Wednesday, Jun. 29, 2011 – 1:33 p.m.
2011-06-29 1:33
So the roses in pots for the wedding project have been in place for about 6 weeks. Most of them are doing pretty well. I have been deadheading and picking off bad leaves just about every morning and it takes me about 10 minutes to do. Two of the bushes (the Brandy and Full Sail) have not been doing as well as I would like and I noticed that on a couple of the bushes, the new growth has been pale. In addition, some of the older leaves have been light green with darker green veins. I also noticed some webs between leaves, speckling of leaves, and the usual… black spot. Of course, we also have the June menace: Japanese beetles.
Time for an intervension
I had gotten some Bayer Advanced All-in-One granules on about a week after planting. I thought that would protect against black spot but I guess I was wrong *sigh*. The granules were convenient at that point because I had not put any much on and could just move the micro-soaker hose that I put in each pot out of the way. Now that I have pine bark mulch over the hoses, it is not so convenient.
In any case, I also looked to address some of the other issues. According to my books, the paleness in the laves could be either iron deficiency or nitrogen. For the former, I got some Ironite and applied it on Jun 24; for the latter, I applied a dose of MiracleGrow for Roses (soluble plant food).
The Beetles
For the J.B.s I got some Bayer Advanced Rose & Flower Insect Killer which has Imidacloprid and is very effective against the buggers. To be truthful, I have only seen about a half dozen of the things so maybe it’s not too back of a year this year. The same stuff should also do a job on any aphids, white fly, spider mites and thrips (though I am a little skeptical about the thrips).
The Black Spot
Picking the bad leaves off will only do so much so it was time to implement the Rosemania.com spray program for black spot. On Sunday June 26, they got a dose of Mancozeb (contact fungicide) and funginex (systemic fungicide). Since I was spraying anyway, I also added some insecticidal soap for the spider mites et. al. On June 27, it was a dose of the Bayer Advanced All-in-One Rose & Flower Care, this time in the mix up the liquid form. Hmmm… Hard to say, which is more trouble. Moving th much and re-arranging the irrigation hoses in each pot or mixing up the stuff and pouring it on the base of the bushes. Have to think about that…. I also seem to have several of the bottles of liquid from past years. I should probably just mix it up in a big batch and put it on the big roses beds. *SIGH* we are not even going to go there about how the main rose beds are doing…. * shudder *.
Today (June 29) I did the second dose of Mancozeb contact fungicide. I realized that I also need to spray the neighbor’s rose bush since unless I address the blackspot there, it will keep infecting my bushes. Fortunately a gallon of mix does all the rose project bushes, the neighbor’s bush, the other roses in pots by the kitchen door, and there is still stuff left to do a number of the roses in the main garden (Europeana, Glowing Peace, DisneyLand, Iceberg, etc).
Employ, successor to Messenger
So one of the other thoughts I is to spray with Messenger, which contains the harpin protein. This chemical is a signal to the plant that it is “under attack” so it induces the plant to “fight back”. Since the plant is not actually being damaged, the plant grows bigger and stronger. I guess you would call it a steriod for plants. Anyway, several years ago I got some Messenger by Eden Bioscience and had pretty good results. In the intervening years, Eden Bioscience has gone out of business so you can’t get Messenger any more. However, another company PHC picked up the patents on the stuff and now markets it as Employ. I got mine from GardenThings.com and put a dose in with the mancozeb this morning. Label says apply every 3-4 weeks.
I will need to get some pictures of the what the roses in pots look like now but I think this is enough for now….