Here's the nut! >"I tried last year to dig out severel problem areas, and then patched the bare spots in with plugs I dug out from my back lawn. Though that seemed to help for last year, I fear I may have actually made things worse, perhaps by disturbing the soil." Yes, disturbing the soil! Poa seeds remain viable in the soil for MANY years. You know they are there, so .... do NOT dig, core aerate or dethatch anytime in your future. Just say NO. Let a sleeping dog lie. Round Up the area/spots, over lapping the area a little bit due to any poa annua underground rhizomes and inter-twined blades with the KBG and apply a pre-emergent to this area - never disturbing the soil. Using a combo product, like say Scotts Turf Builder with Halts is ideal for this purpose. It will prevent any germination while encouraging the KBG to fill and spread into the void with the added fertilizer. >"but in the summer it seems to fade/die off anyway" And this is your clue! You are familiar when this happens in your area every year. Since poa annua dies when drought and heat stressed, so help it! Do NOT irrigate prior. Yes, your KBG may want to go dormant, and if it does, it will recover. Not to worry. When you notice the poa being stressed and browning out, (August???) THIS is when you apply the fall preM, before soil temps drop to favorable temperatures for germinating additional poa annua. Once your fall preM is down, you can water. After Labor Day, feed it ... bombs away. Labor Day, Mid October and around Thanksgiving. Fall IS the best time to fertilize and you want that KBG to fill in those voids. And FYI Halts - Pendimethalin has a 90 day residual Dimension - Dithiopyr " 120 " Barricade - Prodiamine can last 8 months when applied at the heavy rate. You have a longer growing season on LI than I do in Chicago. 2 or 3 apps will be needed depending on the product you use. Come spring, forget the forsythia. That's great for crab grass. Apply earlier for poa annua. Better early than too late. Kill the poa annua and feed the KBG ... it will fill in. Click link below for visual proof. KBG is outstanding at this! *YOU* too can do it also! Here is a link that might be useful: P. Annua Repair

Hi folks Thanks so much for all your encouragement and support! It's so nice to know that I'm not alone in this, and that there are friends out there who understand that roses are important to us when we've lavished love and attention on them - Bluegirl put that well. Part of the fun of growing roses for me is that they need me in a way that daylilies never would, but this year they've needed too much attention for too little return. And I am indeed a lazy rose gardener, at least as much as I can be with 700+ roses. I don't spray anything except very occasional Liquid Fence or insecticidal soap, and they've all built some resistance from "tough love" for years that will hopefully help them weather all this. RpR, that's one reason I am totally toast if I winter protect before the ground freezes - without the Serenade and more fussing than I'm willing to do, far more roses will die from winter canker in my climate than winter kill. For Nebraska, it's not the absolute low temperature but the constantly variable ups and downs of temperatures all winter that keep no reliable snow cover on the ground, and just enough warm spells to confuse the roses all winter (we've been alternating single digit weeks with 40's and 50's since Christmas). Thanks Hoovb for the sympathies that this is one of the toughest climates for roses! Statistically, Nebraska has wider temperature variations all year - hotter heat and colder cold - than any US state except South Dakota. A perennial breeder in Nebraska named Harlan Hamernik (who created Husker Red penstemon) says "if it'll grow in Nebraska, it'll grow anywhere". Not exactly true for roses, but we do make weather a challenge and a legitimate topic of conversation. Personally, I secretly think folks in zone 3-4 and below have it harder for roses, since I can get away with growing lots of hybrid teas if I winter protect a few inches at least, but the options are so much more limited further north. I totally agree with ehamel and intris and bluegirl that this was the year to hunker down and just concentrate on keeping everything alive. I always mulch well for long-term survival in a naturally dry climate anyway, and always plant new roses with the water crystals to help short-term survival. Yep, mori1 - I was watering even into December too, and my neighbors have long since stopped trying to figure me out in the garden. It's just that watering isn't fun, and a large part of why I don't spray is that it isn't fun either (though I like to believe health principles factor in as well as laziness). Harmonyp hit it right on the nose, in what I was getting across with all the wingeing. Gardening is one of my few "me" things, and the only one besides exercise I "have" to do enough to carve out time for it. I work more than full time and have kids and my husband and other responsibilities, so I rely on the garden for that extra boost of sanity and strength to balance me out with faith and family. This garden year was just plain depressing non-stop, and I didn't even want to sort pictures of better years to post since it so wasn't reality for now. It's reassuring though discouraging to hear the same from others like seil and bustopher and mori1 that have had the same kind of year in the midwest. Even though things sort of grew and stayed alive, nothing thrived - 25 tomato plants and maybe 25 tomatoes total for the summer, fewer potatoes out than I planted, well established blueberry bushes dying. Seil, I agree that roses are tougher than we fear they'll be and that if I can keep even the crowns alive they'll come back in the spring. We know that well in our zone 5-6 winters, and we're used to pruning the puppies down to little nubs in the spring. It's just that the poor things were so stressed already by the limited water, with the freeze added to it. Even with the mulch and crystals and weekly deep watering enough to keep them mostly green, their root systems were stressed. Still - it is what it is, and we'll see what happens in the spring. After all these years, I know that a rose dying is an opportunity to plant a different rose, and I certainly haven't stopped buying roses for spring. Lucille, Kitty, Melissa - I know you have your share of challenges in your year-round warm zone in different ways, so I appreciate your sympathies. And Jeri, don't you dare stop complaining about your drought or I'm going to feel like a real whiner. Tough conditions are tough, even if it could always be worse elsewhere. Thanks again Cynthia

