Too wet? Too much fertilizer? The roses I have have done well in the last couple of years.

What has your weather been like the past week or so?

Weather hasn’t been unusual. It got very hot very fast but we have had occasional rain and I’ve been watering.

I wasn’t precise with hollytone measurements a few weeks ago.

I got Love Song as a bush with blooms on it already and they didn’t look this bad. Not perfect, but not like this.

Could be thrips damage

I haven’t noticed any bugs but I will spray anyway, just in case.

How do I get some of those predaceous thrips. I think i only have those that like roses. : ( I have very similar damage today after a rainy weekend. There are thrips, but I believe the rain played a role also as it happened seemingly overnight.

Had the same troubles last year, it was bad weather and thrips combined... Hoping it does not happen this year...I'll find out soon...

I never worry too much about that 1st Bloom they're usually not the best ones. I bet your next ones are better

That does look to me like thrip damage. I have had a rough experience with them this year. Delicately open one of those buds that have discoloration and look for tiny larva moving inside to see if you have thrips. Spraying does not completely resolve the problem as the spray can't reach inside closed buds.

I will check for the larva this evening.

Hope that's not the cause!

Predaceous thrips are unstudied and most aren't named. What the RRD studies are trying is to interplant some of the grasses. Where there are grasses/hay fields, there are thrips and thrips emergence is followed by predaceous thrips. What you probably want are grasses that are less invasive, that don't die back completely in winter and that are up and producing seeds about the same time as the roses start to grow buds. (Because they are grasses, they should be in a bed of their own, so you don't spend the rest of the year digging grasses out of your rose roots.)

This bed is actually right at the edge of a massive field of different types of grasses that go unchecked year round. No clue what all is in there.

So it sounds like if this is thrip damage, I should just wait for these predaceous thrips to come around and take care of the rose-eating thrips?

How well do the cups work? My beds already look bad enough with landscape fabric for midge; if they work I might add them. If they're so-so, I'll suffer with Sugar Moon looking sad. I guess regular grass doesn't count. : (( Where are the larvae? I just assumed thrips were everywhere and flew in regardless. I'm game for anything to keep them from hatching that's not detrimental.

Maybe the FC isn’t so bad. This is a different bloom that’s a few days older.

I just pulled back the outer petals and there are TONS of teeny tiny brown bugs. I don’t think you can see them here.

Is that thrips?

Yes, those are thrips. : ((

I doused them, but man alive were there a TON! And they all ran as soon as they were exposed.

Looked like little fleas.

I do not have alot of roses (14) so last year I deadheaded and put the spent blooms into the trash...Not sure if that will help me this year or not by cutting down there numbers...lol... But here they destoyed every bloom just on certain roses until like July then they just left cause things were fine after that...

In my case I have a small field close with grasses etc. and every year the railroad sprayed it with weed poisons and I had no problems with thrips, but for the last 3 years the railroad been letting the field grow and now I have thrips...lol

Dang thrips. I had someone eating my leaves. It is so irritating to have your roses devoured.

I haven't seen any thrips but a lot of people swear by the blue cup and I would definitely use that. I don't care what it looks like if I have thrips I'm getting rid of those suckers

Hello,

I am sorry that you actually have thrips. They are very annoying, but finding them is the first step to getting them under control. I just spent all weekend removing every bloom and bud from my roses (over 150). It was a painful thing to do as they were loaded with unopened buds, but a quick look into those buds showed me it needed to be done. If you can make yourself do it I would remove every single bloom and bud into a trash bag, and then spray with whatever you prefer. I read that doing this a good way to tackle the thrips on the heirloom website ( they said to spray with an organic product).

Thanks for that info, diane.

These are first year plants, so I don't have so many blooms that it would be painful to get rid of them.

Maybe it was just because they were brand new. Maybe too hot. I have a lot of good blooms right now.

Im so glad that as time went on everything improved.improved. your fragrent cloud is so pretty.