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.

I'm enjoying reading about your culling! I'm new to this in the last few years, but right now I'm trying to view every new purchase as a "possible" rose--even if I think it may take 5-7 years to figure it out. I think I'm only looking for a dozen or so roses that do really, really spectacularly in my gardens and the rest I plan to cull. thinking about that up front I'm not sure I'm as emotionaly attached to individual plants as some of you. I wish there were a bunch of people near me with vast amounts of local knowledge to just TELL me what does well here, but there doesn't seem to be so it's up to me to figure it out. I suspect some of you more experienced growers are thinking yeah, yeah just you wait. BUT I'm not a "collector" of much of anything. (My husband would say I collect horses, but as long as I technically have fewer horses than stalls he's got nothing!) I don't collect do dads, or books or early 19th century thingamabobs. I'm not interested in "specimen gardens," that's just not my thing. When I close my eyes and visualize my perfect garden it's a garden that has a hand full of roses placed for a spectacular show when they are "on" then playing a supporting, structural role when they aren't. It's not a rose garden, but a garden with roses. They just have to be the *right* roses.

Dang, pkponder, we'll miss you! got a private email that reminded me of one more "etiquette" point. We all get together to trade gardening items & to enjoy visiting with other gardeners, so to keep the mood positive & enjoyable, please don't bring up controversial subjects such as religious or political debates.