President's Message - June 2024

Hello Fellow GRS Members and Friends,

What’s next? You guessed it, the Hot Dog Days of Summer. When the heat and humidity gets so high it can cause severe damage to ourselves and the garden plants. I just found that a few varieties of our roses are eaten up with spider mites. This past couple weeks of zero rain and 95 plus temperatures got ahead of me in treating the roses for this microscopic pest. If you have roses showing leaves turning gray to brown and webbing, spider mites most likely are the problem. Long periods of real hot dry weather will bring on the perfect condition for them. The remedy is to spray with a miticide like Avid or Floramite. Avid is much less costly, but only kills the adult mites. My choice is Floramite. It will kill all the 3 stages of the mite, adult, larva and eggs. Using Floramite usually will do the trick all summer long. But if you only have just a few roses, you can use a strong spray of water on the underside of the leaves. This will dislodge the adults, but has no effect on the larva and the eggs, so this water treatment approach has to be repeated every 3 days for 2 weeks. You may then have so-so effectiveness. This is my first year in a good 10 years to have seen so heavy of an infestation. All due to the hot dry weather (tip of the month).

Our last meeting for the summer 2024 is on Sunday, June 9th. We will be installing the society officers for the next 2 year term. Our annual ice cream social is always a treat too. Jean has suggested each of us bring our favorite book (rose or otherwise). The plan is to share what and why you like that particular book. If you can, let’s each of us bring one rose to comment on as well. Let’s make it fun.

See you on Sunday.

Ralph Stream, Master Rosarian, President 

President's Message - May 2024

Hello Fellow GRS Members and Friends,

As we are now getting into summer, my thoughts recall the brutal heat of last summer. Here in McIntosh there has already been several days in the low 90’s. Hopefully we won’t have last year’s heat all over again. It was very hard to keep all our plants hydrated and the roses really showed it. This plus the devastation from chili thrips, I was almost ready to trash rose growing.

At our last meeting, the action to change our bylaws was voted on and approved. This action changed the wording on how long the president and vice president would be qualified to serve in their office. We voted these terms would be for two 2-year terms served consecutively. After the second 2-year term, another member will need to step up and serve. If this does not happen GRS will have to become non-affiliated with ARS, losing all privileges and benefits associated with ARS. I’m sure none of us wants to see this happen, so please be thinking about how you can serve in leadership.

This May meeting is our annual picnic. It is being held in Micanopy at the Historical Society complex, in Warehouse II. This is an open-air facility with bathrooms, water and a sink, electricity and a refrigerator so it will be comfortable for us. If anyone wants to visit the Museum after we eat, Jean will be glad to give you a tour. If you have never been, it will be a treat. See directions further in the newsletter. We would love to have family members and guests come too. It will be a fun afternoon.

I want to thank Jean Giesel and Jean Stream for going to the Master Gardeners Plant Sale in Newberry last Saturday. They had fun and talked with a lot of folks who are currently growing roses or are interested in growing them. They were invited back on October 19 to the Fall Horticulture Expo. If we want, GRS will be able to sell roses that day. We will need to discuss this later and make plans if this is what we want to do.

The only business at this meeting will be the installation of our 2024/25 officers, so come for fun. We need to stay on track with what we have volunteered to do for the 2024 DSD Fall Convention and Rose Show. Let me know if you need a reminder, I have a list. Keep in mind there are no meetings in July and August so we can’t wait until September to get our individual jobs done.

I will look forward to seeing you at the picnic. Bring a friend.

Ralph Stream, Master Rosarian, President