Anyhow, most roses will still come back to life even though they have lost all there leaves to Blackspot.

I wish you the best of luck with your problem!

The roses drop their leaves in late summer, but I've not seen any detrimental effect from this. They can re-grow leaves later.

When leaves fall on the ground I rake them into the ground to tidy up the area.

There are still things you can do this season: Keep your plants hydrated and avoid wetting the leaves. In late fall, completely clean up all leaves and throw them away.
In very early spring while the roses are still dormant, spray the canes and surrounding soil with lime sulfer. Then when the leaves are completely open and before the first bloom, start spraying the plants with fungicide. Try alternating between mancozeb and tebuconazole (bayer product). Some members on here are so anti spraying even if it means letting their bushes die....ridiculous. Fungicides are there to help gardeners maintain a beautiful and healthy rose garden. I hope to see you post next summer and advise how well you roses are doing.

See the FAQ on the Organic Roses Forum for organic sprays, which include sulfur, anti-transpirant, and oil-bicarbonate mixtures. I used micronized sulfur with reasonable success for a decade and can recommend it. You have to apply it faithfully every week, because it is not as effective as the best synthetic fungicides.

Here's a picture of my Paul Neyron, most notorious for blackspot, taken after 3 subsequent bouts of all-night rain and humid weather in Chicagoland. It took me 3 times moving him, and 4 months of experiments before I figured out how to keep him clean without spraying. I used a potting soil with 55% fine composted pine bark (has tannin as a natural fungicide), lime (a natural fungicide), peat moss, vermicullite, perlite, and gypsum.

In agriculture, the highest yield of soybean was recorded using lime pellets and sulphate of potash, which beat the yield using fungicide alone. Horse manure is many times higher in potassium than cow manure or compost, and I used it succesffuly last year to keep my 10 Austins clean after 1 week of continuous rain in the fall. The stable here uses lime to deodorize their stall, which acts as a natural fungicide in the manure. Horse manure on wood chips does not absorb water like decayed mulch, thus stay dry and blackspots can't germinate. Potassium is needed to fight diseases, bloom production, and to counteract the salt index in fertilizers.

Daytime humidity in Illinois is nowhere near normal. It's been below 50% for a majority of the summer, and although humidity climbs during the evening hours to nearly 80 or 90%, it's fleeting, and the temps have not been in the range necessary for blackspot germination when the humidity peaks. It has been at or around 80 each morning before 8 AM.

Lots of folks have been complaining about the humidity here (locally, not on the forum) without checking weather stats. They're surprised to see that it has been low since they are used to wet, sticky summers. As I type this message, it's at 32%, down from a high of 80% overnight.

I haven't had the need to spray for over 2 months. Time and effort has been spent deadheading and watering--that's it. Good soil is dry to 4 feet down; our clay was dry to at least 18 inches. I stopped digging at that point. I've never seen water sink into clay & disappear like it does this year.

Everything I have is planted in clay & the roses do fine, and WILL get blackspot if conditions warrant it. This year, it was only a danger in late spring.

"There is a another choice. This choice is to allow the friendly fungi to reach equilibrium with the blackspot. This choice comes under the heading of "biocontrol".

The following may be useful in putting the concept of biocontrol into layman terms:

"Disease-suppressive soil microorganisms have been found in many places. In monoculture wheat the severity of "take all" disease often decreases within three to five years. This phenomenon is known as "take all decline," and is considered an effective natural control. Although the mechanisms are not completely understood, the decline is associated with changes in soil microorganisms that compete with and prey on the fungus. Melon plants grown in the Chateaurenard region of France do not show Fusarium wilt symptoms even though the fungus is present in the soil. Soils with suppressive characteristics tend to develop slowly and are usually found in fields where perennial crops or monocultures have been grown for many years.
Suppressiveness may be lost if the monoculture is interrupted even for one year, or if pesticides are applied. For example, researchers first recognized soils suppressive to cereal-cyst nematode when nematode numbers increased after application of a broad-spectrum biocide. Many species of fungi and bacteria in the genera Trichoderma, Streptomyces, Bacillus and Pseudomonas suppress diseases, but at this time only a few strains are commercially available. Additional commercial products may be available soon, however, as this is currently an active research area."

The quote was taken from:

[sorry link no longer works]

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A scientific study (2007) of biocontrol of blackspot of roses:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17429140701701071

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Thread where the above appeared:

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rosesant/msg06130420825.html

The heavy soil down by Hutch is more prone to black-spot than the sandy soil up north but I use Serenade on both and it controls, to eliminates, the black-spot well.

This summer up North I only had it where I put in a new rose but down by Hutch, where I did not get as often late in the summer, late in the summer it showed up but I treated the roses, and had no defoliation problems.

I usually pick off as many leaves as I can before I treat but this year my roses in both gardens did not get as much attention as they normally would so I picked the worst and soaked the rest.
The black-spot marking remains on the leafs not picked but they remain green and do not drop as the black-spot is usually dead, and remains like a scar.

Serenade is organic and has workded very well for me.
Buy the two and one-half gallon containers and you will save a lot of money.

It is not perfect though and you will have to try to attend your roses well.
Picking off and discarding affected leaves reduces the misery a lot compared to just treating.
Also beware of newly boughten roses, that is where I have most often ended up with black-spot where I did not have it before.

I have at time at time pulled the roses, cleaned and soaked the roots, sometime just soaked the entire root ball, in a Serenade bath while attending to the soil by digging out the soil as many inches beyond the drip like as possible (no more than three) and down approx. sixteen inches and putting in new soil.
I have done this down by Hutchinson also at times simply to replace the very heavy black gumbo down there as I have to walk through the garden and while it does not kill the roses, the soil is very rich, it makes burying them in the winter easier.
That it removes black-spot sitting in the soil is a bonus.

I have lost few roses to winter, and none to black-spot but spring shock, i.e. uncovering healthy roaes but losing them to a late spring cold snap, has been horrid in these warm winters we have had for the past decade.