I don't have any answers for you since we're in such different zones. But how about midge? Do you have crispy leaf tips? Maybe it's too hot for your roses to produce buds? Are you watering enough? Is your soil nice and loamy?

I'm really sorry for you. You are not a loser by any stretch of the imagination. I'm very proud of you for asking for help with this. When you answer my questions, it will provide so much information for everyone to help you. We're on your side. :)

Carol

I think it is your heat. Your rose's blooming will stall out at 90 F and above often. They should bloom beautifully again thanks to your great efforts in the Fall. My Tea roses bloom in heat but the blossoms are smaller. Mike Shoup at Antique Rose Emporium in Texas could suggest some roses that could bloom through your heat. Good luck and hang in there.

Carol:Thank you for replying!! I honestly don't know what midge is but I will say that the leaves aren't crispy. Many suffer from blackspot ( I think) which the leaves are soft but a little yellow with spots on them. I do think the fact that my beds seem to have been all solid rock before I claimed them doesn't help. I would NOT call my soil nice and loamy, even that which I have had delivered from a reputable company seems hard and gravely.

Definitely heat is a huge issue (for the roses and for me) but it seems the should be able to make it to at least June.

I love this forum so much. Such a supportive group of people. I see the beauty everyone here can produce and just aspire to do the same myself.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the leaves and the entire bush shot,

I'm ready to spray anything, add anything or remove anything. I've always shot for organic, non-invasive sprays but right now I just want success. I'll do anything to make this not all worthless.

Ah, welcome to gardening with roses in places that get hot! I usually get one good flush in April and then pretty much nothing (for most roses) until the fall (if I am lucky). You are doing everything correct (as far as I can tell). You may get a few more blooms soon. Roses will generally take a bit of a rest (especially if it is hot) after the first flush as they are growing new buds and blooms.

Having more heat tolerant roses also helps. Several of mine laugh at high temps and will put out a few blooms anyway (although they usually fry in a day). Not sure what varieties you are growing but it sounds like your garden is very well cared for and the improvements you are making to it sound delightful.

Do you have a rose club/society in your area? That would be a good resource. Do other people in your neighborhood have blooming roses when yours are not? If so, you will at least know that it can be done, and you could also ask that neighbor what they do and what varieties they have. Or you could discover that what you are experiencing is normal. Third, consider doing a soil test.

Agree: heat or midge.

When rosecanadian says "crispy leaf Tips", she is talking about this:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/why-the-new-growth-is-burned-and-crispy-dsvw-vd~4710426?n=32

If you've had a beautiful Spring flush then you most certainly do have the skills, so you should be proud of that... all the rest is just trial and error, which is the same for all of us... keep going, and enjoying your roses when they do bloom... I always think if you've got other plants going on as well, to take over when roses are having a break, then that helps too...

Hi ljsemar. I would like to offer encouragement. My perspective is that gardening isn’t really about success and failure, or skills, or being a loser or a winner.... it’s just about that joy you mentioned when you see something you cultivated grow and bloom. Do you have a mild fall when they bloom again? We have that here and I like the fall blooms even more than spring because I can enjoy them more as the sun becomes less harsh. In hot climates roses go dormant in the high heat, like many others said. It really is for the best because the ones that still bloom will fry in the heat and that looks much worse in my opinion. You cant really do anything wrong in the garden in my opinion, or ever lose. We’re always gaining something.

Quick question, does the brick path seem to give off a lot of radiant heat? That could be making it hotter for them and they may need a year to acclimate and grow in a way so that the additional heat isn’t affecting them so much.

I have found a few products that seemed to help my roses handle high heat a lot better. Just my personal experience, but ProTekt (its Silica) really helped my roses become stronger against my high heat last year and this year. I only give it to them once every few months or so though, not nearly as often as recommended.

Another issue could be spider mites. In very hot weather they can infest in a hurry and literally stop all growth... Check for yellow leaves with salt/pepper look to the undersides and webbing.....

Once it hits 90 degress here (early May usually) the roses stop blooming. I usually think of 90 as the cut off point for my roses blooming, give or take a few degrees. So, for my climate, in my experience, roses bloom starting in October and bloom thru April or so. If we have a cold December and Jan, they stop blooming then. Then they bloom thru late April or early May, depending on how hot it gets.

