summersrhythm_z6a

Regarding the Natria Neem Oil that your friend said did not work, it does not contain "azadirachtin".

http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/4f/4f6f8422-1e75-4f06-9af1-ccbc4f584c68.pdf

It is a shame that the Neem products have such similar names. For an effective organic insecticide look for neem products that list azadirachtin as the active component (see my earlier post - unfortunately the posts are no longer dated).

The link that I gave in that post was:

http://home-and-garden.nullanswer.com/forum/51140

Thanks Nike for the input. I think this one is more earth friendly, I will go and get a bag tomorrow and give it a try. I have a small pond in the back yard, it has fountains running 24/7, I don't think mosquitoes live there since the water moves, but I do have more mosquitoes in the back than the front. I still have no clue what cyfluthrin is, but just by reading 1/3 of info on lambda-cyhalothrin ( can't read more than 1/3, it makes my head pounding), it looks weaker than the Bayer's products. I will give it a test run, it's a learning progress. Thanks and good night

Thanks Henry for the info. I will keep my eyes open for the right neem oil. Good night

Summer, I can hear desperation in your postings. I just want to wish you alot of luck in getting rid of midges this year and have nice blooming roses. I hate to spray chemicals too so I am also looking for other alternatives that are environmental friendly. I have been picking off damaged buds and tips and placed in bag and then disposed in the trash in hope of getting rid some of the larvaes. I doubt that it will make a dent.

Thank you Henry and Nik for your information and link on other alternatives. How often should I spray the neem oil?

Good morning Karen, I am trying hard to have some blooms, not a chemical hugger, if I can find something works on midge less harmful I will be glad to use it with all my heart. I will be searching for this Neem Extract sold as Azatin or bio-neem at lunchtime. If you can find it online would you please post it here? So a lot of us can have this useful info. :-) Thanks Henry for the link again! :-)

I am getting a bag of Triazicide tonight since I don 't know when I can find neem oil. Some of my rose friends use Triazicide product, one of them grows a lot of veggies. I met with them last night, I also got a 10lb bag alfalfa too! :-) I should make time and meet with them more often. I saw them last year once, the year before twice. This year I am planning to meet with them every month. :-) There is a hope we can win the midge war, not giving up! :-) Cheers

Are these white specks midge larvaes? The green bugs are aphids?

Karen, I bought 2 bottles of Safer brand Bioneem from Amazon tonight. Will give it a try on a small garden first, this garden has 5 Carefree Wonders, 2 Thease Bugnets (newly planted), 2 ZDs(newly planted), I will spray them weekly. 3 Carefree Wonders have midge damage, they will be the main test targets. Bioneem is not made for Veggies, I have a herb garden but somehow it filled with 20ish roses, for that garden I will try Triazicide which is safe for Veggies and herbs. I will have 2 little outdoor labs under the sun. For the other roses they'd stay with Bayer's products until the testing is completed with total success. Limited success is not good enough for me. If I set my heart to kill the midge, then I will. A little bit biker chick's attitude! :-)

I see Neem Pro 100% with Azadirachtin available at Amazon for $15.00. I think I will give that a try as i have a midge problem as well. I used the Bayer All in One once a few years ago and a week or two later there was a dead bird in the yard. I never saw a dead bird before in the yard before that or since. Broke my heart.

Karen, I think you got aphids and whiteflies on your rose buds. I know you don't like spray, soap water can kill them. Did you get your Bioneem? That will kill them for sure.

Try looking at them with a Magnifier Karen... I had those white insects here amoung our Aphids alittle earlier this season...Looking through a Magnifier they looked just like Aphids but my eyes are not the greatest... I have seen no rose midge damage here SO.... Hard to see yours though in that pic...

Mary, If you're going to try Neem Pro 100%, please report back the results. We can have more labs going. All together we can reach the goal faster.

Midge look like grains of rice. I've been busy cutting any buds that are bent over--if I look carefully I can either see blackened areas or actual midge larvae.

Yes I will report the results. Keeping fingers crossed!

