I don't often disagree with rhizo (in fact, I can't think of any time!) but I'm going to this time :-) Insecticidal soap is not that broad a spectrum insecticide....in fact, it is quite targeted in its application. It is most effective against soft bodied insects - aphids, mealy bugs, whiteflies, trips, the crawler stage of scale, etc. It is a direct contact insecticide. The 'soap' aspect - the fatty acids - must coat the insect's body and this disrupts the permeability of the cell membranes and the insect dies. It has a significantly reduced effectiveness on caterpillars or leafhopping insects and is considered relatively benign towards pollinators and most predatory insects, including lady beetles, mantis and parasitic wasps. Squash vine borers are hard shelled insects in the adult stage and therefore insecticidal soap will have minimal impact on them. The larvae, which bore into stems, could be vulnerable to the soap should it be able to coat them.....but since they are most often sheltered inside the plant tissue, that is unlikely. Rather than recommending any type of insecticide, organic or not, I think you need to identify the specific insect pests you are attempting to control and then research the recommended organic methods. For squash bugs, that includes proper garden sanitation in the fall to remove vine residues, light tilling of the soil to expose pupae to predation, crop rotation, using row covers, mulching with newspapers, hand picking of adults and diatomaceous earth. Other insect pests may require other methods to control. For organic gardeners, there is seldom any single acceptable product that can be used on the full range of potentially damaging insect pests you are likely to encounter. There are a few new biocontrols on the market that utilize a naturally occurring bacterium to control a relatively wide range of insect pests and they are approved for organic use. Look for products that list 'spinosad' as the active ingredient but make sure your insect culprit is listed for control on the product label.

Deebs, I have 5 trees planted, 2 in the back, but it'll be awhile before they get large enough for the birds to nest in them. They used to use my large climbers too. With all the cats they'd have to make them up really high. One is a redwood though hitting close to 20 feet tall now, not as easily climbed so maybe. I can't distinguish really between all the worms on the roses, most eat holes through the buds and eat the roses, others the foliage too. I'd like to think the ones I miss are eatting aphids:) Duchesse, they tried to petition the subdivision owner on the claim they didn't know the ponding basin was going to be there. That's a lie, I went through the same process they did to pick the house I wanted. It was right there on the site plan and the layout. In fact we paid extra to get a larger lot to be sort of behind it, about 20ft. They bought their houses knowing that was behind them, they were all sold at a premium price for that much yard. They wanted the basin filled in. Won't happen, by city law there has to be a basin at each new subdivison for the water to go when it rains to help on flooding. The only activity I ever see at the basin area is a couple times a year they come through with a tractor and take out all the weeds. The basin is home to mud ducks and others and geese off and on all year. I like to hear the honks and bullfrogs over dogs barking anytime. I think some of them walk around and squish them on purpose. I saw one of the neighbors vacuuming them up with one of those shop vacs one year. These are all relatively young people that have never owned a home before. They have no idea what they're suppressing and the price they'll pay. They just want to complain about nature. This was a walnut orchard and home to all the birds in the past. I imagine there are so many toads because nature is responding to the masses of white flies. I imagine over time the number will diminish especially with all the poisons/chemicals they'll put out on their yards and bushes. Sorry, pet rant:) I've admired your roses and gardens Patricia, I'm only resistant because they've already ruined those roses, I can't reclaim that now. It's too late. That one rose in the pics above is Irresistible, a mini. There isn't a bud that doesn't look like that. I found 14 ladybugs on it yesterday. The white looking bush behind it is a floribunda hitting over 5' tall for size on this rose. You can barely see the canes behind the redwood even taller. This was last night and these bushes just don't photo well for me in the sun and not enough light, but it gives you an idea of how large. I did try the flour on some of them yesterday skipping where the ladybugs were. That was almost as much fun as blasting with water, some were startled into flight. Some washed off easier, but others are crammed into every nook and cranny of the buds and leaves and new growth. It irritated the bees, lucky they don't like me:) As far as Murphy's Law goes, I was too pleased with early spring and all the healthy looking bushes. I was last year too and spider mites devastated them about this time. So, yeah you better knock on wood, LOL* I know what you're talking over on the Hover Bees but I think they're called something else, Deebs, still I have all different colored ones. Dark green, light green, stripped not stripped. This one had stripes too, from last year's infestation:) I have a terrible memory so if I find one of these, I kill them. Thanks for all the help, I do appreciate all the advice and thoughts on this. Patricia I may yet resort to that spray.

