Each year I tell you about a fantastic product call Systemic Rose Care. This is a granular product I apply to the soil at the base of a rose bush in the next week and just let the rain dissolve it.
That product has the best formulation of rose fertilizer I have found, and the systemic part indicates that it contains an insecticide that is absorbed by the roots and moves systemically through the plant tissue. It will kill any insect that feeds on any part of the rose plant.
Application is repeated in six weeks and then another time six weeks after that. So we’re talking three applications per season.
One of the most aggressive insects that attack the rose foliage is a little green worm that is the same color as the leaf. The adult butterfly lays a mass of eggs on the underside of the leaf, and the critters that hatch have an enormous appetite. As I said, there is an egg mass, so we are talking a bunch of these hungry little buggers and they will almost totally strip the leaves from the plant in a couple of days … likely before you notice they are present.
The damage will start as just a few holes in the leaf, and the worms feed from the underside of the leaf, so unless you know where to look, you will not see them. Obviously they have to eat some of the foliage before they ingest the insecticide, but the damage stops there.
Bonide and Bayer are two readily available brand names.
If you have started some plants indoors that are headed for the garden later, set them outdoors for a few days prior to planting them in the garden. That process is called hardening them off and they get a chance to “muscle up” to the weather they will have to endure later. Indoors they don’t get assaulted by the wind, and unless you introduce them to the fact that we do have wind, the acclimation process can be brutal or even fatal to tender seedlings. Set them in a partially shaded area before setting them in full sun.
I do this with all of my cool season crops because they are going to have to put up with our unsettled weather pattern more than warm season plants that go out later.
Speaking of warm season crops, I am referring to beans, tomatoes, peppers, melons, cucumbers and similar crops that will not tolerate cold temperatures. Eager gardeners get a warm day or two and they get excited to get these plants and seeds in the ground prior to the ground temperature being warm enough, and they actually do more harm to the plants and seeds than if they just practice a little patience.