In addition to the roses I’ve had planted in my garden I purchased about 15 roses that have been in pots for a number of months. By far the healthiest rose is Be-Bop which is Santa Claus
I’m starting to wonder if the R. soulienna background of Julia Child, Ebb Tide and Outta the Blue is not contributing some disease resistance. I am stunned by how clean Julia Child is in my garden. Ebb Tide and Outta the Blue are fairly clean as well.
I have two other roses with R. soulienna in their background that are showing good disease resistance as well although Be-Bop shows the most resistance. Midnight Blue and Night Owl are the other two. B-B may be showing the best resistance because it’s an F1 of R. soulienna. I’ll have to look up the ones you mentioned. Thanks for the tip.
Surprisingly, Julia Child has been a disease disaster in my no-spray garden this summer; probably the most defoliated plant in the garden.
Julia Child blackspots here near the Gulf Coast also.
Patrick
Ok…Julia Childs is coming off the list. 
HOW discouraging!
Doesn’t surprise me. I raised seedling from Top Notch. They had a 100% discard rate. I had one that was brilliant carrot orange, but defoliated when sneezed on (Top Notch x Disco Dancer).
I think other’s from the Singing in the Rain/Pot of Gold line might be better choices – or even Amber Queen.
Night Owl and Ebb Tide have been BS/mildew clean for me thus far, though.
I wish this forum had a specific designated area for Zone AND country/state(or province, etc).
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I had Top Notch this year and it is already gone. I could not keep any leaves on it.
Patrick
Rob, I don’t know if I would scratch it off your list. Even though it had a little blackspot it still was more disease resistant than most others. But I still don’t like that it had Top Notch as one of its parents. As I said before Top Notch got blackspot real bad.
Patrick
Hmm well that is too bad, I was hoping that perhaps the disease resistance that I am seeing was a bit more robust than it apppears to be. I have the bush growing next to some excellent inoculum providers that were completely defoliated.
JC has two things going for it for me. It’s yellow and it has 12.5% hybrid of Rosa soulieana blood. I’m not familiar with Top Notch but if it is such a BS magnet I’m not sure I want to use a decendant of it so I’ll take JC off my list. There are other Rosa soulieana hybrids to work with that are more disease resistant. Thanks for all the opinions!
Rob
Hi Rob,
I have had BeBop for two seasons now and grow it in a pot. It is not completely clean from BS, but it has managed to hang on to most of its leaves so far (I never spray for disease). It is truly spectacular in bloom and repeated one time for me–our season is pretty much at an end now and I am nursing along the last of the hips I need to collect–trying to give them one more day (northern Wisconsin). I tried quite a few pollinations using many different pollens on BeBop. I got three hips from a cross with Mrs. Coleville. I was a bit disappointed by how many crosses aborted. I had similar luck using Topsy Turvy.
With respect to Julia Child, I raved about it last year as being disease free. This year my two plants have distinct and large BS lesions, but both plants have retained their leaves. The lesions are similar to those on nearby Prairie Joy (known to have pretty good horizontal resistance) and make me wonder if Julia may also have some horizontal resistance to blackspot going for it.
Midnight Blue defoliated very early from BS and always looked ratty to me. I discarded it after two years.
It is very interesting to hear how plant performance varies in different parts of the country. It is clear that it is nearly impossible to discern anything other than local disease resistance for the cultivars we grow. Perhaps the RHA could develop a data base of disease resistance across the country for each cultivar, similar to the Roses in Review that is carried out by the ARS. If we all kept tract of individual plant response to BS (or mildew) in our gardens for a few seasons, we might get a kind of handle on the over-all disease response across the country of an individual cultivar without having to go through setting up trials. Perhaps something similar to the rating David Z has used when providing us with disease evaluations of some of the Bailey roses. Would something like this be do-able, or is it too large an undertaking? I rate each of my planted seedlings for disease resistance each fall, noting leaf-spot disease if terribly noticeable, presence of mildew, presence of BS and degree of defoliation. I can generally do a couple hundred plants in a few hours. Any thoughts from others?
Julie
Be-Bop seems to set OP hips fine. I didn’t get a chance to use it in any crosses but will try both ways next season. I’m assuming it’s fairly hardy in your zone 3 Julie?
I like the idea of tracking disease resistance in various parts of the country. I would contribute to any data base that was developed. Thanks for your input on B-B and MB Julie.
I think Summer Wine is probably 1/4 kordesii, which is a grandparent of JC.
I noted the have the lineage wrong at HMF. Jadae, do you have documentation of the lineage for Julia Child? If so posting it at HMF would be helpful. Thanks, Robert