Zack please keep us up dated on how it goes. Good Luck

Sorry for your misfortune, Zack. Gemini is a great rose, too!

In my experience with RRV, it is not a rampantly spreading disease...a one bush in a bed kind of thing. Has your experience been similar?

If yes, let's hope this present case is a one and only event.

Moses

Oh, Zack, I'm sorry. Hopefully catching it early WILL minimize the chance of further infections. But if I were you, I'd be making the rounds in the neighborhood looking for the source; upwind of course, and most likely in someone's yard where they have a rose or two, but aren't a "rose nut" and are clueless about RRV.

Here, the problem is R. multiflora growing in every field, pasture, fence row and ditch. There's no eliminating all of them. I hope you don't have to contend with that.

I've already lost three roses so far this year...and July is when new infections start showing up.

(Waiting for the hammer to fall) John

I knew it was just a matter of time before it would show up, as just about everything shows up eventually when you grow 200 rose bushes. I've had enough time to space out my plants to minimize the spread of disease--ten years ago they were in clusters of four or six plants.

Sorry to hear that Zack!

You were wise to spread out your plants Zack. That helps on so many fronts! I have had two plant in the past four years come down with it. Interestingly, I noticed that on one of the two plants, even the roots were weird --- lots of proliferation and knots.

Here in central Michigan, I noticed too that for the last two years we have had "silent" springs, in the sense that during my daily commute to work through the countryside, the blooming multifloras were absent. Usually, they garland all of the road side ditches and edges of the woods. They have vanished!

Sunny

Zack,

With the huge amount of multiflora along your southern sea coast (just from what I saw in bloom several years ago) and so much that comes inland in CT's wild spaces, CT is going to have major problems. You know this already.
You aren't going to want to do this, but if I were you (and I have been with RRD rampantly around me), for taller roses I prune to see through roses. No wonderful dense (aka mite catcher) bushes.
Also consider interplanting grasses that can be habitat for predaceous thrips. And even worse spider mites are good as they really love to eat the vector mites of RRv.

More later.

Ann

So sorry to hear this Zack. I keep watching the Multiflora in my area, so far no signs of it. I worry though that I'll buy an infected plant from one of the mail order houses. Such a scary and devastating disease.

Sharon

I agree with Moses ...if you catch an RRD infected plant quickly and remove it completely, your chances are decent that the rest of the bed won't be affected. After a few weeks, even another rose planted in its place has a good chance of staying clean.

However, if allowed to linger like on the closely-spaced, mass plantings of Knock Out we seem to have on every corner, EVERY SINGLE PLANT will look like a horror movie.

If your rrd/rrv has gone systemic in your rose i.e. traveled to the roots. Your roses new growth will show the disease. It will not sit there looking all healthy and pretty. Rrd just can't sit dormant in the rose so to speak. It will either be sick and the new growth will look infected or it will be healthy. That is a benefit of catching this wretched disease at it earliest stage.