All my mail-ordered roses are clean from nurseries : Burlington, CA - High Country Roses, CO - Roses Unlimited, SC, and Chamblee's, TX. They are far away from the infected rose.

Linda from LongAgoRoses in NC informed me that her roses are band-size, so she ships them according to the law: she dunk them in a bucket, then wrap the roots in paper-towel ... if she shipped them west of the Mississippi River, she put insecticide in the bucket. I would rather get roses small and clean, than large and infected.

A few years ago I got Bonica in a big pot from nearby HomeDepo. I planted it, then moved it soon to a better spot. When I dug it up, there were tons of baby slugs crawling in the hole. I had to destroy the rootball.

I checked the RRD map: a few cases reported in Chicagoland, but not as widespread as further south of IL.

Home Depot buys their stock from suppliers, they do not grow them on site in green houses or fields. The source of the RRD could have come from anywhere from the supplier to the store to your flower bed. Carried by the wind, the truck driving could have picked up by the wind at a truck stop.

Maybe your point was that you prefer to buy bands and monitor their growth in your own back yard rather than purchase larger plants who some one else grew for a couple of years before selling?

But RRD is not the common result from buying a bigger rose from a nursery or home depot vs buying a band sized plant.

But I have to ask, why dig up a plant that had slugs? Seems like a rather extreme way to deal with a minor issue that has easy organic treatments available. Check out "Sluggo"

Kim Rupert informed of the law regarding shipping plants in the Roses Exchange and Propagation Forum: plants must be shipped in a soil-less mix, not in contact with the ground .....sterile potting soil is allowed, but not dirt from the ground to prevent transmission of insects. "

That's why I prefer to buy band-size roses mail-ordered, grown in sphagum moss/perlite like from Burlington. Since they are tiny plants, I can easily inspect again for slug in the pot, or bugs on the leaves.

I dug up that Bonica because it lost all leaves, there were tons of slugs in that rootball, it's not worth keeping. I don't have slugs here after getting rid of that one.

If you grow roses where the wind patterns are more likely to drop the mites that vector RRD, then roses there are more likely to get RRD.

If you grow roses in a wind tunnel-like situation, like between two houses where the wind speed doesn't slow down, but increases (venturi effect), those roses are less likely to have mites land on them.

In my gardens, I have one bed that has had RRD more often than any others. It has our garage plus a big ole arbor contributing to making it a drop zone. I live with that, because it's what I see when I look out my kitchen windows and I can't move the kitchen.

Probably a mite hitched on that rose in Home Depot's outdoor center where it sat next to many Knock-outs, plus others from different nurseries. It was healthy and loaded with blooms, that's why I bought it last June. After putting in the ground, it gave me 3 distorted bloom, and nothing else for last year. It always have this bronzy-sick color since last July.

I dug up the plant, plus the soil, and trashed it. One site said NOT to plant anything there for 2 years, since a tiny root left behind had been known to infect another rose planted in the same spot. Then I sprayed the entire area with Windex. Why? Windex had been known to trigger asthma attacks. In microbiology class, we tested Windex against 90% alcohol and it was just as effective in killling germs. My kid uses Windex to zap ants in the kitchen. Ants hate it more than alcohol.

I also wiped my shovel and pruners with alcohol. I'm leaning toward buying from mail-ordered nurseries. The well-run nurseries have tight control on what's in stock, whereas Home Depot is like a middle man who collects many items from different nuseries. Burling from Burlington Roses, CA, roots all her roses, and if she sees something not right, she trashes it - that's a very good watch over the health of her plants.

You may want to reconsider Windex as a soil additive since you state your soil is already alkaline. Windex rings in around 10 on the pH meter.