This is an example of fertilizer burn. If your leaves look like this, try flushing out some of the fertilizer with lots of water. Or repot.

You certainly have picked some nice roses! They are going to be great for you this summer. The fragrance of Jude the Obscure is amazing, as is Munstead Wood -- I LOVE those roses.

Of course there are plenty of other possibilities, but my guess is that your leaves are crisping because of fertilizer burn. Most potting soil has fertilizer in it already, and the fertilizer in the soil won't run out for the first little while (how long depends on too many factors for me to make a generalization about it, but I don't fertilize my pots in their first year). I have given young roses (bands, which are much younger than your bare roots) fertilizer burn simply by planting them in Miracle Gro potting soil, with no additional additives. Once the potting mix starts to leach out its fertilizer, you will want to give the roses occasional fertilizer, but not too much.

If I were you, at a minimum, I would stop fertilizing or adding anything to the plants, and just give them water and sun for a few months. If the fertilizer burn gets worse, I would definitely re-pot the affected plants, using a different potting soil, and not adding anything to it. I'm sure others will have other suggestions, and people in your zone would be able to tell you if they think it is the weather, etc.

The good news is that roses are tough, and don't mind a bit of benign neglect.

Thank you everyone! MAD, my Jude's new growth is mostly a uniform apple-green, and the affected leaves (about a quarter to a third of them) display brown at the edges and are definitely crispy-feeling there. With MW, it's harder to tell, as the new growth is burgundy, but some of the leaf edges are also crispy and blackened. Not any have whole leaves like that, though. It's good to hear that the LOS is being characteristically vigourous. Thank you K S for the knowledge about young roses and fertilizer burn! I will curb my helicopter-mom tendencies. I had heard so much about how roses were heavy feeders, and was looking forward to doing a "feed weakly, weekly" routine, but I will find some less intense way to baby the new plants!

The “feed weakly, weekly” regimen is for water soluble fertilizers on mature plants to boost bloom production.

The problem with fertilizing young plants is they may not have a big enough root system to support all the top growth you are forcing with the constant feeding. Come summer, all that lush new green growth may wilt and dry up because the root system can’t take up enough water.

For young roses, it’s recommended you only use organic water soluble fertilizers for the 1st year. No granular slow release fertilizer.

You can “feed (very) weakly, weekly” if you use organic fish 5-1-1 fertilizer or something similar.

Like KS said, Miracle Grow potting soil already has 3(???) months worth of granular fertilizer in it so you may want to wait at least that long.

On newly planted plants you can also water weakly, weekly with a Vitamin B solution, instead of fertilizer, to encourage root growth and reduce transplant shock. I’m not sure this actually works, but some people swear by it. I do it in case it does help : D

Hi! Pot culture is a lot different than growing roses in the ground. Are these going to stay in pots, or be planted? I would hold off on anything else for now, but I’m pretty sure Osmocoat is ok for pots as needed. There are several people on the forum that do well growing in pots, you may want to search or start a new thread if that’s your long term plan. I’m awful with pots, much better in the ground for me! Good luck!

Ahhhh, that's so helpful, MAD! It was confusing wondering which growth to prioritize in a bare root transplanted rose, the roots or the aerial portions. I did nothing but sunlight and water for my hibiscus and it bloomed and bloomed into the fall and is now almost foot taller than when I got it (also been repotted for spring). I'm glad I got the liquid fish emulsion; I will use that and only that on the plants this year, and then only when they're more filled out. That Vitamin B suggestion seems interesting to research!

Dingo2001, these roses will be in pots indefinitely. If they take off after this year I will get them into bigger pots, but for now I don't trust this random city dirt that seems like a lot more trouble to treat and amend (clay? fire ants? iffy water table? risk of flooding due to bad drainage? welcome to Houston!). I would love to have a permanent rose garden at home, but rent being what it is, that'll have to wait. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the process of helping these babies grow, and if they ever need to find new homes because of space considerations, hopefully they'll be healthy enough for some of y'all to trade or something. I like many types of plants, but find rose culture and rose people the most interesting!

Fire ants. One big factor in me moving back north. My loathing has no limit.

Update: phone still broken, so I can't provide pics, but MAD was right on the money. I put gallons and gallons of water through the Munstead Wood and Jude the Obscure pots a couple times this week (luckily they drain very quickly), and now they are more leafed-out, with the new growth not showing any crispiness, so they're catching up and have little thorns on canes about 6 inches. Jude's new leaves are burgundy mixed with green, and tender. We had the first day this year when temperatures started to approach 90 degrees, and my Lady of Shallott, which last night was a perfect foot-tall specimen, began to wilt. I probably did push her too much too early, before the roots could support all the new growth, just like MAD said. LoS will be moved to a spot that's shadier at noon, and I'll start trying to flush out the excess fertilizer in that pot too. Hopefully she'll slow down and start focusing on her roots. Thanks again for the advice!

You're welcome. It's good to hear they are doing better. Good luck & happy growing : )

All the plants have buds and Munstead Wood is the first to bloom-- 9 flowers have opened and 9 more developing. I gave them water and nothing else for weeks, then as they started getting bigger, sprinklings of bloodmeal and half-doses of fish emulsion. At some point I tried giving them a bit of diluted potassium with indeterminate results. (Maybe because I got muriate of potash instead of the potassium chloride, sulfide or whatever it is that's supposed to be better?) Once I gave them water left over from cooking beans (no salt) and they seemed to like it fine. Sorry I don't have any pictures of the whole plants yet, but they do seem like they are taking off. Though Munstead Wood, Lady of Shallot, and Jude the Obscure are growing with big open spaces between canes-- I don't know if these are the reported David Austin octopus arms, or pest damage to terminal shoots that would otherwise fill out the center of the bush, or particular growth habit in Houston, TX weather, or if it's just something it'll grow out of after a year and some pruning. The other, younger two plants that I've messed with the least, Lady Emma Hamilton and Brother Cadfael, have much more attractive foliage and look more bushy/shrubby. LEH has sixteen buds already and is nicely rounded, while BC, who has been growing tall thick canes and took the longest to leaf out and bud, looks more like a sturdy column shape. They are all at least two to three and a half feet off the soil level. So far the scent on MW is very sweet, like berry candy and rosewater (rather than dried rose petals), and seems stronger after a fish emulsion feeding. Can't wait for the others! Thanks to everyone for being present on this forum. I've been going through a lot of posts and learning a bunch!

I know I’m late posting this, but maybe some future reader like me will see it and be helped. Our local rose society says never use Miracle-Gro on David Austin roses because MG contains salts and the David Austins don’t like the salts. Before I learned this I used it on them and they looked burned and wilted by the next day. Other roses in the yard were fine with MG, but not the DA’s. Also, you can pick off the damaged leaves and they’ll be back in about 3 weeks, except climbing roses seem to take longer.