Yesterday I went out at 10:00 and came in at 6:00. I don't know when the weather has been so nice. I have lady bugs and bees all over my garden. I did not see all three stages of lady bugs, just the red ones, and I did not really examine the roses well since I have cut back to far. Since you are probably a couple of weeks ahead of us, and you do not have enough good bugs, I agree with others, buy the larvae and clean off the aphids. Do you have landscapers who automatically use spray in the lawn? It could be in a product that they use to fertilize, and you would never know it. Have you seen the Earth kind gardens? Is Dr. Stephen George still the horticulturist, and isn't the entire project in Dallas? I forget which Texas University it is, but I met Dr. Stephen George once when he came to Tulsa to speak to our Rose Society. He is a very good resource if you care to study roses. I was very fortunate to have met with him in a rather small group, and I was able to ask him whatever I wanted. His goal at that time (maybe 10 years ago) was to travel the country, and encourage rose growers to develop their own Earth Kind roses in their own states, and encourage them to spread the news about how important it is to maintain a good environment. I am curious as to whether he is affiliated with your university. Now I am curious, and will let you know if I get any answers. Good luck Sammy

Hazel, Hmmm, I have rarely seen aphid molt. I guess the ladybugs eat them before they live long enough to molt. Honestly, we have almost too many ladybugs--they try to come into the house to overwinter. I let them stay in the mudroom but they cannot come any further into the house or I vacuum them up and dump them back outdoors, so instead they overinter in the insulated barn-style garage and in the greenhouse, which is great since I have some plants overwintering in the greenhouse every year. I feel like once you get a good ladybug population established (and it has begun...because you have ladybugs in the garden), the aphids are a very brief problem and then the ladybugs gobble them up and that is that. If the damage to the foliage is not too extensive, the tomato plants will put out new foliage within the next couple of weeks and should survive. If the the damage is too severe, they won't. It really is a case of just waiting and watching and seeing what happens. I'm sorry the homemade soap spray damaged your tomato plants. I see that all the time here in southern OK, even as early as March if we are having high temperatures in the 90s, which happens occasionally (we even hit the 90s on a day or two in February this year). Our sunlight and heat are just too intense for homemade soap sprays to be successfully used without a high risk of damage, especially on tomato foliage which is very tender and easily damaged by many things. If I have to use insecticidal soap at all, I use a commercially prepared one. They are made in a way that their droplets of soap are smaller and less likely to damage anything. Still, because soaps can cause damage, I rarely use a soap spray when we are hitting highs any higher than 80 degrees, and I rarely use one in the sunshine. If I have to use soap sprays, I use them in the evening after the garden is shaded by adjacent trees, and I don't use them often. I can, in fact, go years without using a soap spray. Really, with most insects, if I cannot handpick and drown them, snip them in half with scissors, or kill them with an organic bait (like SlugGo Plus for snails, slugs, pillbugs, sowbugs and cutworms or Semaspore for grasshopper nymphs), I just leave them alone and let them be about 99.9% of the time. If I am patient, the beneficial insects, toads, frogs, birds, lizards, turtles, etc. will eat a majority of the pest insects for me. Some things, like stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs are hard to catch and kill and I don't like to spray broad-spectrum insecticides (not even organic ones), so I just do the best I can with those. Sometimes I can snip a stink bug or leaf-footed bug in half with my garden scissors, but a lot of the time they get away from me. With the similar squash bugs, I keep a lint roller in my garden tool bucket and roll it over them, picking them up with it. Then I quickly peel that part of the lint roller paper off the roller and wrap it around them, firmly entrapping them, and I put them in a trash can with a lid so they cannot escape if they somehow manage to get free of the lint roller paper. Rainy years are always more challenging. I haven't used Miracle Grow on any plants yet, but I wouldn't hesitate to use it if the constant rainfall starts keeping the plants from taking up nutrients with their roots. Sometimes a good foliar feeding will help struggling plants, whether you use MG, Liquid Kelp, Fish Emulsion, Compost Tea, Garrett Juice (more as a plant tonic than a fertilizer) or whatever. Once your soil is more well-established and has the right level of biological activity in the soil, your organic fertilizers will be adequate to support great plant health, growth and productivity most years. There's a terrific book by Jeff Gilman about what truly works in organic gardening. It is called "The Truth About Organic Gardning: Benefits, Drawbacks and The Bottom Line". I really like this book. It was published in 2008 but I didn't read it until a couple of years ago. I had gardened 99.9% organically since 1999 (and even before that I didn't use synthetic pesticides more than maybe once a year and didn't like them either) so felt I understood organic gardening pretty well already, but really enjoyed the book anyway as it helped me understand some of the science behind some common organic practices. I like his scientific approach to studying organic practices to see what actually does work and what doesn't work and I like his explanations about why some things work and others don't seem to. Before I got the book, I was concerned that maybe he was sort of anti-organic, as many other university horticulture professors seem to be, but he isn't. His explanations on every topic in the book just blow me away in their thoroughness and in the way he looks at all sides of an issue. I really love this book, and have been meaning to get his other book and read it too. One section early in this book really gave me a lot of food for thought. It was subtitled "How organic is organic enough?" and made me rethink some long-held beliefs. From the first day we broke ground here (and, lol, we broke ground for our first garden here a year before the builder broke ground to build the house), my primary focus always has been on building healthy soil. If you focus on building healthy soil that is rich in organic matter, all your other garden problems become minor issues. However, building healthy soil takes time, especially if you are doing it in drought years when there is very little moisture. It took me a good ten years to get our soil to the point that I really was happy with its improvement, and at least half those years were horrendous drought years when nothing I did seemed to keep the garden as happy and as productive as I wanted it to be. (Rain does make a huge difference, as does the absense of rain.) Conversely, without healthy soil teeming with microbes, it is hard to have a healthy organic garden. I have focused so long on feeding the soil and letting the soil feed the plants that it is hard for me to suggest to someone that maybe there are times when a synthetic fertilizer would be beneficial, but there are times when it is....and your situation is likely to be one of them. I used Miracle Grow liquid fertilizer without hesitation in our early years here when the soil wasn't yet in good shape and didn't feel bad about it. I still use the Miracle Grow Moisture Control soil-less mix for growing on seedlings (after starting them in a sterile, soil-less mix) and I use it in all my containers at times, though I still add all the rotted wood and leaf mold and compost that I can to the containers as well. (Growing in containers is an entirely different process from growing in the ground, so you have to adapt your practices accordingly,and I learned that slowly and the hard way over many years of growing in containers.) In 2007 we had so much rain that my plant roots stayed waterlogged, and it was foliar feeding with Miracle Grow that saved the tomato and pepper plants and gave us a harvest that summer. Otherwise, I think we would have gotten almost nothing from the constantly-waterlogged garden. At that point, our soil was not in the fine condition that the soil in the raised beds now is in. Last year, we had more than twice as much rain as we had in 2007 (78" versus 2007's 37" or 38"), and the soil is so much better now that I didn't have the same issues with plant roots being too clogged with water to function properly and I didn't have to foliar feed with anything. It is amazing what a difference a few more years of soil improvement has made. Oh, and I should clarify---it wasn't that the rainfall was so heavy overall in 2007 as our rainfall barely was average for the year overall, it is just that so much of it fell in late spring and early summer all at once that the heavy moisture overwhelmed the plant roots). If I learned anything at all from last year's flooding and constant moisture, it was that we finally, maybe, had the soil I'd been working so hard to achieve, in all ut the newest raised beds (and they still have a long way to go). Every year has its own challenges. In a drought year, as long as I water with soaker hoses or drip irrigation lines, I never have to use a fungicide at all---not a synthetic one and not an organic one. The challenge in that sort of year isn't foliar disease like it is in a very wet year, it is simply the lack of moisture, the often insane heat, and the traveling hordes of grasshoppers that fly in from adjacent fields and can strip a garden bare in just a day or two. You just deal with whatever happens in any given year, learn from that year, and use what you learned the next time we have a year with similar weather. One of the challenges of growing here is that one year we'll have hot weather and almost no rain and the next year it will be much milder and wetter and we almost forget what heat and drought can do to a garden. It seems we rarely have the same weather two years in a row, so often we're scrambling to deal with whatever Mother Nature throws at us. It keeps us on our toes. Dawn