Question
Hello Lynette,

I just planted my first rose bush in my garden.  It is a shrub
rose and was large when I planted it about a week ago.  It is
about 30" wide and 24" high and looked fine when I planted
it, lots of blooms.

As the directions stated, I watered the bush every day.  The
weather here (Fair Lawn, NJ) has been hot (90-100) and
humid with no rain for at least a week.

Some of the leaves now are turning yellow, drying up and
falling off.  I don't know whether I am giving too much
water or not enough.  I did not fertilize or add anything to
the soil when I planted it.  It looks like it will live, but it is
some kind of distress.  What can I do to help it?

Thanks, Tina.

Answer
When you transplant a rose bush, even from a pot, it is not unusual for the rose to go into a snit. Planting a rose to a different location always causes stress to the bush. Spring and fall are the best times because the weather is usually cold or wet and the plant is dormant. What has happened is that the feeder roots have been distrubed (even by just taking them out of the pot) by the high heat. The only way a rose can stay alive is to first get rid of it's leaves, then the flowers are finally the canes dieback. Your rose is just reacting to the stress of the heat. I am getting a lots of questions about rose heat stress. In high heat the roses usually need about 5 gallons of water every three days. That is about a bucket of water. To see if the rose is getting the water just take a trovel and scoop down to see just how far the water is going down. The putting a mulch all around the base of the rose bush after you have heavily watered it will make the rose happy as roses love cool roots and it is the heat on the roots that is causing the trouble. If you don't have any mulches then 5 layers of soaking wet newspaper really helps. You were wise to not fertilize as this can cause leaves to burn in high heat. Liquid fish fertilzer would be okay and roses like it. The rose won't die and it will bounce back when the weather turns cool.
Hope this helps.