We had a warm spell in February and I was actually getting some starting growth on my roses. Then we have two nights near zero.
Most of my roses now have mostly black stems. See a little growth coming up from the base of some of the roses.
Does it sounds like these roses should be replaced?

to the rose forum!

Generally, I would wait and see if they put out new foliage and then trim back any dead canes.
It would be easier to be more specific if you could post a picture of the damage and maybe tell us what kind of roses you have and which zone you are in??

Hope your roses recover!

Hybrid teas do not like the twenties much less near zero.
Where are you located?
Cut the black off and see what happens.

Rpr ... I think that is too much of a generalization. There are simply far too many variables. It also depends on the rose.

@roseman2145 ....

You may have pruned your roses too early, but it really would help to know the general area where you are located. However, roses are tough and are genetically programmed to come back from being pruned by nature at the wrong time.

It's unlikely that the roses need to be replaced. You may have to prune off the damaged canes, but for now, a wait-and-see approach does seem wise. If you have more freezing night temps predicted, it would be wise to mound the growth at the base of the plant for cold protection.

RoseBlush1 said:Rpr ... I think that is too much of a generalization. There are simply far too many variables. It also depends on the rose.
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Believe me having dealt with roses and hard freezing temperatures for decades, no it is not too much of a generalization.
In the spring time, which is different from the fall, Hybrid Tea roses DO NOT like or survive well to twenties much less near zero.
I have lost enough due to early uncovering to know this well.
Black is dead, cut it off.

The growers location makes huge difference in how his roses respond to hard freezes in spring which is why I asked his location and said to just cut off the black.
You are ABSOLUTELY correct to tell him to think about covering incase of more hard freezes.
I almost uncovered my south roses last week as the hard rain we had this miserable warm winter pounded some of the leaf cover down, and probably washed dirt chunks off, of some of my roses.
There are several feet long canes sticking part way up.
Had I uncovered it would have been hell to pay as it got down to 26F last week and that wreaks havoc by either shocking the roses so they just sit there for a looong time, or they simply die.

Addendum:
Oak leaves are recommended by most professionals up here as the best leaves for covering roses.
I used to use mostly Oak, but as I bury them now, I am not so fussy. Bad move.
Well the rain I mentioned above, WILL NOT pound down Oak leaves like it does most other leaves as they do not absorb water readily.
Just a note for those who use leaves for cover.

Rpr .... I know you have a lot of experience growing roses in a very cold climate, but your knowledge is not completely transferable to warmer zones.

I grow hybrid teas in this garden where the average night temps during the winter months range from the high twenties to low teens without any winter protection. Some winters, the night temps drop to the single digits. I haven't lost one rose.

I can give you a long list of hybrid teas that are cane hardy in zone 5. As usual, it depends on the rose.

Also, many other variables come into play besides cold hardiness and may play a role in a rose's ability to withstand cold temperatures.

RoseBlush1 said:Rpr .... I know you have a lot of experience growing roses in a very cold climate, but your knowledge is not completely transferable to warmer zones.

I grow hybrid teas in this garden where the average night temps during the winter months range from the high twenties to low teens without any winter protection. Some winters, the night temps drop to the single digits. I haven't lost one rose.

I can give you a long list of hybrid teas that are cane hardy in zone 5. As usual, it depends on the rose.

Also, many other variables come into play besides cold hardiness and may play a role in a rose's ability to withstand cold temperatures.

That is why I asked his area.
How cold does your ground get?
Warmer ground, dead canes, live roses.
Cold ground, dead canes, dying roses.
That is why twenties in the fall, frost not in the ground, affect roses differently than twenties in the spring.
Around here, true spring and late fall, Nov., walking barefoot can be very uncomfortable to near frost bite without surface being frozen.
We can get frozen surface ground in spring after days of temps. in sixties and seventies because frost never truly left the ground yet.
IN winter frost can go from a couple of feet to well over six feet in the ground.

Now not all of mine have died, as I said, some just sat there looking frumpy for weeks longer than they should but I have had enough die that you can NEVER be too cautious.
He asked whether to replace; if they grow good canes, no; if they come up half-hearted maybe.
My half hearted ones have some times after a year or so done well again; some never really got any better and I dug them out.