I think every climate has periods of blooming, not blooming, etc, unless you live in places that never get too hot or cold. We are lucky here that we don't get much disease but we have little rain and much heat.

Good luck with your garden; gardening is a challenge!

Ijelmar - that's odd that a reputable soil place would deliver hard, gravelly soil. Yikes! Another reason could be maybe you're not watering enough. I know nothing about gardening in heat...so ask others here about that. Can you get some aged horse manure to put on top?

Carol :)

Ijsemar,

You are right. The Roses Forum folks are like family, looking out for each other, and quickly available when crises suddenly arise.

Growing roses is probably the most challenging garden activity there is. When everything comes together and the roses are magnificent we're on Cloud 9. When the bottom falls out, we go into an emotional tailspin. You, me, and all other rose aficionados regularly go through what you are experiencing.

You are not a failure, you are a victor....stick to your roses, and you will see improvements galore as you learn about the special factors in Austin you cannot control. As you learn to deal with them everything will fall into place.

Take it easy. Don't beat yourself up about things beyond your control. As you gain more experience and knowledge you will know what to expect, and growing roses will become much easier.

I really believe an accomplished rose person has amassed so much knowledge, that person has the equivalent of at least Masters Degree, and in many cases, a PhD.

Concerning blackspot, for immediate control I recommend the Bayer fungicide in the blue bottle. After you get the black spot under control then study up on the best organic control if you want to go thataway.

If you have midge fly maggots destroying your roses' growing tips the Bayer Complete Insect Control works extremely well for me. It's in a blue bottle, too. I do not know of a truly effective organic control for midge fly.

If you have Chili Thrips I cannot help, but I am sure there are plenty of helpers from among your forum friends, with gladly given information on that subject.

Keep your chin up!

Moses

ljsemar, my youngest daughter lives in Austin and has started gardening for the first time this spring. She found out about a nursery called The Natural Gardener on Old Bee Caves Road. She has gone to a couple of free gardening classes there, and she also brought some spotted leaves in for them to identify as well as photos of some insects on a few of her plants. She said they were very helpful and identified the leaf disease immediately. They were not familiar with the insect, but they told her they would consult with others and get back to her - which they did before the end of the day. I am pretty sure that The Natural Gardener does sell roses, and if you are close enough to visit them, it could be helpful to talk to others in your same general area who might be able to give you more ideas based upon your location and local soil, temperature, etc.

Ever since climate change/global warming, our summers start into the 90s come early May and continue until the end of September. When our weather was in the 70s all summer I had roses blooming all the time. Now I have no rose flowers after the spring flush until maybe in the fall if the Japanese beetles and deer leave them alone. I never thought I would have to seek out roses that can take heat and humidity AND severe cold. With no BS! The list is very short! Take heart - there's always another day! Hardest part is trying to get projects done in the heat right now.

Ikayetwv - yes, that's a very short list! Darn!

Carol

ljsemar

I am also in your situation . I had a huge spring flush end of Feb and since then almost nothing . I mean some roses have a few blooms but not much . The bushes are growing big though ,too much nitrogen I think . we need a slow release bloom booster .

Heat and humidity are a huge problem in the summer for roses. Defoliation is common here in our Florida heat. Plus, most roses have bloom cycles of about 6 weeks even in the best temperatures. Some of the China roses will bloom almost continually, but don't have spectacular blooms in the summer. I think of summer as our dormant period, just the opposite of the northern winter dormant time.

Unfortunately summer like heat arrived early during the last few weeks after a cool, dry spring. Our roses are shutting down now that daily highs are staying in the 90’s.. I still have teas, chinas, noisettes, polys and a few floribundas blooming, but the sun is cooking the blooms quickly. Since the heat set in, midge & thrips have staged their return! I’m keeping the roses well watered, enjoying other plants and looking forward to our ‘second spring’ in the fall when the roses will flush heavy with blooms again.

I feel your pain gardening isn’t the easiest in our Texas heat. You have had some great advice and I’ll add my two cents, I would definitely call the Antique Rose Emporium and inquire about roses that will do well in Austin, adding more heat tolerant and disease resistant roses may help, I don’t know what your growing but my Hybrid teas shut down in the heat where as my Teas and polys thrive in the heat. Some roses that do well for me are Duchesse de Brabant, Clotilde soupert, Marie Pavie, Maggie, Souvenir da La Malmaison and Mrs. BR CANT ( she gets huge). I also water deeply every 2-3 days and I have found that over feeding sometimes will stop my roses from blooming as often, I usually give my roses some rose tone about every six weeks. You aren’t doing anything wrong so don’t give up, in fact it sounds like you are doing a great job! Everyone on this forum faces different challenges in their gardens and you will get good advice and encouragement. Hang in there!

