The bugs won

I have been so happy with my Knockout roses. They have filled up the whole area in front of my house under the window. Their flowers smell awesome! These are the ones I got for a dollar a piece a couple years ago.

The above photo was taken back in May. By August they had doubled in size. If you look close you can see holes in the leaves. I believe at that time it was the white cabbage butterfly eating them. I assume these are moths. What did I do? I went to the store and bought two bottles of spray.

Garden Safe Organic insecticidal soap and fungicidal. Back in May I sprayed the daylights out of my roses with each spray. They seemed to like this and doubled in size. I guess I haven't been paying attention, or spraying enough, because I looked at them carefully and there were dead leaves and lots of holes, especially on the left sided one. It was smaller than its neighbor. I walked in closer to the bushes and there was a web with a great big fat spider scurrying away.



I started whacking down the diseased bush and noticed that the other one was really in bad shape, too. It just didn't show it as much because the damage was more on the inside. I decided to whack down both of them and then spray the heck out of them. It looks pretty sad.

As long as the roots are OK, the bushes will come back better than ever. I'll spray them until frost hits.

The above two photos are the rose bush on the other side of the porch - the top one taken in May and the bottom one now in September. This is what the two on the other side started to look like, but they didn't survive the spider attack. 

Lesson Learned: Spray, spray, spray with fungicide and insecticide all summer long!

How have your plants grown this summer?

Happy gardening, my friends,

~Ann