If they come up Dr Huey or some other root stock, also maybe.

Sorry I didn't give you more details. I live in NW NJ Zone 6A. All my roses are hybrid teas.
I lose a lot of roses and I think the main reason is I read not to cover your roses in winter because it causes fungus and disease problems. Probably poor advice!
I have about 20 roses, seven of them are recently planted bare root.
The rest look pretty bad. The only growth I see is at ground level on some of them.
I have not pruned them yet as I am trying to see where the growth is going to appear.
I think today I will dig around the base and cut them down to the ground if I see some new growth. It looks like I will be buying some replacements when the potted roses are available.
Should I fertilize the new bareroots when I uncover them. They have been in the ground about a week and I see new growth pushing through the mulch I covered them with. If so, organic or miracle gro for roses?
The first picture is a 6' sugar moon. There is top growth coming but the base stems don't look very healthy!

Sorry to see all the damage from the roller coaster fluctuating past winter temps. I am experiencing a similar problem here although less damage than yours most likely because I hilled up my roses. I hill them up (about 8 - 12"") sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving each year. A few shovelfuls of top soil, followed by some horse manure or compost and finally top it off with mulch. Around mid April I remove the hill.
https://garden.org/apps/frost-...
About the pruning: I pruned my roses last week. I cut down to where the cane pith was whitish in color. Some of the canes showed areas where it was darken in color, I left those in place to see if they would eventually show some signs of growth - bud eyes and leafing out. I see a combination of both new growth and burnt distorted leaves on the canes. Some canes had dark spots in the surface of the canes. I believe this is from the overwintering of fungus - black spot. After pruning I did follow up with OxiDate (fungicide and bactericide). A few days after pruning I fertilized the roses but will retain the hilling until mid April.
A week has past since I last pruned. I am in process of doing a 'second pass" of pruning - touch-ups.
Here is a list of hybrid teas that done well in my zone and climate. These are grafted with the exception of a couple as indicated:
Electron, Helen Hayes, La Rose Optimiste, Mister Lincoln, Velvet Fragrance (* own root*), Caroline Victoria (*own root), Charles de Gaulle, Double Delight, Eliza, Grafin Diana, Midas Touch, Paradise, Pompon Veranda (*own root), Pretty Lady Rose, Rainbow Niagara, Over the Moon, Golden Fairy Tale, Pink Enchantment, Sunset Celebration, Travita and Tineke.
The last 2 summers, we had a drought here on Long Island and I had to resort to using a lot of tap water (pH 7). Rain water is acidic. If it happens again this summer, I am considering the idea of applying a thin top layer mixture of peat moss (acidic) and sand to the base of the roses which would hopefully act as a filter and alter the pH. This adjustment may help to control/prevent black spot as it is my understanding that fungus can not thrive in a very alkaline nor acidic environment. The sand is to prevent peat moss from clumping. I will do a pH test first as my final decision will depend on these results.

Hi again Roseman ...

If your temps drop down to the point where your roses die from cold, it makes sense that you do need to winter protect them. You don't need to worry about fungal diseases for dead roses ...

Unlike other colder climates, you do not have to cover them completely, but do need to mound them up. General practice is to wait until until the first hard frost and then mound them up about a foot. (The reason for that is so that rodents don't make nests in your winter protection mounds .. ) The canes may die back to the level of the top of the protective mound, but you will have protected the bud union which will allow the rose to grow back.

You don't prune your HTs in spring until the forsythia blooms. The forsythia is an indicator plant that is used world wide that has let rosarians know when to prune since forever.

I would hold off digging around the base of your roses. The feeder roots which supply nutrients and moisture to the top growth are located in the top 12 to 6 inches of the soil. The plant needs those roots to get going in spring, so it's wise not to damage them at this time.

From the looks of your roses in the photos, they do not look like they are ready to break dormancy, nor do they look all that sad for roses that were not winter protected. You do have some clean up work to do when it is time to prune them, but I think you probably need to wait a couple of weeks. Look for swelling of the bud eyes on the canes. You don't need to dig down to check them out.