It's interesting -- I keep reading posts about "how to deal with (fill in the blank) pests" involving chemical warfare. I don't use any of these products, and I don't have any big problems with pests. Do I get aphids? Yes, and a couple weeks after they arrive, so do their predators. I see some damage from sawfly larvae beginning, but I'm leaving it alone -- because whenever I'm out in the garden, I see wasps hunting. Perhaps once you start attacking a problem with a 'cide, you start messing with something else which kept a check on another pest you barely noticed before, which now breeds out of control so you need another 'cide to handle that, etc. It's like when people are on litanies of prescriptions, and a third of them are to handle the side-effects of the rest. If you're an exhibitor and demand perfection from every plant, well, that goes beyond my set of expectations. But for those of you who simply want to grow plants to beautify your yard, why spend so much time and money on trying to make every bud open to a flawless bloom? If you say your roses can't survive without chemical intervention, why bother filling a garden with such fussy cultivars? Again, if you exhibit, that's another story, but I thought gardening was about cultivating plants for the purposes of beautification and enjoyment, not wondering what spray to get the next time a bug lands on your plants.

Obviously, I'm not going to tell people what to do with their hobbies, but I can't help but scratch my head about some of these discussions involving the use of such dangerous chemicals in the pursuit of perfect blooms. I just don't understand why some people have no concerns about what they're risking while using this stuff.

:-/

~Christopher

Well said Christopher.

These posts are meant to stir. Don't let them . Just point it out.

President Obama got together with the Prime Minister of Canada and Mexico about how to save the bees and the monarch butterflies. They are down 90 percent due to loss of habitat and also chemical use.

Chris and Sam, I have the greatest respect for your opinions and have personally enjoyed reading your posts and experience. However, I don't think that you have personally dealt with having midges in your rosebeds. I have never sprayed my roses until now. I can take rose slugs, aphids, spidermites, JB, blackspots and PM. But the midges, it is a different story. They don't go away during the growing season; they stay and increase and the longer you wait the more there are of them and thus more damages. If you have a bad infestation, you literally will have no flowers. And if you have them, they are either deformed or damaged. Basically, you will be growing your roses as green shrubs, no blooms. There are no predators of midges that I know. I think that it is judicious to take care of them when the problem is small before it spreads to other areas of the garden or to other people's gardens. I believe I got the midges from potted roses or bands that I bought. Had the vendors took care of the midges, this midge problem would not have spread to me or other people who bought their roses.

I am really happy that summersrhytm starts this thread. Like her, I am lookiing for other alternatives to combat this midge problem without the use of destructive chemicals. What I hope is that I can eliminate all the midges from the beds so I can go back to the no-spray way that i have been doing.

What Karen said times 100. Midge decimated 80% of my spring flush one year. We are not talking about having perfect, exhibition-quality blooms. We are talking about having NO blooms at all. Look at Karen's first set of photos. See that crispy nub in the second photo? That was a rose bud. Picture that image on all of your roses.

Midge is the only time I talk about using insecticides, and I do a lot of talks. For anything else, aphids, JBs, whatever, I don't do anything, and I don't recommend anything except water or hand picking.

Agreed. I used to worry about JB's. They are minor compared to this scourge. We're under a frost/freeze warning tonight. I am more hoping it kills the adult midges out there than I am worried about losing the tender shoots.

I was wondering if Bacillus thuringiensis var. Israelensis has been tested against the rose midge. It is supposedly effective against this class of diptera during their larva stage. It would have to be carefully sprayed on young shoots at the bud formation stage and more than one application (depending on their lifecycle) would be needed. I'm not sure how effective this would be since it has to be consumed by the larvae and the larvae are feeding inside the young bud. I believe Bt-i is commonly called 'mosquito dunk' in the US. That would be a quite benign method to try for some control but may be ineffective due to the insect's feeding habits.

