Sbcand, Roses thrive in neutral soil. If the soil is sandy, there is a great chance your soil is too acidic for the rose. One half cup of lime at the initial planting of the rose would have taken care of the acidic part of the soil. Every spring, I add 1/2 cup of lime to the top of the soil around my roses with my compost. I bought a double knock out rose this spring. I added the lime, I have no problems with it. I love that rose bush, it is care free. If the soil PH isn't correct for any bush, it will be unable to absorb nutrients from the soil. You could try adding 1/2 cup of FAST acting lime around the top of the soil of the rose and watering real good. They sell PH meters inexpensively at Big Home center plant departments, like HD, you could test it yourself, before adding the lime. My soil is awefully sandy, so one of my roses I actually dug out a hughe hole and placed Miracle Grow Rose Garden soil in (big bag), and planted it in that (Pope John Paul II white rose), and now I don't have to worry about PH at all because the garden soil, (not potting soil), is neutral for roses. GOod Luck!

Many people will say to you that you don't need to deadhead Knock Out roses. They are shrub roses and will drop their petals and clean themselves up pretty good. There are 9 double red KOs in our front flower bed that were there when we bought the house. Last year they only bloomed sporadically and didn't have what I'd call a nice flush. This year I fertilized and had a beautiful flush on all nine bushes. Then I tried an experiment. I deadheaded five of those bushes and not the other four. The five I deadheaded are covered in blooms with their second flush but the four I didn't deadhead have only a few blooms on them. Deadheading them is a pain but I will certainly deadhead them from now on.

One year, I lost 35 roses to RRD. I'm down to losing maybe 1 a year because I notice the symptoms earlier now. Pink Double Knock Out is the best KO, I think. I have a whole hedgerow of them, and they do great without feeding or spraying or even irrigation! La Marne looks beautiful! Wonder why I don't have that one? I have an Earth Kind bed, and in the past few years, I've been favoring Kordes roses over the Buck roses that made up most of the Earthkind list. It could be that I've been buying the Kordes roses from Palatine and they come to me much more mature and grafted to multiflora, where the Buck roses come from Chamblee own-root, and much much smaller. They struggle to get established in our harsh conditions, where the Kordes roses grow like crazy. As a matter of fact, I have a problem right now with some of the Kordes Fairy Tale roses. They grew way larger than expected---catalogs say 3-4 feet, mine are 9 feet tall and wide. They bloom constantly, even now, in October, and the foliage is awesomely clean and green! Too bad I have to move them so they don't completely cover my front entrance! I'll look into La Marne too, because those photos Patty posted are really a great endorsement.

I thought maybe there was a reason why it got leggy already. I've heard high nitrogen fertilizer or even hard clay soil can cause those problems...Besides not enough sun...And winterkilled canes that were never pruned out...Rose bush itself not growing right...etc.... I have 7 Double Ko's and 5 are nice and bushy but two of them grew more lanky and runty so I replaced those two this year... (they were 3 years going on 4 same as our other ones came from same vendor and they got plenty of sun and were in good locations...) I transplanted them elsewhere this past late March so they can be runty if they wish now...lol But yes prune them back and see if that corrects the problem... Hopefully it does :)