Sorry for the delay. Here is the response from Emily Wilson who is head rosarian up there. "We honestly do not do a thing for rose midge. It has not been troublesome enough to need to do anything about. Unfortunately, they have a few generations throughout a growing season. But some suggestions would be prune out and destroy infested plant parts, and removal of old mulch in the spring (then of course reapplying new) to eliminate overwintering pupae. These two things would hopefully lower populations significantly."

Looks really good, Jim. How do you make your home-made compost? I make mine in the shade, just dump stuff on the ground ... it's NOT stinky. I'm going to get all the leaves I can this fall from the neighbors. Chicago Botanical Gardens' roses are ridiculously healthy, they use leaf-compost. When I took that soil-chemistry test, it stated the highest content of leaves is made out of carbon. Carbon (brown stuff) is good for the compost pile, a bit of nitrogen (green stuff) is good to speed up the decomposition. My most-blooms were when I used EarthGro Organic humus & manure ($1.26 for a 40 lb. bag from Walmart) to winter-protect, and in the spring there's zillions of buds ... way better than chicken manure. Here's a review on Walmart website for EarthGro bagged Humus & manure: 5.0 stars 4/1/2012 by oklahomagirl1989 "I made a flowerbed last year and planted 2 tiny roses into it...the flowerbed consisted of nothing BUT Humus and Manure Mix from Wal Mart.....my Roses have exploded with blooms during last years brutally hot summer when everything else died.....and since then, they have at least quadruplet in size....I couldn't be more happier about this product, in fact, I recommend it to all of my customers, since I work in the Garden Center and I always get asked about which soil is the best. Right now we are sold out of it and I am a bit upset myself because I want to buy lots more of it.....I would recommend this product to ANYONE at ALL TIMES!!!!! Here are the buds on Sweet Promise in spring when I winter-protected with EarthGro humus & manure (sold at HomeDepot and Walmart). Yay to the power of humus !! More spring buds on Francis Blaise when I used bagged humus & manure to winter-protect. Well-rotted horse manure is good too, but it's a real pain to scoop that into my car. I didn't winter-protect last year, since my kid's 6th-grade gifted-program was stressful for me. Growing healthy roses is easier than feeding a picky kid. I put money in her lunch-account, but she refuses to buy lunch from school, so I pack her lunch everyday. How do you pack lunch for a kid who doesn't like cheese, and is allergic to peanuts? Any ideas? Thanks.

As always, a pleasure. (Hard work, long day, but a pleasure :-) With some of the JSRS members prodding me, maybe next year I'll even enter an arrangement ... IF I can figure out the "styles". I almost did it this year, but feel "style" illiterate.

Thanks. Ours is a week after Fall Nationals, so we might not get much, but we are hopeful!