PS. Another idea would be spirotetramat (Movento), This has shown effectiveness against other kinds of fruit and vegetable midges, is highly systemic so it is going to reach the larvae, quite selective and relatively benign supposedly (compared with neonicotinoids and pyrtheroids). I assume it is quite expensive in the States (being relatively new and patented) and I'm not sure if its is available to the amateur gardener over there. That would have to sprayed on foliage (mixed with horticultural oil) a few times during the season.

I don't use chemicals BUT I will say this thread is not a flaming one! Rose Midge can be a very serious pest!...A pest that can wipe out your rose hobby if left untreated... And yes be careful when receiving new roses from vendors that have Rose Midge in there area. I suggest soaking the entire plant under water for awhile upon arrival...

I hope a more organic solution is found that is truly effective against Rose Midge...Or a good insect that keeps them in check... But for now its a very serious problem!

Thanks Nike for the good idea! :-) I use that for my little pond, still have some in the garage. It lasts for 30 days in a pond. I will give it a try in another garden. I can soak it in the water for a day or two, then spray the water onto the young buds/ young shoots, every rose and the bed. Please correct me if this is not right. I can spray one of my gardens weekly ( or every 3 days?). :-) Thanks again

This is a Czech paper that studied Neem (containing 1% Azadirachtin) control of a different midge (Dasineura brassicae) on a different plant. The rose midge is (Dasineura rhodophaga Coquillett (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae)). I am not sure if they are similar.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10340-009-0244-2

I tried picking them off with a pair of steel tweezers when I had better eyesight--but I had too many roses for that to be a useful technique. I've never heard anyone else trying that with a small garden. Ironically, I think midge started spreading when commercial rose growers cut back the amount of pesticides they used in response to consumer demand (and lowering cost of production). I'd certainly consider a practical organic technique if 50 percent of the rose buds were untouched by midge. Even if you just wanted to grow pretty green shrubs, the tip die off can seriously affect how the plant looks and grows.

It could be that you were lucky enough to avoid getting infected plants--this is the whole rational behind Ebola quarantines. Just before I wrote this I was lucky enough to hear a ham radio operator in Conarky --it has been hard to get permission to operate ham radio in Guinea, but he is doing Emergency Telecom for the UN and NGO.
It could also be that your climate gets cold enough to kill midge that try to overwinter in your yard. I just visited a page that suggests the recent cold winters may be able to save the Hemlocks in Connecticut from Hemlock woolly adelgid.

We would be happy to send your our midge.

If you love roses and organic gardening, believe me, you don't want rose midges. You are very fortunate to be spared of this pest. Even knockouts are not immuned. There are just not enough tender rose tips to keep up with the midges' reproduction rate.

My roses that got knocked to the ground by winter kill seem the most susceptible. They are only a foot tall right now. My larger and hardier Lillian Gibson which is massive, Polaries, Ramblin Red, Quadra are all untouched. We had a brutal winter. We did hit -20 and there was a week in February I dont think we got above 0.

I would not be so flippant towards those who have rose midge. Consider yourself lucky, Sam.

Gardening is by definition intervention in nature. You want to be tea total Sam? You shouldn't garden. You shouldn't introduce non-native plants (not to mention naturally unsustainable hybrids created by human intervention) to your local habitat and you shouldn't help one kind of plant fight it against the others. There are no weeds, just stronger plants! Non-gardening is the way to go! Pick wild fruit to eat too! Graze the grass! That's it!

Is this a rose midge on the flower?

Here is another insect inside my peony bloom that looks like a midge. Is this also a rose midge?

Karen, I think the bugs in your first photo might be rose midges, but the one in the 2nd photo it doesn't look like a rose midge, the head is too black.....

http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/roses/rose-midges.htm

Thank you, Summer. The first one does look like a mosquito and the second more like a bee. You are right! I read somewhere that midges resemble small mosquitoes. So far I have applied the Bayers 2 in 1 about 3 weeks ago. Last week I applied the Bayers Complete Insect Killer. I felt so bad. I had probably killed all of the earthworms in that bed after years of adding compost and other organic stuffs. I sure hope that I can contain the midges in this bed. I sure don't want them to proliferate and fly to the beds in my backyard.

