whats eating my rose bush

whats eating my knockout rose

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Your Roses are being attacked on all fronts with black spot (a Disease) and either caterpillars eating holes in the foliage or some other insect, with the amount of black spot, there is every chance that they are so week that any other named creature or disease will take advantage and make things ten times worse, thats how nature works, the survival of the fittest, for your black spot you need to remove ALL the fallen leaves and possibly remove some really bad ones from the shrub and burn them or tie them in a plastic bag for the garbage, dont compost them, this disease will hibernate on the fallen leaves for winter and re-attack your roses again next year, once you have cleaned all the diseased foliage, get a spray for black spot and spray the roses every two to three weeks to help the shrubs for this year, (it don't go on the flowers and mark them like the leaves) after fall, go and gather all the fallen foliage again so the area is clear from this, then very early spring, when you see the tiny new buds break on the rose stems, start to spray again and keep spraying every couple of weeks so that all the new foliage as it grows gets the spray and protection from the black spot fungus/spores, it may take you the whole of next year to keep spraying, but it will pay off. Next spring, give your roses a good organic feed around the root area to help them get good and strong to fight off this disease , I always feed my Roses end of summer and again in spring and mulch them with well rotted animal manure or home made compost. hope this helps you out, good luck. WeeNel.

Grassman have you had a lot of rain? Then the hot sun pops out on them? Along with very humid conditions all three could be part of the problem.
Lin

no Its been a drought the worst in a long time and I do not think its blackspot because its a knockout rose

Japanese beetles will chew holes in the leaves, I'm not sure how bad they are in your area but I think roses are a special favorite of theirs. It's a little hard to tell from your picture, but it looks like the black/brown areas are all surrounding holes in the leaves? If so then it's probably not black spot, but if the spots are there where there aren't holes then it probably is black spot as well as some insect munching. Knockouts may be resistant to black spot but that doesn't mean they can't get it, just that they're less likely to have it every single year like some other roses will.

thankyou