Having been the victim of severe early spring freezes several years ago, my roses had to undergo an equally severe pruning to get rid of damaged canes. Definitely cut them back about an inch below the black part. But check and see if the center of the cut area is a nice healthy white. If not, cut back more until you come to that clear white center. That well could be back to the soil line in some cases. However, new growth will depend on the rose having a healthy root system. If the rose does not have good roots, I would start looking around for the reason--eaten off by critters? poor drainage? burned roots from multi-chemical fertilizers like Bayer (any of those all-in-one, 3-in-one, etc., products). Newly planted roses should not be fed until they have produced significant growth in their new spot. Since you have already potted the rose, I'd guess the best you can do now is prune as I indicated above, water regularly, and keep it in semi-shade for about a month. Maybe it can be babied back to health. Good luck, Kate

Clip off the black canes. That's canker. Be sure to sanitize your pruners between cuts so you don't spread it. I find it fairly normal to get canker on new bareroots but I can usually catch it before it spreads very far. I've found that as long as you cut those canes before it gets too far that the roses do fine. Where are you and how much rain have you been getting? I think I get canker in the spring because of all the rain I've been getting. If you're getting as much rain as I have then you might want to pull the mulch away from the canes and stop misting then. Although, if the canes are turning brown and not black, and there was some growth on the roses before you planted them, then this might be normal die back of the growth that formed out of the sunlight. That type of growth will usually turn brown and die off. It's nothing to worry about. Either way, you should cut off the dead canes.

Buford, The one time I'll go in and cut lowest is when the cane is mushy. This hasn't happened often, and I don't know what the disease is, but sometimes the cane has leaves that don't look good, and I'll wiggle it to see if it's broken and it's not broken, it's mushy. Then I will cut lowest possible, usually in stages and I follow the cleanliness regime that Cass recommends (sometimes with adding bleach in between cuts to the secateurs if I think the disease has a real lethal potential.) The cleanliness that Cass talks about is so important. About rugosas: We visited a garden Wednesday where we'd watched two beds that were primarily Pink Grootendorsts with a few interplanted forsythia. One bed is gone, replaced with grass. In the eight years we've watched these, only one plant had gotten Rose Rosette, and we'd pruned the sick canes off; that bush is still RRD-free. But with no care, another plant is a RRD mess now and forsythia is taking over. The remaining five Pink G's are mostly dead canes. In my part of the world, have have seen this dead cane thing on rugosas in my yard, I try to cut them back as far as possible and it makes a better looking rose. But I've seen some mass plantings of rugosas up in the mountains (clear zone 6 cold) and many of the rugosas are mostly similar dead canes. Down here, the rugosas aren't 'no care'. The cause? Sometimes you'll see a swelling on the canes. I've sent some of those to some plant pathologists who couldn't find any boring insects or other pathogen. I'm afraid we may learn more about rugosa diseases as northern Europeans consider ways to fight and kill rugosas which are becoming known in parts of Scandanavia as invasive alien species.

New growth isn't a clear indication that the plant is growing. True growth is measured by a plant's increase in dry weight; so, if a plant is shedding a leaf and growing a leaf, it's roughly in a static state, which is not a good place for a plant to be. I'm not necessarily saying the leaf ISN'T being shed as a result of normal senescence, only that new growth might not indicate an o/a increase in mass. There is no better fertilizer program than one you can control to the degree you know exactly what nutrients your plant is getting, how much of each, and when nutrients will be available for uptake. There is an ideal level of nutrients in the soil and an ideal fractional amount of each in comparison to each and all of the others. Most plants use about 10X as much N as P, and about 3/5 as much K as N. The rest of the nutrients also have an ideal level determined by a function of N levels and the overall level of total dissolved solids (TDS) in the soil solution. Adding tonics, miracle concoctions, or supplements targeting an increase in 1 or 2 nutrients w/o good reason or a strong likelihood what you are doing is going to correct a deficiency, is far more likely to result in limitations than benefits. Al