You're welcome Karen. :-) Earthworms will be back after rose midge is under control. I wish there is other way to kill the midge...... Just got back from camping today, soaked one mosquito dunk in a 1.5 gal. sprayer tonight, I will spray a few roses everyday to test it out( starting tomorrow). I applied Triazicide in my herb/rose garden and a couple of other gardens tonight, some of rose/veggie gardeners from my rose club use that product, I am testing it out too. Tomorrow is the 10th day, I need to repeat the spray in the front yard (at night), regarding this link: http://home-and-garden.nullanswer.com/forum/51140. Waiting for the Bioneem I ordered last week, they should be here this week (Wed or Thur), will test Bioneem out in the back yard as soon as I receive them. It only contains 0.09% azadirachtin, not sure if I can find 1%. The 3% azadirachtin Bioneem is pretty expensive-$150. There is a neem cake too. :-) http://www.drrajanlaboratories.com/product12.html

I am not sure if it works on midge.....

I think Bioneem(0.09%) is safe on veggies/herbs after reading Dr. Rajan Laboratories, he was talking about using 1%, 1.5% and 3% azadirachtin. I shall try the bioneem spray in my herb/rose garden.

I received Bioneem, and sprayed 2 gal. of it on the roses in the backyard, only left 4 roses for testing out mosquito dunk spray. I have been spraying the mosquito dunk water everyday on a Teasing Geogia (totally damaged without any buds), and 3 newly planted Breck's roses. I hope I can see some rose buds on Teasing Geogia in a week or 2. I think it's working, so far no midge damage on the new growth. And I hope the Bioneem works well, some of the roses are damaged pretty bad without any rose buds, I sprayed twice on those troubled ones tonight. and will spray Bioneem every 10 days. The roses in the front yard are doing pretty good, Bayer's products are working. Very happy to see some of roses without blooms for 2 years, now have some rose buds! I hope the midge problem can be controled this year, next year I won't need to do all these. I have high hope on mosquito dunk water, may be that's all I need for next year.

summersrhythm_z6a,

Where did you get the Bioneem & Mosquito dunk spray? Thanks!

Jim, I got Bioneem from Amazon, and the mosquito dunk spray is homemade, it was Nike's idea. Nick has a beautiful brain, so is Henry, I am telling you. :-) I put 1 mosquito dunk in a 1.5gal spray and fill it up with water and let it soak for 1 day and spray it everyday on the new growth. :-) I am just trying it out, so far I don't see the midge damages on the new growth. :-)

'Mosquito dunk', BT-i that is, if it is effective at all it is effective only against the feeding larvae not against the adults nor against the eggs. If the shoots have not reached the stage at which larvae hatch and start to feed there's no point in spraying it on them. As I mentioned above, I have two main doubts: Is Bt-i effective against this particular midge? And mainly, can the spray reach the parts where the larvae are feeding? The problem with it is that it should be consumed to have any effect and I understand the larvae are hidden and feeding inside the bud at its early forming stages. I don't know if BT-i conconctions specifically formulated for spraying exist in the US and what their brand names might be.

For people who may wish to experiment with 'chemicals' (as long as it is legal for them to do it in their regions) I also suggested the use of spirotetramat (Movento) which should be (a hypothesis) effecive against the midge and is systemic so it will reach where it should. On top of that it has the ability of translocating to new growth developing after the application thus only limited applications would be required. Spirotetramat is a new generation quite narrow range 'enviromentally responsible (until proven otherwise..)' chemical insecticide much more benign (supposedly) than neonicotinoids and pyrethroids (which themselves are more benign than organophosphates and carbamates).

Nike, which store product has

spirotetramat? Bayer's products?

Not sure what spirotetramat is....

Just found out spirotetramat (Movento) costs $950/gal, too expensive for rose gardeners, may be for farmers....

For the cost accounting part, Bayer's 2 in 1 $8.84, Complete Insects spray $12.76 and a 20lb bag of Triazicide $12.24( at Walmart).

Bioneem $10 (Amazon).

