Pruning

I spent some time out with the roses tonight, cleaning them up. Still issues with fungus, and I'm not sure what's going on. At least it seems more or less contained, and I'm absolutely going to stay on top of it! If I lose that rose garden to fungus I'm going to have a fit.

So far: The Nearly Wild, as usual, has it the worst. Whether this is the cultivar being more susceptible or its position between the other two roses or a combination, I have no clue. Systemic anti-fungal seems to have no effect. It now suffers from BOTH black spot and powdery mildew. (Although, come to think of it, a lot of the yard has powdery mildew this year... even the perennial garden has big patches of it. Must be the drought followed by a wet September.) It has spread the black spot just over to a few leaves of the Champlain, much to my horror. The Yellow Submarine and Will Baffin are untouched, and the Little Mischeif has come back mightily with very healthy new growth and no signs of active infection.

Tonight I made free and easy with the pruning shears. It killed me to do so, the Neary Wild is a quarter of the size it was when we bought it. But, I am telling myself that it is for its own good - I HAVE to remove the infected leaves or the entire plant will die. Plus, winter is not far off anyway, and the roses will need cutting back if they don't die back on their own; so this is just getting a jumpstart on winterizing. At the very worst, if I lose the Nearly Wild due to the cut back, I will have saved the other roses from a spreading infection.

I removed any leaves (or whole branches) I could see with any signs at all of black spot or powdery mildew, on all three roses that were / had been affected. I practiced good rose hygeine and carefully put each pruned sick bit into a bucket without letting any fall on the ground, then took them all to the firepit and burned them. I cleaned and disinfected my shears with soap, hot water, and rubbing alcohol when I was done. Finally I pulled out all the asters in the garden (they were planted too low in the ground and also susceptible to powdery mildew) and pruned back the mums to have only new healthy growth.

Hopefully that will be the end of it!

The Maples and honey locust are all turning lovely colors, and the gingko across the street has already lost most its leaves! The birches are just starting to go golden. Everything else struggles to maintain a green look, but with high temps in the low '50's they won't hold it for long!