I have biked in Germany and Denmark where the landscape is covered with rugosas. They are like oleanders on California highway. No care, can withstand cold, pump out beautiful blooms and and huge cherry tomato sized hips. I have seen what I think is Meilland landscape roses in rest stops on California highways that thrive with absolutely no care, pollution and garbage. Roses are tough customers. They have thrived at abandoned homesites and cemetaries for more than a few generations. Carol

Hey heavensabvus1, you keep getting rid of these critters but if you enhance the natural immunity on your plants, you may be able to deter these bugs for the long term. I recommend working some worm castings into your soil or better yet, innoculate your soil with worms. Worm castings contain an enzyme called chitinase which eats away the shells of many insects. It will take a while for your plants to absorb these enzymes but it will save you a lot of trouble down the road. You may also want to innoculate your soil with beneficial bacteria and fungi. You can buy prepackaged organic fertilizers like Kelloggs at Home Depot that already have these organisms. These organisms form a symbiotic relation with your plant and soil rhizosphere and protect the plant and inhibit insect attacks by several mechanisms. One of these mechanisms is the direct infection of insects by some of the fungal or microbial organisms. Some of these microbial organisms, the bacillus species for example, are naturally found in the soil and certain bacteria and fungi can directly infect and eventually kill harmful insects. To get rid of your pests, I would also highly recommend putting out ant bait stations. Ants innoculate plants with aphids in order to create a steady supply of sweet plant sap. The ants pretty much farm the aphids. By getting rid of ants around your property, you should see a dramatic decrease in your aphid population. To directly kill the aphids, I recommend using Chrysanthemum tea. Chrysanthemum contains a chemical called Pyrethrin which act as a mild natural insecticide. You will have to spray your trees every couple of days for about a week or two untill the insects finally realize its futile. The aphids will eventually come back and you will have to spray again but hopefully your tree has absorbed enough chitinase from the worm castings and also your beneficial bacteria and mycohrizzal fungi would have established itself well enough in your potting soil that even if the bugs did come back, they will take one bite out of your plant, vomit a little, and scuddle to your neighbors yard for some greener pastures :) Beware of those ant bait traps around pets, small children and rain however. If it rains heavily in your area, the poison can get washed into your soil. I try to stay organic but I haven't found a good way of getting rid of ant aside from the bait stations. Good luck with your citrus!

Before this gets out of control, and people post their thoughts and get hurt/angry feelings, just put in google the bill and read it to find out what it really will do and won't do. That is all I ask. Marie

Momscottagegarden, if your leaves are skeletonized to such an extent they look scorched and brown, there's a good bet you are dealing with some sort of leaf chomper. It's too early for Japanese beetles, so if you are not seeing snails or slugs, then some sort of larvae is more likely than not attacking your leaves. Some of them only show themselves at night, so you may not see them unless you skulk around your garden with a flashlight late into the night. Snails and slugs are pretty easy to spot day or night. If you don't see anything during the day, you might find something during a night time garden walk that looks like a little green caterpillars munching away. In fact, these are not true caterpillars: they are probably the larvae of other insects that lay their eggs on or under your rose leaves. One that has plagued my rose garden this time of year is the rose sawfly. They are a real pest but with a limited schedule for decimating the leaves of roses in your garden and while the leaves are ugly and won't win awards at a rose show, they generally don't kill the plant. If you're on the East Coast, the plague happens once annually in the spring. The variety that feasts on roses on the West Coast has two complete life cycles so they are twice the trouble. I wrote about rose sawfly larvae and have pics of the larvae on my garden blog here: http://thewiedersgarden.blogspot.com/2013/07/unwelcome-guests-roseslug-sawfllies.html Insecticidal soap or even just some clear liquid kitchen soap is often all you need to treat the rose slugs (my blog post explains) but DE will also be affective against either the sawfly larvae or snails or slugs. For my money, if you have it, and you have a problem, I would spread it. I spread it routinely in my garden to catch these kinds of problems early on. It also helps control fleas and other pests in the garden that can become pests for your pets as well. That said, I do agree that identifying the pest is important, but in the meantime, DE is a good product to use for basic, routine pest control and I wouldn't hestitate to use it even if you aren't able to identify the culprit.