Well, I am certainly confused. I thought the purplish spots weren't actually diagnosed yet. Did I miss something. Can you tell me where you read this? Rosepep, I don't mean to step in on your post, I just want to know about the cane thing too. Someone will surely get here with answers. I don't know where you are located either. Carla

hi, mehearty, I hope this is not too obnoxious/rude to add my questions to your post. But I too have questions /concerns about the brown canes... I had one damaged tree rose branch that unlike the other black frost burn spots on my other tree rose branches had seemed to spread? rot? and wondered if you had this same problem? and wondered if cherriej and veilchen had any comments at this... There used to be a lot of green in the branch in spite of the damage, 2/3 green but the upper 1/3 black... I had hopes for it because of the green but then one day, much too my horror it had spread down to 1/3 black and 1/3 a yucky brown with only a bare 1/3 green left...the brown was so close to a new emerging bud that I panicked and cut it off...The part still remaining was very healthy white and green outer shell, but I made one cut then took it away and made several (investigative) cross-section "autopsies" of the removed branch. The upper black was black on outside but ash-white on inside, but the brown areas were yucky brown on outside with slight juice but yucky sallow center on the inside... Did I cut out a diseased stem...or did I jump the gun too soon. Was your brown like mine in terms of spreading downward? Thanks and much apologies if I'm being rude... I'm a total beginner gardener (never grew anything in my life except for a beautiful orchid)...and in March bought two tree roses that got snowballed and iced (poor tree roses).

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.

Alana, I'm colder than your zone so some of my experience might not apply, but once the roses (and bulbs) start growing, there's nothing I can do to convince them to stop. They might get a bit frost nipped here and there, but unless you get weather returning to the 20's for several days in a row (and that's all day, not just a brief tip in the night), you should be fine. Apparently roses when they first start growing in spring have nature's equivalent of "antifreeze" in their canes and they're more insulated against cold snaps than they are later in the season. Roses like the rest of the garden are reading a multitude of factors that you may not be aware of (e.g. day length, soil temperature, moisture), and they usually know what they're doing or can recover from it if not. As for pruning, I prune off obviously dead wood as soon as the crocus and such come up, which is before the official forsythia blooming start to pruning season. Dead wood is dead, and the rose doesn't know you've cut it until you get into live cane. If you're worried that it's too early to prune, leave an inch or so of probably dead wood on the tips, and it'll just be a haircut to the rose, not a stimulus to start growing more cane. Once you can tell that the rose has indeed given up on that cane, and you feel better about stimulating growth, you can do a second round of pruning to get rid of those stubs. In my zone, we always have to do 2 or 3 rounds of pruning to get rid of cane that was only temporarily alive in the spring, so this isn't unusual for us. Bottom line for me is I prune off dead wood as soon as I feel like being out in the garden, and then do a more detailed prune once the leaves are definitely emerging. I figure if it has leaves it's going to be subject to weather variations with or without my pruning, and I want to get it done before planting season starts. Cynthia