If you have other flowering perennials and annuals in the garden amongst your roses, you'll likely attract bugs that eat the rose slugs -- in particular, yellow jackets hunt them down. My garden is two years old now, and the worst rose slug damage happened the first year, because I hadn't added perennials yet. Last year, I saw some damage early-on, but not quite as much as the year before, and then I saw very little at all after June. This year, the little I see is concentrated on roses which still don't have non-rose companions -- i.e., areas I'm still filling. You can spray insecticides to kill them, but you may inadvertently kill some of the critters that eat them as well, which can lock you in a cycle of HAVING to spray all the time because nothing else will be around to take care of them. It takes a bit of time for a food source to become obvious to critters that utilize it -- rose slugs didn't appear until I had roses, and bugs that eat rose slugs didn't appear until I had rose slugs. Just something to think about. :-) ~Christopher

Check the underside of the leaves for tiny, tiny green "worm" like things. If they are not there, then don't worry about it--they are gone and you are looking at past damage, not current or on-going damage. If there are tiny green worms, squish them or toss them into the grass (they aren't likely to find their way back). If there are no tiny green worms, then you know that the good predators showed up and ate them all, so there is nothing left for you to do. In either case, give the plants a good watering (slow and deep), perhaps pluck off a few of the worst looking leaves, and sit back and wait for new leaves to form and then for the rose to start putting out buds and blooms. You don't need to do all that "doctoring" since the good predators always come along and finish off the rose slugs for you if you haven't already squished them all. Kate

Re-post the info. on pH test soil, using red-cabbage juice: I bought a soil-kit from Lowe's and it was a waste of time & gave me false result. Faster to get 7 to 8 leaves of red-cabbage from grocery store (sold by lb.), chop that up, and boil in 3 cups of DISTILLED WATER ($1 from grocery store). Boil for 10 min, then save the juice to test up to 15 samples, from potting soil, to alfalfa meal, to your tap water, plus 1 Tablespoon of soil from different locations in your garden. The above test costs $2, $1 for distilled water, and $1 for red-cabbage leaves. I use those small apple-sauce cups, or small yogurt cups for each soil samples. I use 1/2 tablespoon of baking soda as pH 9 and 1 tablespoon of vinegar as pH 2.6, plus red-cabbage juice itself as pH 7. I put soil samples in those tiny cups, then pour the hot cabbage juice. I use a spoon to stir each soil sample well. Wait for 30 min, before reading the color on top. Here's the procedure in detail, inside the link the pic. of test tubes is wrong ... they accidentally switched pH 7 with pH 8 for the test tubes. My soil is dark-blue, at pH 7.7, professionally tested by EarthCo. Coffee grounds should be clear, it's a buffer. Most potting soil becomes clear solution, or neutral pH. Alfalfa meal reported pH is 5.8. Rain water pH is 5.6. http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2132487/cheapest-way-to-test-soil-ph-using-red-cabbage?n=26 The below recent pic. from the internet is most accurate: After 30 min. of soil sample soaked in red-cabbage juice, if the above solution is cloudy: there's free lime (calcium), and it's a good sign. My healthiest rose is Tchaikovsky (not a trace of blackspot & lots of blooms): cloudy blue, pH 8, with plenty of calcium.

Vicky, Eradication can occur, but it takes time, and you must be persistent. Do not dig it out. That only multiplies it. Do not till the soil. That only multiplies it. Every time you see a goutweed sprout, cut it back at ground level and discard in the trash. Do not dig it out. Be careful handling it, wear gloves that can be washed afterward. Do not compost it or toss it into the woods or over a hill side. Wash your cutting tools, too. This is actually a very easy method of eradication. It doesn't much energy, or long, dirty, weeding/digging sessions, just regular diligence. It takes regular walks around your garden cutting shoots at ground level. It does take a certain amount of time every week, and maybe for a couple of years, maybe more. What you are doing is destroying goutweed's capacity to feed itself by removing its leaves, killing it by starvation. What's nice about this method is the psychological victory you experience, and uplifted spirit restored, knowing that you are winning, albeit slowly, but in the end you win, goutweed looses! You will look forward to making your extermination rounds in your garden, knowing every shoot you cut back to the ground is one step closer to victory. If you lapse in your diligence, don't beat yourself up. Just recover your determination and pick up where you left off. Goutweed can come up so close to the stems or in the middle of clumps of choice plants and hide from you. Sneaky devils! Carefully cut them trying hard to leave your choice plants uninjured. DO NOT DISTURB THE SOIL. Just know goutweed shoots will try hard to pop up again, but each time they do they are weaker and weaker until they disappear. This is my solution to your dilemma. One that works. There are cases of gardeners who have been combating goutweed by digging it out religiously for thirty years and have made no headway. Moses