Treating the soil is the ONLY way to stop midge. If it didn't work you must have done it wrong. You have to put it down early and thoroughly and water it in if it doesn't rain. I know this works because I have absolutely no midge and I use no spray insecticide. I used Ortho which claims that one application lasts all season for lawn grubs. Next year put it down no later than mid April and cover the wide area around your roses. BTW I also have birds, pets and a pond and plenty of worms in the soil.

Henry, I put the grub killer everywhere I could, leaving just a few feet of margin around the pond. it rains constantly where I live, so that is not an issue. But it was certainly later in the season than you recommended. Maybe I did not use enough? I just sprinkled it around with a small hand shovel, lighter on the grass and heavier under the rose bushes.
I used a different brand, but it also claims that it is slow release and only needs one application per season.
Don't you feel that the stuff is a danger to pets and your fish? The stuff has got to be very poisonous. It kind of freaks me out putting all over my yard!

The best objectivity is to Google the active ingredients in your synthetic chemical labelÂBe sure you are looking under more scientific websites and not the actual company website, once you find the active ingredient.

Here is information for Ortho-Bug-B-Gone; IÂm not sure if this is the product you use, definitely not a good thing to use if you have fish and you have rain or water runoff where the chemical washes into your pond.

http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Product.jsp?REG_NR=00027903240&DIST_NR=000239

http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Product.jsp?REG_NR=00027903240&DIST_NR=000239#Ingredients

The absolutely worst chemical you can get is Sevin or any other pesticide that contains carbaryl or (1-naphthyl methylcarbamate) --produced by Bayer. It has been outlawed!!!! All over Europe. Only!!!!! The U.S. allows it! How messed up is this???????! When I looked up Wikipedia it says this:
It is classified as a likely human carcinogen by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.)[1] It kills various beneficial insect and crustacean species along with intended pest victims Carbaryl is acutely toxic to honeybees, destroying colonies of bees foraging in an area where the chemical has been applied.

Sadly one of the most useful organic insecticide I found for natural pest control didnÂt list rose midge, but at least it has some really good info. But! I will keep looking for you! Hopefully by the end of the day, I hope to find something for you!

http://www.pesticide.org/factsheets.html#alternatives

I use hot pepper wax spray because it stays on longer if it rains and hope it can work for your rose midge. My pepper spray keeps the thrips away 70%-100% depending on what type of rose it is (if it is a very fruity-fragrant, light colored rose it sometimes only cuts the damage 705 ). But you have! To spray it as soon as you get the tiny bud to stop insects from entering and as the bud starts to change in size and especially critical, as it opens! you again spray for each consecutive change in the flower blossoming stage but I just spritz very lightly when it blooms because I donÂt want to scare Mr. Bumblebee too much, LOL!

Here is an image sample of what I consider 80% effectiveÂyou can see thereÂs damage, but I still have a decent rose.

I get 100% effective for roses such as my Lincolns, Fragrant Cloud and Queen Elizabeth roses with minimum spritzing. With them I can even get lazy in my regimen. But then I realize that rose midge is far worse than thrips... I would say try the Bonide Wax Hot Pepper Spray... It's cheap and one might as well give it a try...

hey, I went to a few sites and found this from quote from Cornell University...

Insecticidal soap

Similar to other soaps, insecticidal soap is generally considered to be among the least toxic pesticides available. Soaps are used to control soft-bodied pests such as aphids and mealybugs. Soaps are effective only against those insects that come in direct contact with the spray before it dries. Once the spray has dried, walking over the soap residue will not harm a moving insect.

Horticultural oil

Horticultural oil has gained wide acceptance in recent years in pest management programs because of its environmental safety and effectiveness in controlling many types of insect and mite pests. Dormant and summer oil applications interfere with the pest's respiration and membrane function. For oil to be effective, it must come in direct contact with the pest or egg; therefore, thorough coverage is essential for proper control. Some plants may be sensitive to horticultural oil, particularly when under stress.

Here is the direct link:
http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/FactSheet/Pesticide/fs31.ipm.cfm

Maybe you can try smothering the rose midge with this as well. Someone from the organics forum was wanting to use Pam (sort of the principal of smothering insects)...I bet rose midge would get smothered by horticulture oils or the homemade thick canola oil maybe even the Pam...I bet this would work too... You might get a super sticky flower, lol! but definitely I would assume that the rose midge would be suffocated.