My area is having a huge problem with emerald ash borer, a lot of ash trees got killed. So everyone is using Bayer Advanced 12 Month Tree and Shrub Protect and Feed for their ash trees. All the HDs sold out their Bayer Advanced 12 Month Tree and Shrub Protect and Feed Granules, only the liquid ones left. I have 4 ash trees in the yard (they all have roses around them), so far I have treated one ash tree which shows some sign of emerald ash borer damage (with less leaves on the tree top), so the roses around it have been treated too, they should be free of midge for 12 months(?)...... one treatment for 12 months sounds really good. I am just wondering....... please advise. Thanks

I can't really advise you because I don't have personal experience with the above product. But if you read the product label, the difference between Bayer Advanced 12 Month Tree and Shrub Protect and Feed Granules and Bayers Complete Insect Killers is the 12 Month product has only one active indgredient, Imidacloprid at 1.1% for (Granules) while the Complete Insect Killer has two active ingredients, 0.05% β-cyfluthrin; 0.15% Imidacloprid for granules. As you can see, the 12 Month product has a greater concentration of Imidacloprid than the Complete Insect Killer. I have read that β-cyfluthrin is more effective in treating midges than Imidacloprid.

Thanks Karen. I used liquid one since the granules sold out, but they should be the same. I guess I have to continue with the Bioneem/ Bayer spray every 10 days then, I was hoping 1 stone can kill 2 birds.....

I have treated my rose bed in the front yard last month with the Bayers Complete Insect Killers. So far my roses are doing much better. Belinda's Dream and Wintersun are sending up buds that are not damaged! Though some midges have found their ways to a bed in my side yard. I wish I treated my roses early. If I had killed them before they were able to find other areas of my garden, I would be able to contain the problem. There are certain roses that they are drawn to. They really like pink and yellow roses.

'Just found out spirotetramat (Movento) costs $950/gal, too expensive for rose gardeners, may be for farmers....'

No rose home gardener would need to get Movento by the gallon lol lol unless they have many acres of garden! This is concentrated stuff which needs to be diluted with water, not ready to use. A little goes a long way. A gallon would make a few barrels of spraying liquid to load on the tractor..

Karen, My gardens look better this year after the treatment, I can see a lot of buds! :-) Still have about 45ish roses without buds ( they are double KOs and Carefree Beauty), I didn't water down the Bayer 2 in 1 enough. Now they're catching up with new growth.

Pretty happy with the treatment results. Bioneem treatment in the back yard was later than the front yard Bayer treatment. I have new growth on the damaged roses, they look pretty good so far. :-)

Ok Nik, I don't need a whole gal, at least you got a good laugh before sleep. :-) I will try to find a small inexpensive bottle. It must works well because farmers use it. Thanks again.

I just got back from Niagara Parks Botanical Garden (Canada), there aren't lot of roses in bloom, and they have very bad midge damage. I love that rose garden deeply, but many their rose beds have been replaced with annual flower beds, it's very sad to see less roses everytime I visit there, all the excitement just suddenly lost in the empty air......some old ramblers have some pretty buds on them, I hope I can go back there next weekend. Rugosa roses in the parking lot are beautiful, for some reason there is no rose midge damage on rugosas. They don't use chemicals in Ont Canada, I hope somehow in someway they can keep the rose midge under control. Walking in their beautiful rose garden filled with colors and fragrance became a misty dream from far away.......

Wow amazing what a tiny pest can do... Sorry to hear that!

Yes Jim, it made a whole rose garden looked bare. I'm just wondering if they could use Bioneem to save the rose garden. Bioneem is from the neem tree, it should be a organic treatment.

summersrhythm_z6a are you sure that the lack of blooms is due to midge? The stated period of bloom for that garden is June 15-September 30. Rugosas normally bloom earlier than other types (in my experience).

http://www.niagaraparks.com/niagara-falls-attractions/whats-in-bloom.html

Yes Henry, I saw the damage in every rose bed, the burnt tips everywhere. I will call them today to let them know.