It usually takes a bit of talent to have a real mite problem in a northeastern garden. Determination and a will to win are also necessary. This isn't an easy thing to accomplish, and it's almost impossible to accomplish without an awful lot of chemicals, applied ridiculously often. So if you want a mite problem, definitely get the 3 in 1, and use it at least as often as recommended. If you are in other ways happy with the roses you have, and are willing to spray a fungicide on a regular schedule to keep them healthy, that isn't a big problem. Insecticides are a different matter. They will kill the good bugs as well as the bad bugs because they are all bugs. For the most part, the best thing to do is ignore them, and it will all solve itself. The exception is Japanese beetles. Once they get past the grub stage, the only two ways to deal with them are hand picking and poisoning their food, in other words the rose flowers. However, if you have a bad infestation, if it takes one bite of flower to kill the beetle, you've lost your flowers simply because of the sheer number of beetles. If you aren't dealing with that level of infestation, then hand picking works about as well as anything.

I don't think the giant japanese beetles are actually Japanese Beetles. I think, like a lot of insects, all Japanese Beetles are more or less the same size. THere are many, many species of beetles, and most are more or less harmless. One nice thing about the large, night-flying beetles is that they are an important food for large, noctunal predators like Whip-poor-wills and Screech Owls (screech owls eat lots of insects in the summer)

Box Elder Bugs are about the least worrisome bugs there are, except they are present most everywhere. The adult bugs eat the pollen produced by the "Acer", maple, species of which the Box Elder is one, so even if no one has a Box Elder tree areound they will still see these wee buggers. During the fall they look for some place, sheltered, to spend the winter and out homes are one of the best so they find entry points and invite themselves in. Other than the ones that die that might produce some toxin that could adversly affect an asthmatic they are not anything other than a visual pest. To keep them out you need to spend time outside looking over your house to find any points of entry and sealing those with a good quality caulk. For those already inside capturing them and either flushing them down the toilet, as wife does, or throwing them outside, as I do, is the best means of control there is. Any pesticide you can get to spray around to control them will have an adverse affect on the healthy of your family.

Cathy's right about the sacrificial lamb idea, but the trouble is, these guys seem to have trouble deciding from year to year which plants they like best. Oh it's a sure thing they will seek out fruit trees--anything in the rose family- and hibiscus and so on, but either we don't have the numbers that we did last year (yet) or else they just really have a hankering for a berry because I just finally gave up and quit worrying about freezing the blackberries this year. They are gone, nibbled to stubs and the foliage too.. We had a huge crop coming on with all the plentiful rains and when I first hit the patches I was speechless. In a few areas you would think you were looking at a winter scene because all that was visible to even remind you that you WERE in a berry patch were the naked canes. The good news is that I have not had a SINGLE beetle on any of my yard plantings, and this is within sight of the berry brambles. Maybe this good news is extrememly short lived, as I can only guess where the beetles will fly to after the bberries are depleted. THe traps DO work but they need to absolutely stress to the consumer the need to set them up correctly. I think that is the number one thing I am hearing right now, the fact that people are erecting traps in their yards and then experiencing a population explosion when they start to work. I know of several people who customized their traps to utilize garbage bags instead of those ridiculously small bags they come with, and even then you can't just walk away and forget about it, it HAS to be monitored and cleaned out. Aren't JB grubs sod-dwellers? I was under the impression that like so many other "white grubs" they prefer lawns and grassy areas to develop during the first stages of their cycle. Maybe we now have another reason to tell people to get rid of their sod and go native.