If it weren't for beneficials, the roses would constantly be in a state of ruin from spider mites.

Wasps control my rose slugs, but if they don't in your garden, you could spray spinosad on the areas showing damage.

One of the toughest concepts in gardening is letting nature take its course. I usually have a little lag time each year where the army of pesky critters attempts to defoliate the garden until their predators arrive. One of the biggest problems I have is that our mantises aren't big enough to eat their prey until midway through June. I have to endure a little damage at the beginning of every summer.

Keep in mind that there are a multitude of businesses that make their $$ from our cultural norm of instant gratification. I know I'm waxing philosophical, but it's not just limited to gardening. (Think of that silly little blue pill, Blackberrys, DVR television, microwave pizzas....)

As an accountant, my general advice is to do a cost-benefit analysis and find out what's most acceptable to you based on your personal needs. If your responsibilities to your family are diminishing the enjoyment that gardening could provide, could you enlist the kids as help with rose-patrol duties?

Just a suggestion, I know, but I take cheap labor whenever I can get it. Some kids are all about squishing bugs. I find it's great therapy at the end of a busy, frustrating day to go out & obliterate garden pests with my hands.

And as Jeri suggested in another thread, take a chilled glass of wine along for the trip.

The sawfly lays eggs in the slits of rose leaves, etc.
The Sawfly can fly in from other areas to lay eggs, like neighbors yards, etc, etc.
The sawfly larvea (rose slugs) do NOT fly.
This larvea that can not fly is what eats your rose leaves.

^ Yes, and if you let the larvae mature on the foliage, they drop to the soil and pupate. From the pupae, winged adults emerge in spring to lay more eggs.

Thanks for finishing Michaelg!

And so even if you kill the larvae before they mature on your foilage. Sawflies can still fly in from other areas to lay eggs on your roses.

So you need to learn to ignore the damage Or Spray.

The spinosad that Michaelg mentioned works good. It's important to spray both upper and lowerside of rose leaves. Canes too. Spray at least 3 hours before any bees will be on your rose bush. You could also try to avoid spraying the open blooms.
Because it will harm bees if not used correctly.
Spinosad does not kill unhatched sawfly lavae eggs, so spraying another time or two after the first time may be necessary.

Or learn to ignore and hopefully the good guys will catch up to the bad guys in the future.
I know Rose Slugs do alot of damage here and I know how you feel.
I'm trying to ignore them this year in the hopes that within the next few years the good guys will help out more...

Do you have any companion plants around your roses? Most beneficial insects aren't attracted to roses unless there are already pests on them to provide a meal, but there are other plants that will bring them to your garden and entice them to stay. By providing shelter, multiple sources of food, and a good place to lay eggs you can create a little ecosystem where the beneficial insects will want to spend their lives and you will have a healthy population of predators ready when the pests arrive. A little bit of messiness is also good, leaving some spent perennials where they aren't noticeable and allowing a few places to become overgrown with weeds increases the number of good guys hanging out in your garden, especially if you give them a safe place to overwinter. They also need water, having bird baths both at ground level and waist height is good for the buggies and if you put a few rocks of different sizes in the bath it will help them to drink without drowning.

My most effective companion plants belong to the Aster, Carrot, and Onion families, like daisies, fennel, and chives. I find that I enjoy my rose garden more with the companions I have added, and although I do have occasional pest problems I have never felt the need to spray and I think my roses look just fine. BTW this is also a very effective method in the veggy garden, in fact I started companion planting in my veggy garden and spread it to the rose beds because it worked so well.

Not all beneficials are beneficial; some are the weeds of the animal kingdom (i.e. they're in the wrong place.)

Last night it got cool enough to 'treat' a rather large nest of beneficial paper wasps that had chosen to build a foot and a half from out front steps.

I looked them up, saw the critters they work against, decided that those critters aren't a major problem here and that I have lots of other shrubby growth where there might be other nest of paper wasps. I also felt the hairs on my right arm move as that arm remembered the nine bites it got two years ago from a paper wasp group in another part of our rose garden.

So I made a decision to protect us and our guests.

I don't know if there are any beneficials that eat rose midge, but I couldn't take a garden of burnt tips on every rose, so I went with the systemic Bayer granules. I'm glad I did. I like my beneficial insects too, but if the rose can't even grow, what's the point of having them.

Eric

I hope my beneficials maybe START eating rose midge, because I've got quite an epidemic this year. I had barely any HT blooms and many other roses, including a lot of Austins, were also attacked. I have decided to start with the least toxic route; I've cut off all new growth and put it in the trash, and will continue to do the same for the rest of the season. I also mixed up some Neem oil and poured it on the soil around each of the roses. In late fall I am planning to cultivate the soil to expose the larvae to freezing temps (as per Website of the Montreal Botanical Gardens) In early spring I'm going to remove the top 2" of soil and replace it with fresh compost and mulch. Then....just cross my fingers (and toes)and hope it works. No rose blooms in my garden this year...thank goodness though, for the clematis and other companion plants; at least there is still some colour. Gotta think positive thoughts....there's always next year!
Judith

I used to have a much worse problem with rose slugs, but despite me really doing nothing, for some reason in the past three years or so the wasps, hoverflies, etc. have really seem to have taken care of them. I see these guys "cruising" my roses all the time.

I know what you mean by time constraints. They are so easy to kill, though. Try just a few minutes of wearing gloves and rubbing some of the undersides of your rose leaves a couple times a week. This squishes them/knocks them off and they won't crawl back up. Maybe if you take some of them out, their numbers will decrease enough so the beneficials can take care of them better.

The past couple of years we had a big problem with wasps getting into the house. I don't know what type of wasps they were. We had the pest control people come over twice and they could never find a nest anywhere.

In early spring my son had a playdate and we were sitting in a little gazebo that is on our property. Something possessed his friend's Mother to look up inside the gazebo and there on the "ceiling" were probably two dozen empty wasp nests. It was too early for them to be occupied so we removed them.

As I said, I don't know what kind of wasps these were but they clearly did not eat my roseslug.