I have not purposefully planted tomatoes in my rose garden. However, some seeds must have sprouted from the compost that I placed in the garden. The tomatoes took off and looked great probably because of the fertilizer. Though I ended up having to yank them out because they were chili thrip magnets and caused the chili thrips to get on the roses. I do not need any encouragement for CT's it is bad enough without encouragement. Now it might be better in the fall when the CT's are not quite so awful. I wanted not to have to spray this year. I am trying to use the the banker plants and the good mites to come. While the good mites can handle the pepper which are banker plants, tomatoes were NOT recommended to be used as banker plants. I am wondering if it has to do with the back of the leaves being to hairy and the mites get caught in them. Also, here in Florida we have a new kind of imported white fly that is HORRIBLE and tomatoes are one of the plants that acts as a host to the imported fly. So my tomatoes are moved way off to the edge of the property where I can spray and not hurt my beneficials. Has anybody ever planted strawberries in the rose garden.... I was wondering if they would work.... not so much for beneficials, but as a ground cover because my ground dries out. I can dump tons of leaves (not composted) every fall and spring to help hold the water. I dump about 12 inches thick but they are grounded up, but after a couple of months in the summer they are pretty well gone. Where I have planted annuals the ground seems to hold more moisture, but I can't find anything that lasts through my summers. The annuals die out.

This plant will dissappear in SC when the weather heats up. Debarron, how do you prepare yours for eating? I'm not sure it's common around here, but I've discovered another tasty brassica weed. I let my lambsquarters self seed for more forage yum.😋

There shouldn't be any issues of applying both. Milky spore takes years to build up in the soil (through infecting grubs which then become spore factories) ... and then nematodes look like they are a lot of $$$ for spot treatment areas. I applied milky spore 3 years back after having moles for two years. They haven't returned... but at the same time I had moles come and go from my front yard too without treatment. So who knows. What you could do is go for the milkyspore... applied in late summer into fall. And then just set traps through this whole year.

Part of the problem with a comprehensive data base is that it would include thousands (maybe 10's of thousands) of beneficials. For that reason, they are often grouped together as families, like predatory beetles or flies, mirids, etc. and there can be hundreds of different species involved with each grouping. There are 4000 or so species of aphids alone! And as noted, some will be very location specific. I like this website, both for the photos and the descriptions of the bugs and their life cycle and feeding preferences: Attracting Beneficials