TaniaMcCee
Newly Registered
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Nov 28, 2015 11:36 pm
Location: Canberra, Australia

ICEBERG ROSE completely dried out - PLEASE HELP!

Hello, everyone,

We have a set of beautiful standard iceberg roses and recently, pretty much overnight, one bush, right between two perfectly healthy, thriving bushes, has dried out to a crisp. The leaves are shrivelled and the plant stems have become brittle. I had only recently deadheaded the flowers, so there are no other 'symptoms' to report. No blooms, no spots or bugs present. The leaves have not dropped. They are still attached but completely shrivelled.

We are in Canberra, Australia--we have had some very warm to hot days but we water our roses well and they are well-cared for and fed.

Thank you for any idea on what might be going wrong--Google is bringing up nothing!

Thanks so much,

Tania

imafan26
Mod
Posts: 13962
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

After you deadheaded, did it rain a lot and did those branches die back after being cut.

I don't particularly like iceberg because it has floppy flowers but it has been the top rated rose for years in terms of being easy to care for.

I used to have a lot of roses die after I cut them back so I called Jackson and Perkins where I bought them. They have a rose hotline and their advice really helped me.

1. Roses are very susceptible to diseases. Make sure the tools you use are very sharp and clean. I have a small torch to heat the blade. I use is mostly for the orchids. A yellow flame will work, but it is not as hot and will leave soot on the blade that you have to leave on the blade to avoid contaminating it again. Some people wipe the blade after each cut and spray the blade with alcohol. Tools at the end of the day should be throughly cleaned and dried.
2. I live where normally it rains almost every night. Sometimes the canes don't have a chance to dry completely. On cuts larger than 1/2 inch or even 1/4 inch, I use pruning paint. It is not recommending much for trees, but it did work in preventing the rose canes from dying back to the ground.

I had a row of roses planted when I was a kid at my house. The house was termite treated and one by one the roses suddenly started to dry up. The termites were eating the roots. If the twigs are brittle, I think the rose is a goner. I would pull it up and try to see if anything was going after the roots. It is best to find out if it is an isolated problem or if it could potentially affect the other roses too. That rose was not in a low spot? My friend had a hedge of mock orange and the ones in the middle were dying while the ends looked fine. I could tell my the high water mark on the wall that those plants were being flooded everytime it rained because they were in a low spot of the yard.



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