WIrosarian is correct and it's pretty much like asking what can I plant that the deer won't eat? The answer is, it doesn't matter much because it depends on what they feel like that evening and if they can reach it, it's fair game. Same with the beetles, which begins here with rose chafers, different in appearance to JB's but oh, so alike in appetite. RC's emerge same time as the first roses begin to bloom. Early or late, I don't know how they time it but they time it right. Yellow's are goners for sure, followed by white and pink roses. Fragrance simply draws them in like a magnet, all of which means my old garden roses get devoured. Reds and dark colors will get eaten sometimes too, poor Bayse's Purple and scarlet red Eddie's Jewel this year being prime examples of apparently delicious petals. After a month or so of the rose chafers, the JB's continue the assault, basically following the same preferences. My poor Polereis has not had an undamaged bloom all year. And some roses like Morden Sunrise have leaves that are entirely skeletonized. Yes, once they've found your garden, more beetles will come. They send out chemical signals to advertise the bounty they've discovered. But do you know which rose in my garden seems untouched by either evil beetle? Yup, the Double Knock Out that the previous owners had planted. Figures, doesn't it? And so far, neither bug is interested in my daylilies. Small wonder why the number of DL's I grow is fast approaching and ready to surpass my roses! At least diverging into other collections allows me to separate and mix the roses in between other plants. Sometimes that helps a few rose blooms to escape detection here and there. My worst garden for damage is the strip along side the garage (facing east and prime rose territory) where I planted a long bed of mixed yellow rose varieties and purple and blue tall bearded iris behind. This was planned and planted before I realized the rose chafers here in the village are just as bad as they were out in the country where I was surrounded by hundreds of acres of fallow fields (their prime breeding ground.) And it was before I knew I ALSO had Japanese beetles here to contend with. That bed will have to be dug and redone at some point because it's just too painful to see all the damage there in a row with nothing else to look on. Cheery, no? Still, I continue to tend my (fewer) roses and hope for the best. Maybe NEXT year, the beetle count will be lower and I'll see more blooms....hope (and gardening) springs eternal!

Fascinating conversation. Here in the Ottawa Canada area I never noticed any Japanese Beetles until a few years ago, although I've had roses for about 20 years. I wish they "just lasted a few weeks", but even here in chilly zone 4B the irridescent green vampires hang around pretty much the whole summer and into fall, sucking the life out of the rose blooms. Sure roses are bothered by other things, but nothing like the Japanese Beetles, at least for me. I have a very early rose (Therese Bugnet) that gets a few blooms out before they take over, but then it's a free for all. I have noticed that the most fragrant (Hansa and Blanc Double de Coubert) are the most popular and they don't even open before the blooms are totally covered and devoured even with twice daily visits and "debugging". They are less aggressive on my Knockouts and my Carefree Wonder, the Knockouts seeming to be the very least bothered of all my roses, but they are also the farthest physically from the most scented roses. After they find the roses they are on to the raspberries (leaves) and they bury themselves into the hibisucs syriacus (rose of sharon) blooms. Ah, yest they certainly do fly and probably 1/3 of mine never "drop" into my soapy water container, regardless of how many partners they are mating with at the moment or how carefully I "sneak up" or how close I hold the container. I did see a suggestion of using geraniums to "draw the beetles away". They are supposed to be attracted to them, eat the geranium flowers and then fall over and pass out like drugged party goers so you could sweep them up. Sounded worth a try. This article didn't specify a colour and I had bright pink geraniums. Even when I put the pots of geraniums directly under my handsome "Hansa" they didn't land on the geraniums. Since then I've read that it's the white geraniums that they go for. So, if anyone wants to give that a try, I'd love to know if the white ones work for anyone. Or I've also heard of using catmint, or members of the onion or allium family planted close to the roses Going to give those a try since many are pretty and purple anyway, but I think you'd need something with persistant leaves to keep the scent going. I'm thinking perhaps I should get more of the early blooming roses like Therese Bugnet so that I might enjoy the blooms before the vampires descend, but I really want my roses to bloom all summer and for as long as possible. Just as a point of interest I do work in a garden centre and none of our roses had a Japanese Beetle. I had to fight off other rose thugs that I don't remember, but no Japanese Beetles. Perhaps it's the fact that the garden centre is on pavement and not surrounded by lawn where the lady vampires (JB's) lay their eggs and the adults winter over. Mary

