Well, I went out with some colleagues tonight and am winding down, so that part of the brain isn't engaging, but the staking job is the typical unacceptable POS that will severely damage the tree if not ended immediately. The venation looks Oleaceous and therefore some kind of ash with the 5 leaflets, which are particularly susceptible to low-quality landscaping and poor planting practices, which this tree exhibits in abundance. harrumph!! IOW: the clowns that put it in were incompetent and its half dead. I used to carry around tools to fix these issues when I saw them. Dan

Hi Reneeâ¦. Lets see.. The gooey mush in the center of the flowers is a mixture of extra stamens and almost like a sap, could the wasps have anything to do with this? I will definitely try to make it to the San Jose Rose Garden! None of the bushes have tags, but that would be very helpful ï Michaelg⦠yes if the bushes continue to produce what I consider ugly flowers they will be going but if it is a problem I can solve I will give them the benefit of the doubt and see if I canâÂÂt help them within the next year. Unfortunately they were planted at the very front of a 7ft deep flower bed, so it is hard to see the other plants behind them, this is not helping their case! So it sounds like as long as I am diligent in removing the possibly diseased leaves none of the diseases will continue to spread. Thanks you so much for your diagnoses. As far as watering I hold the hose on each plant for 60 seconds 3 times a week, I would rough estimate this is about 6 gallons a week based on how long it takes to fill up my 2 gallon watering can. As far as fertilizer I am using Maxsea, it is a sea weed based fertilizer and came highly recommended by my local nursery. It looks good and I can see my other plants are very happy with it. Hi Jeri, I am with you on removing unsightly foliage and it seems like as long as I keep doing this the diseases shouldnâÂÂt spread. Thank you so much for the link to the San Jose Heritage Garden, it seems they give free lessons in Jan-Feb so I will definitely be attending! Iris_gal Yes I own lots of gardening books, but it is often more helpful to learn about problems that are specific to your area instead of guessing at which diseases may even be applicable. Glad to hear this is not the best time of year for roses as they are seeming like a lot of fuss for not much garden benefit. Hopefully if I start taking care of them now, next year they will perform much better. Thanks all for the advise, I will remove any bad looking foliage and hopefully that will eradicate the diseases. Also I will make sure they are getting at least 5 gal/week of water! I am definitely glad to hear that most of the problems are not too serious, except perhaps if the mushy centers are a genetic problem!

I planted a hawthorne last year and discovered the same thing. The extension recommendations say spray the hawthorne in the spring, three times before flowering. Spray the junipers in the fall with a different fungicide no less. I removed all the galls I could find this spring on the junipers and sprayed the hawthorne once. I hate chemicals. A man at a local nursery said there are organic sprays to use and I may do that. We paid a lot for the tree. There are tons of the same variety hawthorne around town and cedars and junipers everywhere. I'm just not jumping in to cut it down yet. The one spray I did kept 98% of the rust away and the tree looks fine this year. Presumably it won't then be infecting the junipers so they can send it back to the hawthorne, but I can't say the same for any other trees around. The nursery man (not the same one that sold us the tree) thinks we should keep it. I plan to give the spraying routine a year or two and see what happens.

They probably have early blight. It works from the bottom then up the plant. The time to treat it is earlier in the season either before you see the problem or at least right away. And then you need to spray regularly. A lot of us don't want to use sprays and just don't. Farmers will continue to spray fungicides now but it is not recommended for the home gardener because to won't be very effective. It happens to all of us at some time or another. Fungus spreads from the soil, by wind and by wetness. After you harvest all you can, throw the plants and debris in the garbage. Plant tomatoes in a different area next year.