Hi,

Good afternoon!

The following strange things happened to two roses I planted

1. The outer petals were falling down in Miranda Lambert rose, is it because the weather is too hot or there is too much water？

2. There are holes in the petals of Don Juan rose.

I would appreciated if I can get help from any experienced rose growers

Regards,
Latte

Moved to the Rose forum.

Your 'Mirandy' rose is just opening from the bud stage of the bloom to the open stage and the petals are not dropping, but are reflexing back to make the boss of stamens in the center of the bloom available to polinators.

As the to holes in the unopened blooms, they appear to be rose curculio damage. It can be managed, but, in my garden, I don't like to use any insecticides. My preference.

According to rose research, there are only two ways to get rid of them. 1) use a drench systemic poison; and 2) to hand pick them.

For me the poison was out, so hand picking was supposedly the only way to get rid of them. My garden was totally infested. One evening I was hand picking them off on the street rose, 'Linda Campbell' and I realized that I was working on one rose and the dang bugs were working on the other 99 roses in my garden.

Since curculios are above ground for only two months, and come up to feed on rose buds and lay eggs for the next generation, I decided to eliminate all of the buds in my garden. Drastic, yes, but when they came out of the ground, there were no buds to feed on and no place to lay their eggs. They migrated OUT of the garden. That ended the infestation.

Now it takes them a month to find my garden, so I only disbud for one month. Also, I no longer have to disbud the whole garden. I can just disbud the roses that show damage and/or bugs ....

Hope this helps.

Smiles,
Lyn

A drastic but very effective strategy, Lyn!

BTW, his rose is Miranda Lambert, rather than Mirandy. (Mirandy was discussed on another recent thread.)

@Mike ... I am so grateful you are proof reading my posts. Thank you ever so much.

Smiles,
Lyn

Mike said: A drastic but very effective strategy, Lyn!

I think @Zuzu posted last year that the curculios were no longer breeding in her garden. She said she was very diligent about picking up the damaged buds that fell to the ground, so the larvae didn't have a chance to go underground to incubate for the next season.

She has a lot more roses in her garden than I have, so that was a major success.

Smiles,
Lyn

I did the picking and snapping off damaged buds almost daily for 2 years on my Ghislaine de Feligonde and I rarely see any on it anymore. Now they are hitting one of my Buff Beauty plants and the neighboring roses, Honey Perfume and Bouquet Parfait.

I didn't realize they were so territorial.

They seem to prefer light colored roses.

Calif_Sue said: They seem to prefer light colored roses.

Maybe. When my garden was totally infested they went after all of them. Light colored, dark colored ... whatever was closest to where they came up to eat and breed.

When they finally find my garden, now, I find them on white, red, pink, orange and yellow. I only have two purple roses, but the bugs get to the other roses first.

When Baldo Villegas visited my garden he told me that the dang bugs really didn't have a color preference.

Who really knows ? I am guessing they may like light colored roses more than others because most species roses are white or some shade of pink.

Smiles,
Lyn

Well there goes my theory! I only have 2 dark ones, so far, not touched.

Haven't found them on red or purple yet (did find them on lavender and med. pink since my last post about them this week). Wonder what their larva looks like? Worst infested by far --Elina and Iceberg. I destroy all I find, so I don't know how they would produce larva, and I have no idea what the larva looks like. This is the first year I have even seen them attacking buds.

Hi,

Thank you very much for your enthusiastic discussion and feedback. So far, I have only found one infected flower. I guess I better take a quick action to avoid spreading to other flowers.

Regards,
Latte