As this summer is winding down, I am thankful for all the roses that have delighted all my senses this year. Their colors and fragrances have brought a lot of happiness to my family, friends, and many visitors since the end of May. Every year brings its challenges to the rose gardener, and this season has certainly had its issues!

Our spring this year was not particularly wet, but it was overly cool and overcast. Potted roses were sulky about getting started and roses in the ground also got off to a rather slow start. We went from chilly in April and May to Boom! 90+ degrees on the first weekend of June! The poor roses were not hardened off to the heat and the new blossoms french-fried in the relentless hot sunbeams. June brought us a lot of rain, sometimes 3-5 inches at a time. We also had really severe thunderstorms with scary accompanying winds that ripped beautiful basal breaks right off some of the rose bushes. That’s a real heartbreak for the rosarian…

July

July arrived and summer settled in. Finally, the temperatures moderated, and the summer roses arrived. These are smaller than the first flush of blossoms. The bushes produce more buds that open faster because of the longer days. I always water heavily during the middle of summer. Especially for the garden along the back of the house which doesn’t get rainfall because it is under a wide soffit.

As time passed during July, it got hotter and hotter until we had a week-long period of around 100 degrees. When it gets that hot, the roses are miserable and so is the rosarian! That is when I take my watering wand and wash down the foliage…and myself, too! Another reason for washing down the foliage in the heat is because spider mites abound in hot weather. A water wash will usually help to knock them down…except for one particular garden in my yard…

There’s garden behind my house that I call the ‘Sunrise Garden’ because it is an eastern exposure. Not only doesn’t it get rained on, but it is also the hottest garden in my yard because it’s up against the foundation and the heat concentrates there. I live at the top of a windy hill, so all of my gardens are constantly exposed to breezes. I also have a ‘lawn,’ not just grass…my lawn has clover in it, and creeping jenny and english ivy and ground ivy and…you get the idea.

Summer Roses: Pests

Well, by the time I noticed the spider mite damage on the clover in the back yard, the buggers had been blown into my hot Sunrise Garden and were fruitful and multiplied! Yikes! I spray proactively for insects and diseases, but mites are not insects and are not affected by a normal spraying. They build up immunity to spray materials quickly because they are so small. Don’t spray for mites until you see damage.

That hot week was all they needed to turn my garden into the equivalent of Mite New York City. My summer roses were the high-rises!!! And, it was too hot to spray them because all the foliage would have burned in that heat. I kept up washing them down until the temperatures moderated and then I sprayed with a miticide I had purchased last summer, called ‘Shuttle.’ Miticide is very expensive, and this one was newer and less money so I decided to try it.

Pest Battle!

Long story short…it didn’t work. It also wanted to clog up my sprayer. Spraying for mites is very time-consuming because mites set up housekeeping on the undersides of the leaves first, so you have to be careful to get really good coverage. After all that work, I was more than disappointed when the mites just laughed at me and continued to move upward. I went to Robbie Tucker’s ‘Rosemania’ website and bought ‘Floramite,’ which has really good results. It knocks down adults, nymphs, and eggs, as well, and has a 21 day residual. The last time I bought this product, I had to buy a quart at over $200. Now it comes in a pint for around $100. That’s much more user friendly, as you need to use less than a teaspoonful per gallon.

Hopefully, the battle of the mites is over for this year! The shadows are growing longer, hot days are getting fewer, and there’s a chill expected for this weekend which will be much appreciated. The roses love the cooler weather, too, and Fall roses take their time to develop, so the color is richer, the blooms are larger, and the fragrances are intoxicating. Enjoy the lovely days to come!