Rose midge infestation

9 years ago

Hi everyone, I thought I would re-title my topic because the heading of the last post don't seem to do it justice. This is the link to my post and unfortunate diagnoses..

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg082030579352.html?14

Anyone who has any info about this, please share with me:)

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User

9 years ago

As a follower suffer, I can feel your pain. My roses did not bloom much at all after the spring flush, and not until Jim on this forum suggested that I look into rose midge did I realize that I have a major rose midge outbreak. All of my forty or so plants were affected except for the few that are still in pots. On some of the roses, the infection rate seems to be near 100%. Until then, I did not spray at all, partly out of a general aversion to chemicals, partly out of sheer laziness. On the spur of the moment, I sprayed my bushes with Bayer insect control for roses and flowers (i.e., the blue spray bottles you can get at HD and Lowes) as well as same stuff for law insect control as soil drench (the active ingredients are the same as those in the spray bottle). The insecticide was horrible: I found dead bees and dead earth worms after my applications. It did seem to have, for the most part, broken the circle as the new growths on my bushes, for the most part, do not seem affected by rose midge. However, if given the chance to do it over, I would not have gone "nuclear" on rose midge as I did: killing bees and other beneficial insects aside, I don't like the idea of toxic plants.

Since I discovered the outbreak, I have been adding hardy Hibiscus to my garden. Hopefully, the groundhogs would not chop them down and I can get some reliable late summer color next season even if rose midges do not go away.

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Comments (8)

michaelg
9 years ago
I would follow the advice of your state's cooperative extension service. They probably have a fact sheet about rose pests on the web.
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I have three 'Eglantyne' standard roses. I don't have a picture right now, but I can take one tomorrow for you. This rose tends to want to grow long straight canes that are very upright. It doesn't branch very much. Maybe this is something that can be helped with pruning over time (I planted it last year, this will be it's second season). By the end of the summer, it was 3-4 foot tall (the actual rose part, not the trunk). It looked a little bit strange at first, but then it kind of filled out and was really pretty. The canes got long, but they never flopped over until the end of the season when about half of them flopped. When I pruned this year, I tried to prune hard, yet keep the spots where it had branched. Hopefully as time passes, the canes will get thicker and stronger. Maybe I should go out and pinch some of the new growth to encourage some branching? I'm new at this as well, so I'm trying to figure it out too. The brown leaves at the tips? It could be the color of the new growth. In one of those last pics it does seem like there's something else happening. But in the first pics you posted it looks like the color of the new growth to me. Eglantyne is such a charming rose...I love it!
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KarenPA_6b
9 years ago
Thank you so much for posting this. I have been puzzled over what was causing this problem on my roses. Now, I know what they are. Do rose midges go away or do they persist all growing season? I have been trying not to use chemicals but it seems a losing battle. If it is not the Japanese beetles, slugs, aphids, now it is rose midge and Asian brown beetles.
henry_kuska
9 years ago
I did not see where you stated your garden is. Since it is in zone 5 perhaps this article may be of use.

http://www.pghrosesociety.org/rosemidge.html

" So far researchers have not been able to come up with a good biological control for rose midge. The only scientific study published in the horticultural literature on in subject of rose midge control appeared in 2006 authored by Dr. Janice Elmhirst, director of the Elmhirst Diagnostics & Research Corp. and was performed in selected test gardens located in British Columbia, Canada. This study compared two biological agents, two live predator insects, a chemical control, and an untreated control plot. The two biologicals tested are commercially available, one being AVID (with the active ingredient abamectin derived from the soil microorganism Streptomyces avermitilis and the other DOKTOR DOOMÃÂ®, a ready to use permethrin formulation. The predators were a nematode (Steinernema feltiae) and a predatory mite in the form of an unidentified Hypoaspis species. The chemical control was Matador (lambdacyhalothrin), which is similar to the active ingredient in the Bayer chemical products mentioned earlier. The results of this study were interesting in that the predatory insect approach actually had a higher level of midge damage than the untreated controls. The best result came from the Doktor Doom product with less than 2% damaged rose growth. The next best was the chemical control with approximately 4% damaged tips. The Avid did better than the control but not by a significant amount."

Here is a link that might be useful: link for above
User
9 years ago
Perhaps due to its geographical footprint, rose midge does not seem to be a frequent topic on the rose forum. I have been stalking this forum for a few years now, and rose midge was never on my radar until weeks ago. It can wipe out one's post-spring flush rose season (speaking from personal experience). As far as I can gather online, there is no "organic" control against rose midge. The takeaway for me from this whole rose midge fiasco is load up on other plants. However, this is no easy task at all when the groundhogs see your garden as a salad bar (when you have managed, for now, to hold the damn deer at bay).
iowa_jade
9 years ago
One of our club members recommended Merit.
I am going to need more than two plants out of 140 damaged before harming my earthworms. I may change my mind.
FL
michaelg
9 years ago
kousa--

Generally the midges do not go away but rather build up over the season and return the following year. If you are outside the hot zone for midge, it's possible there is some environmental factor or predator that limits them. In that case you might have an intermittent problem some seasons but not every year.

An approach that has not been mentioned (nor tested in a controlled experiment) is using an impervious mulch to keep the pupae from burrowing in the soil or keep overwintering pupae from emerging from the soil. This could be plastic or a thick layer of newspaper applied freshly each spring before any leaves open.. You would have to cover every square inch of soil inside the drip line and a little wider. Don't mulch heavily over this layer, as deep mulch creates soil-like conditions where the pupae could survive. We used to have a competent poster here who believed she had successfully controlled midge with a newspaper mulch.
jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6
9 years ago
We are in the process of rebuilding our rose garden... (On a mission to find better blackspot resistant roses for my area in a no spray situation.)

So right now we only have 9 roses and 5 of those are Double Knockouts...

But I ordered two Carefree Sunshines a couple years ago and that's when our rose midge problem started. But only those two roses showed signs of rose midge.
SO I shovel pruned both CS roses and carefully bagged them and called our local Ag office which later confirmed they both had Rose Midge.

I took up the mulch, loosened the soil then put plastic over the area. So far so good this year as all other roses are still blooming good.

I will have to wait and see what happens next year though...

Rose midge infestation

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Comments (8)

michaelg

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jim1961 / Central Pennsylvania / Zone 6

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