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
