I have had some tough battles with rust in the past. You don't want to ignore it because it can weaken your plants so much. Pick off the worst leaves and wash down the whole plant with fungicide including the stems and the soil below. Get rid of all the old mulch, leaves and twigs under the rose and spray the soil with fungicide. Put down a thick layer of new mulch and spread it out as wide as you can beyond the rose. If there is poor air circulation, trim away crowding branches or branches of nearby plants. Then after the initial cleanup and treatment, begin to wash your plant every or every other day on the days that the sun will dry it off quickly. I get down low and sray upward to the undersides of the leaves. I also spray weekly with fungicide until I am sure that no new rust is forming on the leaves. I had good luck with this method. One year nearly half my roses were sick with rust. I cut them all back by half, removed EVERY last bit of mulch and debris and sick leaves on the plants. Then I sprayed everything every week and washed off the new leaves on sunny days. That winter, I cut them all very low and swept the ground with a fine rake and put new mulch down everywhere. The rust has never been that bad since. I think the best way to fight the rust is to pick off sick leaves and spray as soon as you see them, make sure you don't let bare soil splash onto the plants when watering, and I'm a big believer in giving the rust prone roses a bath on sunny days. Poor air circulation seems to be a big problem, so make sure you don't let others crowd in on your rose. You can beat rust. It is easier to beat than Black Spot. I was able to keep my rust prone varieties this way and I'm glad I did. I love thoes roses. They are good bloomers. They only need a bath now and then to keep them clean most years.

Hi Bluegirl: You are right about "the professor told us that iron oxide is unavailable to cows." I already tested iron sulfate on my rhododendrons ... didn't green up, but leaves turned brown, and the plants died. Iron sulfate burns root fast, it's very acidic, but plants can't use that. Chelated iron is in a form that plants can use. That's why I use Wholesome Organics molasses with 20% chelated iron, 20% potassium, and 17% calcium ... that greened up Excellenz von Schubert rose immediately. That rose is known for chlorosis and prefers acidic soil. People make the wrong assumption that lime added to tap water provides calcium to plants. They don't realize that form of lime, calcium oxide, is unstable, and binds with iron, phosphorus, and potassium ... making plants yellowish. See below from Wikipedia: "Calcium oxide is made by the thermal decomposition of materials such as limestone. This is accomplished by heating the material to above 825 °C (1,517 °F),[5] a process called calcination or lime-burning, to liberate a molecule of carbon dioxide (CO2); leaving quicklime. The quicklime is not stable and, when cooled ... after enough time, it will be completely converted back to calcium carbonate .... Calcium oxide is a key ingredient for the process of making cement." Calcium hydroxide is calcium oxide mixed with water. It's used in fresh water treatment for raising the pH of the water so pipes won't corrode. My tap water in my last house was neutral ... roses bloomed OK when watered with tap. But my tap water in my current house, alkaline soil, is hard-well water, pH 8. The soil where I watered with tap turned concrete, compare to the soil where it's just rain water. The practice of adding calcium hydroxide to water to prevent pipes from being rusty, is what glue up clay soil further, and raise the pH. Thus I get less flowering when watered with my tap (pH 8), versus rain water (pH 5.6). I put rock-hard limestone clay under drain-spout where rain water pours ... they become fluffy fine particles. Rain water (pH 5.6) through time can convert limestone into gypsum ... I already double- checked with the chemist in the Soil Forum. Gypsum occurs naturally and also is made by reacting sulfuric acid with calcium carbonate. Too much gypsum can hurt. Here's an excerpt from link below: "From intensive field observations of gypsiferous soils in Iraq, Smith and Robertson (1962) found that root growth was inhibited where the gypsum content of soil was over 10 percent." "Van Alphen and de los Rios Romero (1971) conclude that up to 2 percent gypsum in the soil favours plant growth, between 2 and 25 percent has little or no adverse effect if in powdery form, but more than 25 percent can cause substantial reduction in yields. They suggest that reductions are due in part to imbalanced ion ratios, particularly K:Ca and Mg:Ca ratios" K stand for potassium, Ca stand for calcium, and Mg stand for magnesium. That's why I use gypsum (17% sulfur and 22% calcium) to break up hard clay at the bottom of the planting hole .... and use sulfate of potash (23% sulfur and 20% potassium) to neutralize my pH 8 tap water. My pH 7.7 clay soil is tested exceedingly high in magnesium, Mg is what makes clay sticky. Calcium and potassium together help with best bloom formation. Below is a bouquet of roses: Radio Times (pink), Crown Princess Magareta (orange), and Paul Neyron (dark pink). They are fertilized with gypsum and sulfate of potash. Here is a link that might be useful: Effects of gypsum and calcium carbonate on plants This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Thu, Oct 31, 13 at 11:55

I know! Which is why I bought 3 bushes. One of them, in my perennial bed gets bs late in the season but the other two get bs to the point that I am considering removing them. I don't have any trouble with my Kiss Me or Sunrise Sunset, Kashmir, Como Park or my Weeks rose Drop Dead Red. If you want a good hybrid tea style red rose Drop Dead red and Kashmir have been good in my bs magnet garden in humid hot SW Ohio at the height of summer. i have had good luck so far with all my Kordes roses and with Belinda's Dream ( touch wood).

I live in Calif., and in the Fall some of my mid 20th century HTs get rust. NONE of my OGRs get rust, or my modern ground cover roses, or any of the other 100+ roses in my garden, just the HTs. I only have 4 HTs, and not planning on getting any more! Here's what I do when I see ANY sign of rust: Get a paper bag (I use the big brown grocery store ones). Get your clippers. and hold the bag underneath an affected leaf so it will fall directly into the bag. Clip (do not pull or "pick") each affected leaf gently off, and let it fall into the bag. This is because those orange spots are zillions of spores, and if they are even moved or jostled a tiny bit (like by pulling or picking), spores float off into your garden, on to other roses. (You may have been the vector which spread the rust around). After you have done this with EVERY leaf with those orange spots on the back of them, close the bag gently and put it into the garbage. Wash your hands. Dip your clippers in a bleach solution, and then clean with WD40. 2) Spray the roses with Bayer Advanced Disease Control (NOT any of the Bayer products which contain pesticides), making sure to get the underside and top of the leaves. 3) Peer at those roses periodically to see if they have more rust - check the undersides of the leaves, which is where it shows up. 4) REPEAT. This method works for me, and one or two times is usually all it needs to get rid of the rust until the following Fall (sometimes it shows up in the Spring too). Good luck - Jackie