Sherry, This may not be what is eating the leaves on your roses, but last summer I discovered that June bugs were responsible for eating my roses' leaves. I actually saw some June bugs eating the leaves on roses in my pot ghetto on the patio at night (the patio lights allowed me to see them quite clearly). Howard Garrett and Malcom Beck say "There are over 100 species of June Bugs in Texas..."in their book "Texas Bug Book the Good, the Bad & the Ugly". Their focus is on the species that causes damage to lawns while in the larval stage, and they add "Adult beetles chew leaves at night but are not highly destructive." When I lived in the Dallas area, I had more roses and a lot more June bugs, but I never had problems with them eating rose leaves. Here in the Houston area, we don't seem to have as many June bugs, but I am assuming that they are a slightly different species here that are particularly fond of roses. When I have seen them or their damage on the roses, I have noticed that they seem to prefer the older, thicker leaves and tend to leave the new soft growth alone. Kathy Here is a link that might be useful: June Bugs

If you get spider mites, mix up this mix and use a rag or soft sponge to wipe it on all surfaces of the leaf. Don't miss any places. It's the only way to put it on without moving the plants. One cup cooking oil, and one Tablespoon dish detergent. (A man running the Garfield Park Conservatory told me you can use Suave shampoo, the coconut kind instead of the dish detergent, and I've used it before with good results too.They would use that in there so they could spray hot spots on cloudy days without closing the conservatory. It smells really good that way.) Mix it all together well and then put 1-2 teaspoons of the mix in a cup of warm water and use immediately while it's still mixed. If it separates, shake it up again. It's non-toxic, I suppose you could put the plants in the bathtub and spray them with it really well as long as you got it to the point of runoff, and didn't miss any spots too. If they're small enough to carry. You can use this in a fish pond too if you get those aphids on your water plants. Just try to spray more on the plants than the water surface. Don't EVER use this mix in full sun. You will fry every leaf off everything you spray it on. Wait till it's shady. I'm mixing up another batch and spraying it tomorrow morning on some elephant ears. Those darn things are spider mite magnets, as dry as it's been around here lately.

Shamae, How big are the bugs? I know you posted a photo, but without something whose size is known (like, for example a dime or a penny or something) placed beside them to provide context, it is hard for us to understand what size your pests are. Spider mites are roughly the size of the dot over the letter "i". They are very hard to see with the naked eye and hard to view in a photo, though once you're used to seeing them, you can flip over a leaf and look at the underside of it and see the tiny mites on the plants then. Sometimes, folks new to spider mites aren't sure if they are seeing spider mites and we tell them to hold a clean white sheet of paper underneath a plant leaf and thump it. Tiny insects the size of a period will fall onto the paper and begin moving, and if that happens, they likely have spider mites. It actually is easier to identify mites on plants by the damage they do than by seeing the mites themselves. If you can tell us more about your pests, perhaps we can help you with an ID. If, by chance, they are the same size as spider mites, I'd suspect chiggers, but the pests in your photo look larger....more like the size of aphids? Not that I'm saying they are aphids, but rather that's just the size they are. Are you here in OK? Was your compost wet or was it dry? The more info you share, the better we might be able to help you figure out what it is that you're seeing. Or at least what it isn't. Dawn