Rochester, I think it is very important to get them early in the spring. I can only assume that the midge flies had hatched before you got them and laid their eggs in your growing rose tips. If you don't do it early enough you can lose almost all your blooms. We had warm weather in April so you have to have done it by mid to late April. I got midge the first time in 1994 and nobody I asked even knew what caused it. It was before the internet. Then I learned about Diazinon and I've never had a problem since even after Diazinon was outlawed. I remember having a difficult time getting rid of midge and I've used 2-3 applications since. This year I decided to put the stuff down only once. So far so good. Perhaps what you put down will work the rest of the way or you can put it down again. Good luck.

Once again, I appreciate anyone who tries methods without insecticides. But in this case, the only one that had any merit was a barrier method where newspaper was put down early in the season and kept the ground completely covered so that the midge couldn't fly up into the tips of the canes. And you had to keep the ground covered at all times. Here is an older thread from the Organic Rose Growing forum, I don't know if any of the participants in that thread have any updates: Organic Treatment for Rose Midge?.

For rose midge (and if you haven't experienced it you do not know what you are dealing with and I'm not going to engage any extended discussion until you have had every rose bud rendered into crispy nothingness and have a PROVEN method of treatment), the key is to break the reproductive cycle (5 - 15 days). Success has been noted by using Bayer Advanced Complete Insect Killer For Soil & Turf Ready-to-Spray, twice in a two-week period and then one additional time after the first flush. A few have tried granulated products, but I haven't had success with any since diazanon was taken off the market. You don't want to use this too often, as it will kill off beneficial insects which can lead to an outbreak of spider mites.

If you do any experiments with the hot pepper wax or Wilt-Pruf or anything else that is not a synthetic insecticide, please let us know the results. I would love to be able to say that there is something much less toxic, but in the case of midge, there is little out there, even in the way of insecticides, that is effective.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Midge info from Baldo's Bug Page

Am I the only one that has avoided midge without Diazinon? Maybe there is more going on than I am aware of. In the past everyone swore by Diazinon and now it seems that there is no proof that one of the many other granular soil treatments works just as well. This is a major problem to go completely unnoticed. I can say that none of the other roses on my property has ever had midge even though none of them have ever been treated for it. Clearly midge has not found these roses just as it didn't find my main garden for many years. Could it be I wiped it out and it has not found its' way back? How do you know if you are controlling it if you don't know if you have it in the first place? I guess I could do nothing for a year and see if it comes back. There are many other factors. My mulching system may have something to do with it. Almost every year I mulch so maybe that buries them or maybe they can't survive in mulch. I do know that there is no midge...not a single sign of it.

Good to know. You can't be 100% sure that you don't have them, but if you are not seeing any damage, chances are that you do not. Unfortunately, you do know when you do have them, crispy ends to the canes as shown in the photos in the links I posted earlier and no blooms. It hasn't been hot enough here yet for them to emerge, my problem usually occurs once the temps stay over 80 degrees.

I'm hoping mine drowned this year.

I know I don't have midge. The question is would I have it if I hadn't put down grub granules to control it? Maybe it has been wiped out permanently or maybe there is something else I am doing that has a side effect of killing midge or maybe it has natural preditors. I don't have any insect damage of any kind to speak of...no slugs, aphids or thrips, no sign of beetles yet, no caterpillars, lots of bees and birds. Maybe NOT spraying with any kind of insecticide is the answer.

I'm trying to understand. You say you applied granules for the grubs, so you've used some kind of insecticide. What active ingredient is in the grub granules? If it is imidacloprid, that's what is in the Bayer product that I named. If diazanon, then we know that works. So you may be killing them off early with the granules before they do any damage. You can try using no insecticides at all and see what happens.

Thanks Diane for the linke to the organic thread. Someone mentioned spinosad. I have a container I bought a few years ago I could try. I got it for thrips, actually. It didnt help, and burnt the leaves badly. But, maybe if I am extra careful when I spray, and keep plants hydrated, I could give it another shot. Nothing to lose, since the many of the plants arent blooming. Thanks goodness for Austins and rugosas and a few others that arent affected.