Monday, Jul. 02, 2007 – 5:44 p.m.
2007-07-02 5:44
This past weekend I got back out to spray the roses. On Saturday, I was in Lowes so I picked up a “ready to use” spray bottle of Bayer Rose & Flower Insect Killer and used all of it to spray the beetles I could see. The active ingredient imidacloprid is quite effective against them and does grant some additional protection while minimizing the impact on beneficial insects. As I understand it, after it dries, the bug would have to ingest it to be affected. I defined any bug that is EATING my roses as NON-beneficial and therefore, fair game for the insecticide. Unfortunately, I only got about 3/4 of the garden sprayed before the bottle was empty. Checking the chemicals shelf, I found that I had a partial bottle of the same stuff in a “attach to the hose” applicator. Perfect! This allowed me to hit the whole of bed 5 (the one with the noisettes and other OGRs). That bed doesn’t have much in the way of blooms at present (about half of the plants in the bed are non-remontant and so are done blooming for the year) but the beetles still like to congregate on the leaves. Therefore, using the hose mounted version, I was able to hit all that plus the Rembrandt and Rosa Mundi in bed #4, which was about where the ready-mixed spray ran out. So I used up the rest of the “attach to the hose” bottle as well.
Blackspot and mildew are still a problem so yesterday morning I went out to spray some more, with fungicide this time. I used the Funginex this time along with the Mancozeb contact fungicide. Ok, I also added Merit (which is imidacloprid in powder form) and Conserve for the thrips. The spraying from the previous evening was apparently quite effective. I would guess that I saw over 100 beetles the previous evening but when I went to spray in the morning, I would say I saw less than 6 and I am not sure that all of those were alive.
Regarding the mildew, I think clearing out the weeds helped a lot. It did not seem so prevalent as I first thought. Clearing out the weeds opened up the air flow around the plants.
A couple of points:
- The Old Blush is significantly overshadowing Peace and Orange Garnet. I may need to prune back the Old Blush.
- I need to go through the chemical shelf and do an inventory. I have a bunch of some stuff and partial bottles on a couple of things. I may need to take some of it to the household hazardous waste pickup. It would be good to have a list of what I have. I guess that goes for fertilizers as well.
- R. moschata is blooming! so I need to get out with the camera and get some pictures.
- I need to move the Eugène de Beauharnais. I have said this before but it is really being overshadowed in bed #5.
I did do two imprompt rose consultations this weekend: Aenor asked me about what to do for her roses, which don’t bloom much and have been losing leaves; and while at Lowes to get more of the Bayer insect killer stuff, a couple was looking at the beetle traps and I told them that unless you have sufficient space to place the traps well away from what you are protecting, they tend to aggravate the problem rather than solving it. They had three rose bushes so I pointed to the Bayer All-in-One product as well as the spray bottle of Rose & Flower Insect Killer.