I don't know what the temperatures are in your garden or what soil you have, so to advise you as to what food you should use right now is kind of tricky for me. There are a lot of opinions about what is best. Organics take warmer soil and ambient air temps to be broken down by the soil bacteria into a form that the rose can use, and chemical fertilizers, if used incorrectly can cause problems. You do not have to buy special rose food ... thats marketing .... because roses can't read and don't know that you are giving them special food. A lot of what you use to feed any plant in your garden depends on the fertility of your soil. What works well for me may be wrong for you.

When I am preparing my roses for spring, I clear the area around the rose from all weeds and old mulch, which will contain disease spores held over winter the last from last season. I like to add horse manure to my mulch because I have found that it does improve my soil. Others skip this step. Most often, I put down about two inches of shredded oak leaves that will cover the whole area under the canopy of the rose. This inhibits weed growth and as the leaves break down, the compost feeds the soil. You can purchase regular compost for this purpose, but I live in the mountains, so I went to a friend's place and bagged up her oak leaves for my garden. The mulch also helps maintain moisture during the growing season when you water.

If a hard freeze is predicted, for young roses, you may want to mound up the new growth, but established roses seem to come through with little damage in my garden.

There are a lot of right ways to grow roses. If you put ten rose gardeners in a room and ask a question, you will often get ten different answers. Some of it is based on our personal experience in gardens with climates that do not have soils like yours and with completely different roses.

It always comes down to, "It depends on the rose." Some hybrid teas are very strong plants, while others will need a lot of TLC because they are lousy plants with beautiful blooms.

Young roses always need more care than they will once they mature into established plants. In a way it's kind of like planting a tree. A sapling takes time to mature into a tree. A young rose takes time to mature into a viable rose garden plant. Many roses just don't make it that far.

Good luck with your roses.

As said above, wait, wait to see how they look in a few weeks.
Except for the totally black cane, they do not look that bad.
OxiDate is another good treatment.
Treat them with something.

I live in a similar zone. Own root roses have done much better for me. I know it is a generalization, but I have been happiest with Austin roses and floribundas grown on their own roots. i research varieties that are winter hardy and that grow well on their own roots. I moved this year. my roses overwintered in big pots.

I had a couple grafted roses. Some have sprouted in February this year and may be dead now. I am waiting to see if they recover.

Roseman,
I gardened for 13 years in central NJ, zone 6b. I am pretty sure that the black canes you are seeing arise from your roses coming out of dormancy, going into "grow" mode, and then being hit with freezing weather. People who garden on the West Coast tend to deny that this can happen since it does not happen to them. Nor did it happen to me very often when I gardened in NJ. It happens every winter here in the mountains of AZ zone 7b. It is mostly a problem for my hybrid tea roses. Most roses in other classes do not suffer this fate. Some HT roses - mostly roses bred in Germany by Kordes - muddle throug. Sometimes HT roses that have reputations as being reliably cold hardy in zone 5 will survive one of my zone 7 winters. LeAnn Rimes is an example.

When I was in NJ, I lost a huge number of HT roses to black spot; very few were immune. I never saw black spot on Olympiad or Midas Touch. I saw Electron grown well at the local park, an AARS site where they sprayed a lot. I'm sure there are dozens more; but from what I remember, that's pretty much it for good looking HT roses. I had good luck with Hybrid Musk roses Felicia, Buff Beauty, Ballerina, and Sally Holmes. I also had good luck with Playboy, Fred Loads, Sea Foam, Champlain, City of York, The Alexandra Rose, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Sophies Rose, Felicite et Perpetue, Sompreuil, Queen of Denmark, and the eglantine rose (The species rose whose foliage smells of apples.)

Golden Celebration and Don Juan could be grown, but only with a diligent spray program. Carefree Beauty grew well; Carefreee Wonder suffered from black spot.

As for roses with blackened canes, I'd prune to good wood, add a little organic fertilizer, and hope for the best. Maybe think about which floribunda would be a good substitute next year. I was always impressed with the Cherry Parfaits at the nearby park, and the one I have here behaves like a champ.

Good Luck.

I live in zone 5b and my rose did the same thing, worse actually. I pruned it a few weeks ago to just a few inches from the ground (I should have waited, but I'm still learning). I've got some promising growth now and I was certain it wasn't going to make it. So don't give up on your roses just yet!