Here is the Virginia next to it. You can see a new cane stemming off of what looks like the dead/petrified canes the other rose that died had.

Next is a pic of the back fence where some of the roses I take care of are planted. You can see to the left in the picture the foliage of the Tangerine and Avocado trees that now tower over the fence to the east of the roses. There are super tall Oak trees to the south of the roses.

Lastly unrelated to the previous roses, some of the older roses that I take care of have a green black fungus growing near the graft/crown. It does seem to spread and I spray fungicide every week rotating Compass, Bannermaxx, Mancozeb, Daconil. Does this happen to roses that are just reaching such an old age they will eventually die?

Thanks for your thoughts in advance.

In my opinion I'd want to find out more about the trees on your list I am no tree pro or a rose pro nor do I live in Fla but it does sound like to much coming out of the soil as taken by the tree roots

http://www.rose-roses.com/problems/fungi.html#rosewilt

Use the entire link save the home page

Best of luck to you

Shade and root competition reduce productivity, but shouldn't cause canes to die.

In looking at the fungus covered roses, I'd guess that Rayrose is right, and the plants could be rootbound. Also, how wet is that soil? It looks really wet, which would contribute to fungal growth and poor plant health. Maybe that's just black Georgia soil, though.

I get the sense that fungus on roses can be like fungus on humans; it's an opportunistic infection, and comes on strongest when the host is stressed or injured. The potted roses especially look like they need some help culturally.

Best,
Lara

I've never gardened in your region or climate. Having said that, based on your pictures increasing shade isn't something I would expect to kill your roses outright by itself. I would instead expect it first to cause notably reduced flowering combined with new canes noticeably "leaning" out towards whatever is the nearest direction of strongest sunlight.

Obviously since the roses use sunlight to make the sugars & starches they need to function less sunlight means the roses are able to make less food for themselves. Being less energetic/weaker increases the possibility of their getting infected, or infested, with some pest and thus increasing shade could indirectly cause the death of a rose, but for a rose growing outside to die outright from increasing shade that shading of the bush must be very heavy.

Here in the Northeast there are some trees capable of creating such heavy shade (e.g. beeches, hemlocks, some maples), but you can see it happening year by year and watch as the rose becomes less & less vigorous. The decline of the rose is usually gradual and obvious. You get the chance to do something about it well before it dies.

lilgreenfrog, the mulch what you see is tan colored but I think I took the picture right after I ran the irrigation for that zone which would explain the wet soil. It only gets 5 minutes of water through theose shrubblers twice a day now since the rainy season is over.

Yorkrose, the same phenomenon happened in their front yard where they planted 10 knockouts around a mature Blossom Time rose. As the Knockouts grew in size they started blocking out the Blossom Time. Within a couple of months the Blossom Time was developing these browning canes and when you cut the canes the pith was still white, but the canes seemed petrified. Does anyone know what disease would show these symptoms? As posted earlier it has some similarities to Vermiticulum Wilt, but that disease mentions nothing about the stems becoming petrified like.

I can only add that it is perfectly natural for older canes to get woody and brown, red, or gray, as you're describing. It's not a disease. Some old canes are very hard and near impossible to prune off (is this what you mean by "petrified"?) while others that are dead will sort of splinter/crumble if you cut them.

When these hard older canes cease to put out any new growth, these are the canes that one would prune off down to the ground in early spring. Hopefully this helps to rejuvenate the bush and stimulate it to throw out fresh new basal canes from the base of the bush. Younger canes bloom better. (Incidentally, alfalfa meal contains a substance, triacontanol, which can help stimulate a bush to grow new fresh canes, too. You can throw a couple handfuls around each bush in addition to whatever other fertilizer you're already using.)

All this said, as others have pointed out, roses grow and bloom best when they receive adequate sun and from your photos, these roses don't have that...

If your clients aren't interested in replanting the roses where there is more sun or limbing up some of the trees on their property, you could suggest replacing those that are struggling the most with roses that are reported to be more shade tolerant.

I'm guessing they are growing hybrid teas? Two HT's that have done ok for me in a part sun bed are Bronze Star and Peter Mayle. I have read Granada is somewhat shade tolerant. Pink Gruss an Aachen grows in the shade of a deciduous magnolia here and gives a great first flush and scattered blooms in part shade the rest of the season. I have several David Austin roses that bloom well in part sun (Pat Austin & Molineux) and hybrid musks and albas are two other classes of roses to look into, for tolerating less than ideal sun conditions.

Still, all these "shade tolerant" roses tend to bloom better the more sun they have. Your clients need to adjust their expectations of any roses they're growing if they can't provide a rose it's preferred growing conditions. I don't envy you that task. ;)

Regarding your questions about the black fungus on the base of the containerized rose, perhaps I'm missing what you are trying to photograph, but I'm not seeing any fungus.

My first thought, too, given the diameter of the trunk versus the diameter of the pot, was that this rose has just outgrown the pot and is possibly very rootbound. It looks to me like as this rose has grown it may have pushed up out of the soil, leaving a gap or hole.

If you cannot replant the rose in a bigger container or rootprune it and replant it in fresh potting mix, you could at least add some compost and lime. (If that rose is still in the original soil from whenever the rose was planted, the pH could be far from ideal now...)

Hope some of this helps.

Dawn

The roses are somewhat rootbound as exhibited by the roots growing through the drip hole in the bottom of the pot and rooting in the ground underneath the pot. Some of those roots are toucher than rope and I need loppers just to remove the rose from the pot.

In my experience excess water would have nothing to do with fungus growing on the base of the rose. If the soil medium was too wet fungus would generally grow on the soil surface especially considering there is a mixture of peat and pro mix and these pots don't exhit any kind of soil surface mold growing.