Blackspot on all my roses

Hello all. I'm having a terrible time with blackspot this year. I have 6 roses and there are hardly any leaves that are not affected. I've been removing them, but there are now so many. Can I remove all of the leaves and will this be detrimental to my plants? I'm a bit worried about cutting them all off.

 

It's the leaves that supply all the energy for your plant, so whilst the leaves may be damaged, they are still working, but not as efficiently.
So it's best not to remove all the leaves.

Black Spot is just one of those things that roses often get.
My roses are mostly in mixed borders so other plants hide the dodgy leaves somewhat.

If you remove all the dropped leaves especially at the end of the season that will help, but it'll probably come back net year.
There are sprays available to treat Rose Black Spot, but I've never bothered.

 

I’ve given up worrying about blackspot, the rose in this photo is covered in it. Every year the leaves on this rose, The Pilgrim, get covered in black spot but it still flowers well and looks beautiful. It’s funny because my Mary Delaney rose immediately next to it doesn’t get any. So try not to worry about it as it seems to be just one of those things!

 

Roses are tough plants and usually sail through some leaf drop. All you can truly do to improve blackspot is to have better air circulation for your plants and to feed and mulch them. Everything else is just money wasted on chemicals.

 

Thanks for your advice @CatDouch @Pete8 and @amancalledgeorge . I do feed regularly and mulched at start of spring but the problem seems to be worse this year.

Ah well, I will just have to put up with it as the flowers look and smell lovely and I don't like to use chemicals. I will make sureI have a good clear up at the end of the year. Thanks again for your help.

 

I’ve also stopped worrying about blackspot. In my experience it fluctuates from one year to the next, regardless of whether I remove or clear away dropped leaves or not.

I suspect a lot of the standard advice is more about clearing away unsightly damage than actively preventing black spot. Given its caused by spores, unless you garden in an airtight sealed environment it’s bound to arrive some years.

I did take out one old variety which seemed to be susceptible to everything.

 

Thanks @Butterfly6 , I think I will need to be more relaxed about it and learn to live with it. I think my main concern is damage to the long term health of my roses.

 

Blackspot is a fungus and fungus loves the wet weather. In really dry years it's less prevalent because the spores need water to spread. If you're weather has been as wet as ours then it would be difficult to keep them clear.

 

Thanks @Thevictorian , it has been very wet so far, that would explain why the blackspot is so bad this year.

 

The Pilgrim might be my absolute favourite rose and that is a very nice photo!

I was coming to this forum to vent about blackspot and I saw that the most recent thread was about it and I thought "of course"

It's so bad this year! I thought I was doing things right (removing old leaves, mulching, keeping them well watered and fed)... But the weather has been ideal for blackspot: a mild winter (which meant that fewer fungal spores & pests were eliminated), followed by one of the wettest Aprils on record and now the temperatures are below the average, and it's mostly cloudy and wet.

I have been removing infected leaves and using a sulphur spray which is meant to be organic and safe for pollinators. A few times I did use a conventional fungicide, but I did it late in the evening to minimise the negative impact. And yet, blackspot is winning. I know I need to make peace with having some of it, but for my two Lady of Shalott it can get pretty bad if I let it. The Pilgrim has been surprisingly resilient for me, considering how old the variety is. But my toughest one regarding blackspot has been Penelope Lively.

One useful tip, and I feel silly for not thinking about it sooner, is removing the leaves from the lower part of the shrubs, so that there isn't moisture trapped between the soil and the leaves. By the time I thought of that however, I already had noticeable blackspot.

 

I think Blackspot is part of the natural process, and once it's there, nothing can be done, but next year may be better. As TheVictorian says, it depends on the weather and I would assume roses have an inner instinct knowing how to survive.

 

I sprayed a rose one yr, following the instructions carefully ... and promptly every single leaf on the entire plant dropped off. So ... I decided the "cure" was worse than the disease and learned to live with it.

 

I never spray them with anything. Some years they have little if any blackspot, some years it may be worse on one or another rose. It’s part of nature and I think we need to learn to tolerate imperfection.

 

Thanks @ViewAhead and @Butterfly6 . I'm going to ignore it.

 

Oops, thanks also to @simone_in_wiltshire