As a newbie, I'm finding out having a good healthy Rose plant is more of a dream than it is reality. There's always something happening that upsets the growing condition. So take the green rose plants with out blooms as the proverbial bag of lemons. Make lemonade and enjoy.

I don't have any experience with your climate, but maybe try mixing in some plants that flower (or at least look nice) when it's hot, so that your garden will still have visual interest when the roses aren't in bloom?

Even in this cold zone, our summers are in the 3 digit range almost all summer. Last year my husband brought home some of those farm type, tall tripod sprinklers from the feed store. I hesitated to use them because they're just not esthetically pleasing, but, they kept the temp in the garden down enough that I got blooms all summer. They can be used to water the garden, or just turned on sporadically throughout the day, to keep the area cooler. They saved my roses from turning into crispy critters.

I'm also wondering if you are overdoing the feeding. You say:

"They received osmocote and alfalfa in the beginning of the season and since I have attempted to feed them a rose food mix every few weeks (the dogs eat some portion)."

Info from resources like: "http://homeguides.sfgate.com/problems-overfertilizing-roses-28052.html";

"Over-fertilizing the roses leads to fast and sudden growth, which produces an excessive amount of leaves and shoots that the plant cannot handle. This leads to a weaker plant and with fewer blooms. This overdose of nitrogen increases the foliage production at the expense of flower buds and, since roses are grown for their blooms, you are left with a rose bush without roses."

If you had a wonderful spring flush, pat yourself on the back and say - "Job well done!!!"

Before we retired, we lived in Zone 6A in Central Massachusetts. We had a beautiful garden with an arbor, brick walks, etc. It was beautiful for several years until an infestation of JBs killed all of the roses and a large portion of our lawn with their grubs.

We moved to Cape Cod and live about 300 yards from the ocean. I now grow a few Rugosas and some knockouts. We get winter storms with 90 MPH winds, Nor'easters, and hurricanes. The wind carries salt spray off the ocean which can kill about anything. Rugosas and Knockouts seem to tolerate this better than most.

The moral of this story is Mother Nature always wins. Adjust to what will work in your micro climate and learn to live with some happiness and a lot of defeat.

Just like the roses do in cold climates in winter your roses are going dormant to handle your high heat in the summer. It's not unusual and shouldn't be taken as a sign of incompetence on your part. When the temps cool down you should see them spring back to life.

Carol - you've had a tough time growing roses!

Carol

Adapt, Improvise, and never quit.

Carol, great words of wisdom, I think that applies to life in general too.

Heat really does a number on roses.Also I think it's pretty normal that they should take a rest after blooming so enthusiastically. Mine have to rely on rainfall for irrigation since I don't have running water out at my land,so I myself am quite used to getting only the one main flush of flowers in the spring; anything else is just icing on the cake, as it were. So ,in re-reading your post, ljsemar,I can't see your efforts as being failure at all! just normal rose-growing, lol. At the moment I'm kind of distressed that some of mine are very disease-y; the weather has been very damp. But I'm not going to worry about it in the sense of running for the sprayer,since it is due to the weather. Probably I'll try to improve the soil in this area where I have this disease issue concentrated, but I won't let it bother me. My garden is also kind of in the middle of a woodland,so I've become pretty philosophical about bugs as well (except for the beetles, which I do try to pick offregularly). Gardening is supposed to bring you joy, not be a source of depression and worry, so keep that in mind when you start to feel down; it's nature, it's never going to be "perfect".I think the advice given by other forum members is very good, too: talk to other rose growers in your area, to find out what varities do best there, start introducing other plants as well, to tide you over while the roses are resting, etc. You aren't incompetant; you're just feeling low, which, as Moses so rightly says, happens to all of us!

Cynthia - I love what you wrote

If our roses bloomed fantastically all the time, we'd probably take them for granted

and

Part of the fun of rose growing is the potential for being surprised, and in order to be surprised there needs to be a pause of expectation. That's where you are now, so breathe and enjoy the "what if" that's down the road

So well said!

Carol