Rhizo, I pay little attention to the fertilizing of them as I have stated yes, but to the watchfulness of insects your wrong. By my posts, I would think you would could see what I am like the minute I bring them indoors! I am more vigelant, even overboard, when it comes to the insects though. Ask the people that live with me. I spend hours looking for just one mite or pest. I even bought a 80 dollar magnifyer last year. Everyday, I mean everyday, I was looking at my plants for insects. You could say obsessed. Read last winters posts..lol No matter what I did, they came back EVERY day. I rinsed them, sprayed them with neem, ordered natural prdators, over 200 dollars worth, tried to create the perfect enviroment for no pests, then sounded like a fool going on this site every other day frustrated with the pests that haunted my plants like a plague everyday not going away until I was finally able to put them outside. Now they are all PEST free, I hope, because I was quite vigelant with that, but not so with fertilizing I did admit. So, I have this fear that all that hard work to keep my plants clean, not fed, will only be corrupted by a lack of proper proceedures for bringing them back indoors. I want to do what's best for them. I will say that you have been of great help. Also thanks for the concern in your response to someone else suggesting I spray chemical. The problem is, is that I can not even handle the slightest infestation, not an explosion. It was my worst winter last year with insect, even with my vigelance!! The problem was caused by infected plants I brought home from a greenhouse last November. I know better now. But I pretty much know how to keep the population down. I just want to make sure I am doing all I can, and just want to, I guess, be told that I will have no pests if I use the correct pesticide. I am begining to see that there are no guarentees and that is the world of indoors plants, even if never brought outdoors. These pest could be in the crevices of our floors for petes sake. I guess no matter what we do, the chance of mites or any stupid critters sitting on our plants is part of the game. If we don't want any at all, then quit the hobby right? Thanks rhizzo for everthing, you make alot of valid sense. Remember though,this is me, and you know that I am not only "parinoid" of pests, but very vigelant at catching even one. That is my problem. Fear of just one. Just seeing one, kills me. That's why all the fuss. I would hope after all this great advice I might not even see ONE with my 80 dollar magnifier. In fact sometimes I am afraid to use it. I start from the day the first plant comes in. Mike

As you can see there are many flavors of organic gardening. I was going to specifically agree and disagree with various comments but there are too many. Here's my idea of organic gardening. Grow plants that are adapted to your area. You can't grow cactus in Michigan or blueberries in Arizona. Grow plants in season. You can't grow coriander (cilantro) in the spring/summer or tomatoes in the winter. Never till the soil or dig any hole larger than needed to plant a seed or a plant. This applies to organic or chemical gardening, but it only really works with organic gardening. Organic gardening is all about developing a healthy soil to include healthy soil microbes (bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and microarthropods). Those critters need to eat food, so with that in mind, peatmoss and compost are not organic fertilizers. Fish meal (or hydrolysate or emulsion), seaweed, soybean meal, alfalfa pellets, used coffee grounds (free in bulk from Starbucks), blood meal, milk, corn meal, cottonseed meal, and any other ground up nut, bean, or seed are organic fertilizers. Peatmoss and compost have a place but don't expect them to perform like a real fertilizer. After a few years of soil building without doing anything destructive like tilling, you can probably use less of these fertilizers. In any case you can forget completely about NPK and 10-10-10 or whatever. All you need to pay attention to is protein content (is there or isn't there any?). Don't use insecticides for anything. If you leave the insects alone and build health into your soil and plants, the insects will take care of themselves. You should see more toads, lizards, wasps, and birds in the garden once you stop using insectides. Those are all predators that will help you to control your pests. Don't use chemical herbicides for anything. This requires you to keep after the weeds. Using mulch heavily helps a lot with weeds. Weeds are very easy to pull out of mulch. Certain plants (sometimes called weeds) can have beneficial effects. An ugly plant that happens to attract aphids, for example, will also attract a population of ladybugs to your garden if the aphids are left alone. Any population of ladybugs in the garden is a good thing.

I know for sure that Jung's in Madison has William Baffin every year. I'm not sure about Milwaukee places. There is a list of nurseries on the Wisconsin forum and one of those might have it. Even nurseries that don't normally have roses often have the hardier climbing roses like this one in their shrub section. You don't need to worry about the soil. Go ahead and plant William in the same spot and it will be fine. I have John Cabot which is closely related and that's the one rose that I never have to worry about blackspot or winterkill. If you're getting a lot of powdery mildew though then you might want to be sure it is getting enough sun there and enough air circulation. Here is a link that might be useful: Local Wisconsin Nurseries

Aphids are generally more likely to infest plants with lush green growth, plants growing in soils with too much available Nitrogen although they can be found on other plants. Aphids also produce live young, and start doing that almost as soon as the are born so by the time you see an Aphid you probably have several generations already present. The simplest means of control is to knock the wee buggers off the plants with a sharp spray of water. Now many people that know not whereof they speak will tell you that those Aphids you just knocked off will simply return, but these wee buggers are so dumb they know not whereof they came and die before they figure out where they need to go. What you will see is the next generations moving into the vacancy you created, so it takes some time and repeat applications of the water spray, as well as digging into your soil to determine why your plants might be so attrractive to these pests.