Anna, Every fall somebody (maybe a federal agency, I can't remember) does a grass hopper count and forecasts grasshooper population numbers for the following year. This helps farmers and ranchers plan ahead for spring, and schedule orders of pesticides and ramp up for serious spraying or whatever. In the western states like Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nebraska and a few others, the forecast for this year is for a massive grasshopper outbreak. Most of Oklahoma did not have a large outbreak forecast, but I'm seeing a lot of them nevertheless, although the main hatch seemed to hit very late...about late May instead of late March. The problem with grasshoppers is that if I see a lot of small ones and put out Nolo Bait or Semaspore to control them, it is likely to work just fine and will wipe out most of what I'm seeing. But, with hoppers being migratory, more move in from elsewhere all summer long and often they are in the later instars, so that Nolo Bait and Semaspore are not very effective with them. I put out Semaspore and within a week was seeing significantly fewer. This week, though, I bet we have more than 2 dozen per square yard, so I need to do something else and do it quick. They are destroying the leaves on my beans, catnip, lemon balm and now have started in on the peppers. I guess I'll make some canning jar traps with alfalfa tea and see how many I catch that way. J, You're welcome and congrats on the harvest! Spider mites are perplexing critters. For me, a trap crop of marigolds has proven to be very effective. It is interesting to note that the marigolds in the big garden were simply covered with spider mites but there's not a single one in Maddies' Peter Rabbit Garden about 100 feet away. Her garden is new this year, so maybe the mites haven't found it yet. I also get lots and lots of mites on an ornamental plant--tall verbena (Verbena bonariensis) that I grow to attract beneficial insects. This year, I've moved a lot of the verbena just outside the garden itself instead of having it in the flower border that surrounds the garden. Since the tall verbenas are so appealing to spider mites, maybe they'll lure them away from the garden. The mites generally don't kill the tall verbena, but once the foliage has that whitish stippling all over, I just cut the plant back almost to the ground and it resprouts and puts out new growth like mad. Sometimes the mites find it again and sometimes they don't, but as long as they're on the tall verbena, they're not bothering garden plants as much. Last week I saw mite damage on a few bean leaves, and just picked off those leaves and disposed of them much as I do when I have bean leaves with bean rust. I've also been able to reduce the level of spider mites I see by being careful not to put too much nitrogen into my garden in the form of organic matter in the soil or in the form of fertilizer. Nitrogen is good (and necessary) but too much nitrogen turns veggies plants into lures for bugs. And I never use broad-spectrum pesticides although all the old farmers and old ranchers here insist I 'cannot' garden organically in the midst of our post oak savannah ecosystem. (I ignore them and garden organically anyway!) If I had spider mites and couldn't get enough beneficials to come here and eat them or couldn't repel them from the plants with massive blasts of water to the undersides of plant foliage, I'd probably use neem on the undersides of leaves, or one of the other solutions found at Planet Natural. I don't necessarily order a lot from Planet Natural (why pay for shipping if you don't have to?), although I will order from them if I cannot find an equivalent item locally. However, I use their website all the time. Their pages on the various pests are so informative and they always offer several options to either repel or control pests. I love marigolds and am not crazy about losing them to spider mites, but one flat of marigolds planted from 6-packs in early April serves as a great trap crop for mites and probably helps my garden avoid more severe damage further down the road. I've never had a huge infestation of spider mites like my dad did, but if that ever happens here, I'll just order the very costly predator mites. They're so expensive, I cannot imagine using them routinely, but for one of those "worst spider mite years ever", they could save the entire garden from damage or plant death. All my tomatoes are ripening now (but I'm way down south and plant pretty early) so it is about to be salsa time and that's one of my favorite times of the year. With any luck at all, I'll be making salsa once every couple of weeks from now through October. Today I worked in the garden very early but had to keep coming back inside periodically to cool off. The humidity and heat index are just awful. I guess this afternoon I'll start working on processing the 27 lbs. of plums I picked yesterday. By the time I'm dehydrated and jellied/jammed all the plums, it will be time to pick more plums or tomatoes. The squash crop is in about its 3rd or 4th week of 'heavy' harvest time, and I've now lost two plants (one zucchini, one yellow crookneck) to squash bugs or borers. I just yank them out and toss them on the compost pile and start seeds of new ones. Cucumber beetles are a constant problem here. You don't even have to grow cukes to have them because they like practically every other plant a person grows. This is the worst bug year I've seen here, but I have faith that the beneficials and a few carefully selected organic pesticides will help me keep their levels under control. Dawn