Wait until spring to do any pruning because cutting them back now will trigger new succulent growth that could be damaged during freezes this winter. That said you may want to just let Abraham Darby be the short climber it wants to be by letting the long canes arch over (if you have the room) or tie them to a short trellis, although some people keep cutting it back to make it into a tall bush. Jude may throw out a long cane occasionally which you can cut back in the spring or summer. It is more likely to be happy as a bush than Abraham Darby. These are two of my favorite Austin roses, by the way. It may be that you have flower beetles rather than Japanese beetles. Both are a pain to have in the garden, but flower beetles are less of a pain I think. They are easier to control by hand picking and spraying the ground with beneficial nematodes in spring and summer to kill the grubs from which they hatch. After treatment with beneficial nematodes a couple of times I didn't have flower beetles (Euphoria sepulcralis, Fabricius) for years, but they turned up again last year so I treated again. You can google them to see what each beetle looks like. Here is the flower beetle on Prairie Sunrise last summer: Applying insecticides won't do much good for beetles, but unfortunately they will kill honey bees and other beneficial insects. You can buy beneficial nematodes at plant nurseries or on line. They will stay in the soil and do their jobs of killing a lot of unwanted insects that live in the soil like grubs, fleas and ants as long as the soil doesn't dry out. Here is a link that might be useful: How to Use Beneficial Nematodes

Good idea, Jim, that would be sturdy & easy to clean. What store did you get it from? I will have to look for that. One healthy rose worth buying: William Shakespeare 2000, I never find any Japanese Beetle on that for the past 4 years, since its petals are tightly-packed, and JB can't get inside. I have W.S. 2000 in a flooded area, with the overflow of rain barrel dumping water on that tiny rose, yet it's clean. I also put gypsum (for its zillion-petals), and cracked-corn in the planting hole (for anti-fungal agents in corn, such as zinc and copper). How one prepare the planting hole determines how disease-resistant it is. If the hole is well-drained, and has beneficial microbes, it will be healthy. When I piled up horse manure on Golden Celebration, I was surprised that the previously compacted soil underneath is made fluffy, thanks to the microbes from the well-rotted manure. The below link explains why: http://www.naturalenviro.com/Article.php?ArticleSKU=Soil-Building "The broad and diverse population of soil microorganisms will immediately begin to build an aerobic zone in the soil. The aerobic zone is the top portion of the soil that supports plant life. A healthy soil will normally have an aerobic zone 8-12 inches deep. Most soils today have an organic matter content of less than 1% and usually have very shallow aerobic zones (1-2 inches). One of the main causes of this is the lack of diverse population of beneficial soil microbes. Soils that have low organic matter and shallow aerobic zones also have a very low water holding capacity, are compacted, and have very low oxygen content. These conditions are very adverse to good root development by turf or plants and usually indicate very low microbial activity. When you apply microbes, you will see conditions in your soil begin to change quickly." An excerpt from another site on humus: http://www.naturalenviro.com/Article.php?ArticleSKU=humic-acid-role "Humic acid is also especially important because of its ability to chelate micronutrients increasing their bio-availability. Humic acid stimulates microbial activity by providing the indigenous microbes with a carbon source for food, thus encouraging their growth and activity. Soil microbes are responsible for solubilizing vital nutrients such as phosphorus that can then be absorbed by the humic acid and in turn made available to the plant. Additionally, microbes are responsible for the continued development of humus in the soil as it continues to break down not fully decomposed organic matter." William Shakespeare 2000 as own-root can take lots of rain. I look over the pictures over the last 4 years, including the 1st year when it was in a pot, with chemical fertilizer. My rating: it was really stingy in a pot, from high-nitrogen-soluble. It gave lots of bloom with sulfate of potash & gypsum, but the health can't be compared to horse manure. This year with too much rain: I used red-lava-rock & cocoa mulch, bloom-quality is good, but leaves got holes from excess water, but no black spots. Below is William Shakespeare when I used horse manure & alfalfa meal, 100% healthy, fantastic bloom-color and quality: Here's William Shakespeare 2000 bloom with horse manure: nice purple, thanks to the trace elements in horse manure. I like more than what I have now, deep crimson from red-lava-rock: