Okay, I'm a newbie-my first rose. I used sodium carbonate (1/2 tea-scant) and a drop of dish soap : 32 oz water as a spray. I can't recall where I got the recipe, but is the soap needed? Has anyone tried it? Then, like an idiot I went nuts with the shears. The deformed, shriveled, powdery leaves and shoots-bu-bye. I finally realized that I'd wind up chopping all the leaves off and a shoot has come in with the first leaves looking discolored and shrively, but newer leaves look better. Then, our SF summer time winter has set in, slowing growth. I've got leaves towards the bottom, stems mostly empty, and leaves at the top. Some of the stems never developed shoots, but some got cut because they were white with fungus while others just fell off. We will get summer again next month, but a lot of my sun will then be blocked by the building across the street. Is there any hope here? This was my first rose plant and I got it for my birthday...I have one idea-it's 4 plants that I couldn't separate when I repotted. What if I were able to get rid of the least healthy ones? I hesitate to cut the stems because some of the top leaves are relatively healthy and doing their job. Finally, my husband tells me he's going to put bicarbonate in the water he waters with-his got ingected though I was so careful-rather than spraying the leaves-very few apparently infected-his has very glossy leaves-but that makes no sense to me at all! Help! Whenever I look at that plant I want to cry. Thanks for reading this.

When it comes to any sort of fertilizer and teeny new roses, LESS IS MORE. Newly-planted roses should not be fertilized until after their first flush of bloom. I'm sure people do it, but the results here have been disastrous. They DON'T need nitrogen at this stage. That would push top-growth and bloom production, which you don't want until there are roots to support it. Just keep 'em watered (not drowned, but watered) and protected from blasting sun. Remove any buds that form. Doing that will force the plant to grow roots, rather than topgrowth and bloom. And relax. Roses are pretty tough. That's why they've outlasted the dinosaurs. :-) Jeri

The active ingredient in Bayer Advanced Disease Control is tebuconazole. Even though tebuconazole is a German product, the European Union has banned tebuconazole as of 2018. "Most of the pesticides concerned are produced by German chemical industry giants Bayer or BASF, and include Amitrol, Ioxynil, Tepraloxydim, Epoxiconazole, Iprodion, Metconazole, Tebuconazole and Thiacloprid." http://digitaljournal.com/article/265134 ---------------------------------- Apparently the reason for the ban is: "Due to the potential for endocrine disrupting effects, tebuconazole was assessed by the Swedish Chemicals Agency [3] as being potentially removed from the market by EU regulation 1107/2009.[4]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tebuconazole --------------------------- Title: Combined exposure to endocrine disrupting pesticides impairs parturition, causes pup mortality and affects sexual differentiation in rats. Authors: Jacobsen PR, Christiansen S, Boberg J, Nellemann C, Hass U. Authors affiliation: Department of Toxicology and Risk Assessment, National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Søborg, Denmark. Published in: Int J Androl. 2010 Apr;33(2):pages 434-42. Abstract: "Risk assessment is currently based on the no observed adverse effect levels (NOAELs) for single compounds. Humans are exposed to a mixture of chemicals and recent studies in our laboratory have shown that combined exposure to endocrine disrupters can cause adverse effects on male sexual development, even though the doses of the single compounds are below their individual NOAELs for anti-androgenic effects. Consequently, we have initiated a large project where the purpose is to study mixture effects of endocrine disrupting pesticides at low doses. In the initial range-finding mixture studies, rats were gavaged during gestation and lactation with five doses of a mixture of the fungicides procymidone, mancozeb, epoxyconazole, tebuconazole and prochloraz. The mixture ratio was chosen according to the doses of each individual pesticide that produced no observable effects on pregnancy length and pup survival in our laboratory and the dose levels used ranged from 25 to 100% of this mixture. All dose levels caused increased gestation length and dose levels above 25% caused impaired parturition leading to markedly decreased number of live born offspring and high pup perinatal mortality. The sexual differentiation of the pups was affected at 25% and higher as anogenital distance was affected in both male and female offspring at birth and the male offspring exhibited malformations of the genital tubercle, increased nipple retention, and decreased prostate and epididymis weights at pup day 13. The results show that doses of endocrine disrupting pesticides, which appear to induce no effects on gestation length, parturition and pup mortality when judged on their own, induced marked adverse effects on these endpoints in concert with other pesticides. In addition, the sexual differentiation of the offspring was affected. This as well as the predictability of the combination effects based on dose-additivity modelling will be studied further in a large dose-response study." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20487043 ------------------------------------- A full 2007 reviewed scientific paper: "Endocrine-Disrupting Activities In Vivo of the Fungicides Tebuconazole and Epoxiconazole" http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/100/2/464.full?sid=89cbb2cc-b636-4c33-bc06-81ecb01b63b5 Here is a link that might be useful: The European Union has banned tebuconazole

Hi Verandah, Greathawks and brissi555......I just happened to check the Australian Forum for tropical plants, is anyone still cultivate Plumerias/Frangipani ? I was actually in Brisbane for a month, visiting one of my sister and her families, she lives in the area of Chermside! Did any of you buy Plumerias at one of your local nurseries or from a website ? I'll be curious to know because I have 10 of them, here in the San Francisco peninsula. Well...good to know you....maybe you can check the GardenWeb Forums/Plumeria !! Hopefully I will find you in the near future, Annamaria