Texas is actually mostly pretty good for roses, you just have to know the secret passwords.

If your roses are "bone dry", you might drench them, or you might need to dig them out & replace whatever material is around the roots.

Peat is a bad bad bad material;

not only is it a *preservative*, which means it stops biological activity, but it also wicks water away from plant roots.

The roses might be turning yellow from blackspot;

it starts as yellowing leaves, & then the sooty-looking black spots appear.

It's a fungus, & you can kill it with, if I remember correctly, baking soda & water.

Remove the infected leaves & put them in a trash bag & send them to the landfill.

Then mix baking soda & water in a spray bottle & spray the whole plant, leaves, canes, & the undersides of leaves, heavily.

Don't use any chemical fertilizers on your roses, & don't fertilize at the times of year when the roses are likely to go dormant: winter & summer.

Winter dormancy seems "normal", but in Texas we get a lot of summer dormancy, too.

Plants just cannot function in the heat, & they shut down to conserve energy & wait for a better day!

Also, the very most important consideration for hardiness here is the type of rose.

Hybrid teas in Texas need to belong to a retired person with a greenhouse & a gardener!

Roses that do well here are Chinas, Teas (the old-fashioned tea roses, not Hybrid Teas), a lot of the David Austins, & if you want to know the absolute best proven roses for Texas, look up Earthkind Roses.

Earthkind isn't a brand or a type of rose;

it's a designation bestowed by...I forget who...on roses that have proven themselves in test gardens with no care to speak of.

You might also post on the Roses Forum, too;

there are a lot of really expert people over there!

It would be hard to overwater a rose as long as the soil is well drained. My feeling is that underwatering is more likely the problem, at least in these last few weeks of hot and dry weather. Since your roses have not been in the ground long enough to develop a wide ranging and deep root system the smaller immature root area needs to be watered more often.

Over fertilizing can be a problem, but as you say the rain should have washed that away. The foliage on some (not all) of my roses which were well fertilized this spring turned almost white from lack of nitrogen after all the rain. I fertilized them again with a slow release product purchased at Walmart, Miracle-Gro Shake 'n Feed for Acid Loving Plants, but it has yet to take effect. Some rose varieties pretty much shut down growth when it is so hot, but will perk up beautifully when we start getting cooler nights.

But I'm just guessing here. For real expert advice call a consulting rosarian listed on the left bar of the San Antonio Rose Society web site. They will be happy to talk to you and will even come out to your house to help pin point the problem. I belonged to the society for many years and found them to be a very helpful and dedicated group. They meet once a month and always have a good program related to the season. Do call them.

Edit: Thanks for your comments Sylvia. I was composing my answer and looking up the rose society site when you posted.

What Sylvia said. TX summers can be rough on roses, especially babies. This Aug. is a HOT one.

The crisping leaves concerns me that the granular fertilizer may still be having a bad effect. They are all salts & just like table salt, they're very drying. You can burn plants with organics, too, but granulars are a lot more potent & tricky to use.

Also, that your soil around them is "bone dry" 5-6" deep--that's too dry. Yes, roses can be overwatered, but that doesn't sound like the problem now.

I'd suggest starting with a good, DEEP watering. Water them well with a hose, make several passes around the yard hitting each plant repeatedly until the dirt is SATURATED. Stick a screwdriver down around them to make sure. It's harder to get it deeply, completely, wet using sprinklers--try to use a hose. For example, fill a 5 gallon bucket from your hose, counting how many seconds it takes--takes me about 30 seconds or so. So when I'm watering, I know it will take at least 30-60 seconds watering from a hose to get 5-10 gallons of water onto a plant--a deep saturating watering for a small shrub or young tree.

After you've got your roses watered very well, mulch the heck out of them to retard evaporation--leaves, bark chips, old hay--whatever will cover the bare soil to help hold moisture in.

Then keep them well watered throughout this hardest part of the year. Usually, by mid Sept, just 5 weeks off, temps moderate & there starts to be a big improvement in how roses look.

Also, don't feel bad that some of the odd colored roses, e.g. Sterling Silver, Cale Ole, look & perform middlin. SS is a famous wimp! I love it & grow it, but it will never be "KnockOut" robust--it just doesn't have the genetics. Such specialty roses will always be your problem children & need a bit more babying through the worst weather of the year. That's okay--I think they're worth it, but they might need a location of more moderate temps, like partial shade, if you have them in pots where they can be moved.

And that's another thing to consider with these young plants that are crisping--if you can't move them to part shade, cover them a bit with burlap, shade cloth, even a lawn chair to help them recover from scalding for the next few weeks.

Hang on, give them some supportive treatment & wait for fall--often our very best rose season!

My roses are not doing well in this heat either. The newly planted ones in afternoon sun are fairing the worst, and the established ones in part-shade are fairing the best. I would continue to water, and I bet they will perk up in Fall! Mine were doing great during the Monsoons of Spring, so I doubt over-watering is the problem especially if they're dry 6 inches in.

Tken, I stopped one day when I saw the homeowner in the front yard at a home where I'd admired a pair of luscious Climbing Pinkies for years.

I told him how much I liked them, & he showed me the one in the back yard that had been bought & planted at the same time & had had the same care.

It was maybe 1/4 to 1/3 bigger, darker green, more flowers.

It had eastern sun, & the ones in the front had western sun.