My small pots are grouped in a kiddie pool so they get bottom watered and they can soak up as much water as they like. I let them soak for three or four hours then take them out and rotate somebody else in.

My cl pinkies were planted in this last spring and have no BS and are growing like crazy but my Golden Celebration planted at the same time has had BS. I am in east Texas and it gets very hot and humid so I have to come to realize I am just going to have to deal with BS. My GC has had BS mainly on the bottom as I keep the leaves picked off and that helps but my red Don Juan is completely defoliated from BS. I think your cl pinkie and all your other roses will start doing much better once in the ground. Good luck!

Hi, lilyfinch! Just SW of Knoxville, here and we've had a little less heat and decent rain so far. I also grow Mrs. Dudley Cross and have had her for over 10 years, maybe even 15. It doesn't make me an expert but I don't mind sharing my experience. For me, she has been a slow grower. I would not expect many blooms at all till she's older. For me, she blooms most in spring and fall with the occasional bloom in between. I don't get a lot of BS from her. She loves heat and doesn't handle severe (below 0) cold at all well. It helps to keep it in mind when siting her. She died back to her roots for the first time last winter so I'm starting over with her.

Sorry, I don't grow the rest of those that you mentioned.

Worry less about the black spot and more about keeping them watered. In hot humid conditions BS is going to happen. There isn't a lot you can do about it unless you want to spray on a very strict schedule. And it sounds like you don't have time for that right now.

The watering is the important thing you need to do on a regular basis. If you can do nothing else keep them watered in high heat.

Since they are in pots is there any way you can move them to a place where they will only get morning sun? That will help cut down on the amount of water they'll need because they won't get so much hot afternoon baking sun. Also, don't crowd the pots together if possible. Spread them apart some what so they get a lot of air flow around them. That will keep them cooler and maybe help keep the BS down some.

Cut yourself some slack. You're doing everything you can for them and when things are less hot and hectic you'll be able to plant those beauties in your new rose bed!

Lilyfinch I'm west of Franklin so I don't think I'm very far from you. I'm somewhat new to this as well but I'm happy to share what I've figured out.

Number one is that I avoid having roses in pots at all costs! Last year I bought bands in the spring and nursed them along all summer in pots, potting them up a couple times as they grew. I got the plants in the ground in Sept a little after the heat broke. With bitter, bitter cold hitting very early for us--early November--and returning multiple times over the winter I lost about half the roses that I got planted in the fall. I just don't think they were given enough time to establish themselves before the weather turned.

This year when I got bands I potted them up to gallons and after about 6 weeks of growth put them in prepared beds. (Some in a permanent place and some in my vegetable garden for transfer later.) These planted roses are doing SO MUCH better than the bands from last year stuck in pots. More growth, less disease and tens time easier to keep watered and cared for!

I've seen a real correlation between roses getting short changed on water from being in a pot (and depending on me to water daily and sometimes twice a day--a chore that I sometimes missed) and those same roses getting black spot.

I have a climbing pinkie I don't spray. Just in the last couple of weeks for some reason the black spot pressure has seemed to spike a bit. It is normally clean. At the moment it has a few lower leaves that have spotted and turned yellow, but in general it doesn't seem to have a significant amount of defoliation. This plant was a gift from a friend who had it limping along in a pot for a couple years. When I put it in the ground and threw a shovel of horse manure on it and kept it reasonably well water it exploded in growth and made a 180 turn around in health.

I also have a Mrs. Dudley. Last year's band was a casualty of winter and was replaced by a 3 gallon plant this spring. It is growing but slowly. I also pinch most (not all) buds hoping to focus energy on growth not blooming. In general my teas are clean of black spot with only a few old yellow leaves toward the bottom of the plant. The cleanest are Mrs. B R Cant, Madame Antoine Mari, Duchess du Brabant, Mons Tillier and Mrs. Dudley.

I wouldn't tried to do pots here again without some sort of automatic watering set up because you miss a few waterings and the roses get diseased and start loosing their leaves in a heart beat.