I love the rain! It is the freaky, high winds that disturb me. I used to love to see the wind blow, but that was before we lost all our big trees. When 40' trees bend over, that is SCARY! I'm soo tired of the power losses. Every day that it rains, we lose our electricity.. Doesn't bode well for hurricane time! I'm getting a sensor for the house that will call us if the temps get too high. If my dogs die from heatstroke from a power loss, I'm afraid of what I will do to FPL.. A good friend (a vet) came home from work one Monday last month to find her house an oven, and her 2 year old French Bulldog dead from heatstroke. Her other 3 (collapsed) were saved with emergency care. Her Mastiffs on the porch were fine-they had gone swimming in the morning, were wet, so were left on the screened-in porch with fans running. Her central A/C had failed. She had no way of knowing, until she got home. She now has a sensor. If you have pets, and work, consider getting a Sensaphone so you will know when temps get dangerously high, or there is a fire or water damage. I flat out do not trust FPL to keep the power on! Lisa Here is a link that might be useful: Sensaphone

I would guess a commercial growers plants don't get the same attention a backyard gardener gives their plant. Thus the difference in a plants production as far as hydropeppergrows opinion goes. Commercial growers don't trim or repot their plants.Not cost effective etc. They also rotate their crops to save the soil from getting messed up if the plants are in the ground. Keeping a crop just isn't a commercially effective thing to do on a large scale. Most of the small seed suppliers ,powder and sauce makers I know save their best and or rarer plants every year and some harvest year round. Depends where they live-weather conditions and such. Second year plants also put out spring and then summer pods for me here in S.Ca. All my older plants have always produced better the second year.Especially the C.Pubescens. I have had some plants that grew into monsters the second year. A 12 ft. tree habanero(habanero de Arbol). It was only 4ftX4ft. the first year,lived 12-15yrs.,mites killed it last year. Here I can get 3 crops a year on some pepper varieties. At the same time,I feel the work involved to grow older plants makes common stuff in my garden not worth messing with after a couple harvests-a season. I don't keep stuff that I can re grow easily or buy the next year in a store. Why spend the time and $ on a Jalapeno or Poblano when it can easily be replaced each year. The only stuff I start from seeds is new varieties I just obtained. Every year I keep the stuff I liked best. Until last season 90% of my garden was all older plants that were 2-15yrs. old. I still don't kill any plants intentionally. People grow them in their gardens. Friends like starting their gardens with adult plants in full bloom each spring better than 6 inch nursery plants.