roses breaking out in blackspots after "sour alfalfa tea", it's like watering roses with sauerkraut or Kimchi-water. At least Kimchi or sauerkraut has salt to control the acidity, but I already tested acidic-alfalfa-tea and it made leaves thinner, thanks to its acidity. Since my clay is rock-hard alkaline at pH near 8, I use acidic pine bark (pH 4) to fix my clay. People root roses in sand. I read a book by a CA rose-grower on the coast (mild temperate climate), he bought a land filled with sand and converted into a rose nursery, to sell cut-flowers !! Here's an excerpt from Houzz when I googled on clay .. folks in CA have heavy abode clay, while I have dolomitic clay. But both are mineral-rich clay. Kittymoonbeam have over 100+ roses in Southern CA, wrote this in Houzz .. from my experience I agree with her 100% .. I killed plenty of roses with acidic organic matter in the planting hole. And Roses Unlimited's tip of 1 cup of alfalfa meal mix-in WORKS ONLY FOR THEIR ALKALINE-TAP WATER inside nursery, but NOT FOR OUTDOOR ACIDIC RAIN, with pH 4.5 in my Chicagoland, and even more acidic rain on the East Coast. Kittymoonbeam - "I just came from a soils class by a local nurseryman. He said DON'T add organic amendment into the soil. The plants only tolerate it, not prosper in it. The short of it is that eventually it breaks down and rots causing oxygen problems in the root zone. A NASA guy said NO terrestrial plant wants to live in ground up dead tree. So most potting soils are only good for maybe 5 months, then they start harming plants. The growers know the plants can only survive a short period before they decline in that mix. Potting up in non amended soil causes no harm. You can grow in 100 percent sand as long as you water and feed often enough. Strawberry leaves from plants grown in sand were twice the size of those in the premium potting mix! There are no overwatering issues. Why the change from propagation in soil to wood products is a long story. However, we've all been taught to do it. But no one ever used to in the old days. Disneyland removed their riverbed soil and replaced with amended soil. After a few years, they took it all out and purchased new riverbed sandy loam and now they only mulch on top. This is all new to me but that's the way it was for millions of years. The organic stuff stays on top where it breaks down and travels to the roots below. Roots want a purely mineral soil with as much oxygen as they can get and still be moist." Kittymoonbeam. Lauren (Los Angeles, 10a, Sunset Zone 19) - kittymoonbeam, that does seem to make sense. Limited personal experience has also showed me that top dressing compost with shredded leaves/mulch produced better results than than simply mixing some compost into the surrounding soil" Lauren

You might want to run some dehumidifiers in your house. We are building a new house and needed to acclimate the wood before the floors went down. Because of all the paint and drywall that had just been done, the house was very humid and the builder brought in several dehumidifiers to help with the problem. I just turned our A/C on yesterday - we are in western PA and I don't know how you're surviving without A/C. Could you at least get a window unit? When we lived in our first house in New York state, I was pregnant and miserable in the heat and humidity and it was amazing what a difference that one A/C window unit made to the comfort level in the house. Good luck! I don't envy you... Patti

Okay, before I continue, Roseguy you MUST post some pics of your rose garden here. 1000 ROSES!?!?!?!?! Wow, and all in Florida. Please share. Rachel, based on what I know about the soil in Central Florida and what I know about the weather pattern up there, I would suggest you plan out what you want in detail and begin section by section. Never get rid of a rose. Let that thing die on its own before you toss it. I've had roses with dieback coming up and down the stem and seen it make it with some TLC, so never give up. Shoot, I have a Crescendo that I got bareroot from Breck's with massive crown gall that I know will eventually succumb but I can't get myself to give up completely! Here's what I'd do (for what's it's worth, lol): 1.) Plan out your yard. Use MS Publisher or get a cheap poster board and plot out where you want all your roses to go. Make sure to take into account the rose's habit as well as the color scheme that you're going for. With all that space you have, you can afford to space out your roses using the three foot rule. Also, make sure to place your roses in the sunniest spots of your land, no use putting them next to root greedy trees when they will already have a hard time establishing a good root system. 2.) Create beds for your roses. I have installed my beds using Castle Rock pavers. I purchase them a little every weekend and now I have great big beds that look good. Once the pavers are in place dig out the existing soil down one to two feet. The task is arduous, but if done in sections it will seem doable. Call C&C Peat or The Bushel Stop and have them deliver several yards of their potting soil to fill in your beds. 3.) Plant your roses one section at a time. Remember to cut them back a bit and to place the weaker/smaller bushes to the outer edges of your beds to give them plenty of room and sun to grow. 4.) Apply mulch and possibly ground cover to your beds. 5.) Get into the habit of mixing in fertilizer onto your roses. I like to create a tea using alfalfa pellets, fish emulsion, and seaweed extract. Occasionally, apply a water soluble fertilizer like miracle grow in cooler weather. Remember, during the June to August your job is to maintain your rose's existing leaves and not to grow it further, so fertilize during the cooler months. 6.) Develop a spray program that works for you. You have purchased quite an arsenal, but there's no point using something that is not needed. For Florida gardeners, the go-to chemicals are Banner Maxx/Honor Guard, Mancozeb, and Conserve SC. Cleary, Subdue Maxx, and Alliette are other great chemicals that can be applied between applications of the aforementioned spray program so your pests don't develop an immunity to any of the medicines. Spray every seven to fourteen days as needed. Spraying too frequently may actually hurt your plants. 7.) Come here for help. Years ago I found this site (then under a different incarnation that has undergone two major changes over the years) and I found the answers to questions I didn't even know to ask. Know that you are among friends that share you passion for roses. 8.) Understand that the past five months have been atypical. When the nursery that produces the roses I buy tell me that they have experienced the same problems that I have had due to difficult weather conditions, I relax at the thought that little ole me, with my limited resources, am not alone in the problems. With any luck, the recent weather pattern will usher new healthy growth and turn the tide that has brought so much hardship to our rose collections. Good luck! -Adrian.

msrpisi: I have 1 Mary Rose and 1 Heritage growing 3 feet apart. Over 10 years old each. 4-5 hours of sun a day, tops. MR gets a bit more. Your description of how MR does matches mine, re: BS/defoliation. That's with 1 March copper spray, and (past years) 1-2 "other" fungicide sprays per year. Good initial flush, then sparse smattering of bloom after big heat subsides. Heritage in past years has given 3 flushes a year - 1st best, of course. With same Rx as above, trivial BS and no to minimal defoliation. Last year I just did the single March spray on it - no difference. Some of the healthiest foliage of all my roses. I do see Heritage was near the top of this http://www.nybg.org/gardens/rose-garden/performers-2010.php list's rankings. Although, as it has good delicate fragrance, some of the high score reflected that (rather than just disease resistance and flower power). I'm presuming the 10 point scale system Peter K. used there was akin to the 100 point scale he used here: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3840656/spray-free-roses-spreadsheet-kukielski    Interesting Heritage doesn't even appear on the spreadsheet (or I missed it). FWIW, I'm about 20 miles from Manhattan. Hope that helps.