Thank you all! Sorry I wasn't able to respond right away. My parents are visiting from out of town! Lots of fun! :)
Cecily, what a smart idea I so wish I had thought of months ago! Genius!
Boncrow, not that I am happy to hear your GC has Blackspot, but I'm glad I'm not exclusively having this issue. Sorry to hear about your don Juan...i believe I heard that before. Such pretty blooms !
Seil, I will move them under our 2 story deck when it gets hot again! Your roses are so inspiring. I do have them grouped (not tightly) by how resistant they have been. I do have a lot that are looking good.
Kes4353,thanks for the input on mrs Dudley. I will put her somewhere I won't mind her taking her time. It's my first and only tea rose! I hope she is as beautiful as the pics I've seen.
Subk3, it sounds like we may be close! I live in burns, 4 miles from fair view. If you have any nurseries to reccomend please let me know! I really enjoy s and w greenhouse but it's kind of a hike. Maybe sometime we can visit each others gardens, I don't know any other rose gardeners! :)
I'm working on getting the pinkies in the ground this week. They seem to be doing the worst but have a lot of promise! Thanks for all the input, glad I have some reassurance and great friends here! :)

Here is a pic of one of my climbing pinkies on the end, I have 3, one on each end of the arbor. It was planted this spring and has grown so much I had to put a tomato cage around all three this past weekend so I can keep it contained and off the ground. I think once yours are in the ground you are goiing to be suprised at how fast they grow. I am tying up new growth every weekend and I can't wait until the spring I see it covered in blooms! The BS on my GC is very minimal and is at the very bottom of the plant and easily controlled by picking off the leaves and keeping the ground clean, GC also got a tomato cage this weekend to help support all of the new growth and it wants to climb so I am training it on the bottom of the porch railing. I have 2 Don Juan's, a pink one and a red one, the red one is the only one that has BS, the pink one has a mild case but that cleared up and it looks good now. Good luck with all your roses and happy gardening!

This post was edited by boncrow66 on Wed, Jul 30, 14 at 16:46

lilyfinch I don't have a nursery suggestion for roses as I've ordered most of mine or picked them up from Petals in the Past (south of Birmingham) when I go that way a couple times a years. However there is an excellent nursery in Thompson Station--just a quick trip down 840 from Burns--that I use for many of my perennials, shrubs and trees. Quality plants, good prices.

I live in Knoxville, so I am very familiar with your sticky, humid conditions. I have two golden celebrations, one in the ground and one in a very large pot on my porch, and it only gets afternoon sun & ironically, only the one in the ground got a terrible case if BS this summer, it was the first one of my roses to get it & it was pretty bad. I removed all the affected leaves and sprinkled some cornmeal around the plant to provide a more alkaline soil surface to deter more BS growth (something I learned from strawberryhill in the organic rose growing forum- thank you!) and it has not come back! The one in the pot on the porch is definitely growing slower but has had zero BS. I think the one in the ground was set up for failure because I put tons of pine bark mulch around it this spring, more than most of my other roses because I read that GC is a bit of a water hog and I thought it might need some extra protection from water loss... Well I was almost right....I later read (again all thanks to SH) that pine bark encourages BS more than other mulches because it is very acidic & provides ideal growing grounds for BS.... Which I might have doubted that if I hadn't seen results from my GC experiment myself, pine bark is such a common mulch it seems like you would hear this warning more often. Maybe that is only in the case of people who naturally have more alkaline soil and the pine bark brings the ph down enough for blackspot to grow, either way I've heard BS is more prevalent in neutral or acidic conditions rather than alkaline. I also read from SH that red lava rock sprinkled through the garden bed can help deter blackspot growth while also providing the roses with essential trace minerals, and I feel like that has also helped control less aggressive BS outbreaks I've had here and there. I also ended up getting some coconut husk mulch to use this fall/winter that hopefully won't encourage such bad behavior in my garden... Everyone should at some point check out all the posts in the organic forum on ways to naturally deter and treat blackspot, there is so much to read and learn over there, it's amazing. Good luck!!!

Jessica

Jessica thanks for the tip!