Excellent. Caroline is grown by a local commercial grower as a season-extender, so it must at least be firm enough and large enough to make it into the markets. I think I've heard its a vigorous one too, which is good because I am tired of trying to get weak cultivars to take. Your recommendation cinches it. Thank you so much. I'll investigate the other 2, which I've never heard of. I've found that the nurseries push whatever the growers hype, and the growers hype whatever the university agricultural stations promote. Now that I have some experience growing fruit, I think it wise to solicit recommendations, and not take the nurseries' word for how wonderful their cultivars are. I've had a lot of disappointments that could have been avoided.

I'm in North Carolina and they are a horrible problem here. I have a couple of thoughts. I have had the time to kill thousands of them a week and I 'hope' that is doing some good. No one has mentioned that the way to do this is to have them fall into mildly soapy water. Their defense mechanism is to fall away from harm. I put one drop of detergent in a sauce pan of water and while it is still cool weather (they fly away when hot), place the pot below a clump of beetles and place my hand above them. The shadow or the hand or physical contact, scares them and they tumble off the leaf/leaves and fall into the pot. They drown after 15 minutes. It appears that one beetle draws others, creating the clumping. This probably explains the changing variety of plants eaten. Roses always seem to be a favorite, but depending what else happens to be growing the best at the moment will be attacked. I believe the best thing to do with traps is to convince ALL of your neighbors to use them and draw them away from YOUR garden, heh heh.

I was afraid you were going to talk about culling noisettes. (Insert giant sigh of relief.) Even though my zone is a zone colder than yours (at the least), we've come to feel that we need more noisettes. Natchitoches is a great deeper pink Noisette; I wish I had at least one in each border. I also think that R. moschata can be used along with its offspring throughout the gardens. I have a rose from one of the not-rose nurseries over in North Carolina and it is sold by the name (something like) 'Hard to propagate' rose and it's a china that has done exceptionally well here even when / maybe especially when the soil gets dry and hot. Its rebloom is consistant. I think the Tea Noisettes may demand better soil that I have offered them, they may also like slightly warmer winters that I have. The closer to moschata noisettes though seem made for the poor soils I have some of them in as well as the less than wonderful winters we have up here as they survive both.

mnwsgal, I'm sure you didn't say it to me, and even if you did and were a friend who also offered plants back, I wouldn't mind. I'm referring to those people who NEVER offer a plant back or if they do at all it's snow on the mountain. I had one person tell me that I had a moral obligation to give my plants to people who wanted them because I have a lot of plants. I give hundreds of plants away every year and most of the time I'm more than happy to share but when people tell me things like that they are probably never going to get a plant from me. I find it extremely offensive. terrene, if someone neglects a plant that I would have otherwise thrown on the compost pile it's one thing, but when I dig up and divide a plant that was not in need of division just to be nice and give them some and then they later tell me it didn't get planted I may get a little testy, especially when they suggest I should give them another one. And yes I've had these things happen. That's the time when I smile and say I don't plan to divide it for many years but it's available from xyz. I didn't mean to sound grinchy, but I do have my limits.