Question
Hi Kathy,

Thank you for generously providing advise to so many.

Our roses gardens have become badly infested. we have 260 roses bushes all in the same area and we have seen a wide varity of pests and diseases come and go from our garden.

It is normal that we have a small population of thips living in the garden, but this year all of a sudden the thrips who before were not very noticable as a problem became a raging infestation which has crippled all of the roses.

It began to get bad since a month ago, we were away on vactation for 2 weeks and came home to a devastated garden, Mildew and Thrips were everywhere. It had been an oddly foggy season here in Central California were we live. THe mildew wreaked havoc on many plants but we got rid of it quickly, the thrips though are proving difficult to get rid of.

the thrips attack the rose flowers causing them to malform or wilt away. There are millions of them, they live in the petals of the flowers, seems to go after the buds as soon as they first crack open.

we have sprayed them with a pesticidal neem spray, and have applied 3-1 bayer systemic chemicals. but the infestation is growing.  do you have any suggestions.  we dont want to use malathon because it is very toxic, but we are about to try becuase things are really out of hand at the moment.

thank you for fielding this question.

best regards from California

-Alexander
We have tried

Answer
Hi Alexander,  We use Merit (Conserve) and Atomic Grow to control the Chilean thrip that is wrecking havoc on roses.  You have to keep switching so they do not get used to the product that you are using.  Atomic Grow is organic and Merit is also safe.  Atomic Grow will go one step further and make the plant healthy to fight off all the bugs that love roses, fungus and mildew.  kathy