by Ann Hooper

First Bloom in Your Garden!

There's nothing as satisfying to a rosarian, whether a novice or an old hand, as First Bloom in your own garden!  You pruned all your roses at the same time in early spring, so they all bloom at the same time in late spring-- First Bloom.  Even if you grow only a few plants, the First Bloom display is spectacular, as there are more flowers on each plant than there are at any other time during the season.

Roses, of course, are ever-blooming perennials, and the plants will continue to grow fast and bloom strongly all summer and well into fall, but that first spring profusion of color is always the most awe inspiring.

Most Southern rosarians will already have experienced their First Bloom, but cold-climate gardeners are watching their plants sprouting fast-growing leaves, new stems on the old canes, new canes from the bases of the plants, and tiny buds that will become your big, colorful flowers in another month or six weeks.  During this time, from pruning to First Bloom, you'll observe big time changes in the plants every day.  Isn't Nature amazing?

But also at this time, when all this terrific growth is tender and succulent, there are some hungry bugs that see your roses as a most bountiful feast.  Aphids will suck the juices out of the tender shoots.  Caterpillars will chomp on the tasty leaves. Rose midge will eat an entire bud before it's even big enough to see.  A full spring complement of the usual six-legged suspects can ruin your First Bloom while it's still six weeks away!

I'm and old broad who's been growing roses and all kinds of other plants for a long time, and this is my philosophy:  I work hard to plant, feed, water, and prune my roses.  They are my hobby, my enjoyment, and my satisfaction.  No sucker, rasper, borer, or chomper is going to dash the hopes I have for the perfection of my roses.  Furthermore, I'm not going to wait until I see the devastation insects can do in a rose garden before I try to get rid of them.  I'm going to make sure they never enter my garden at all by using a good insecticide on a preventive basis.

Perhaps strangely, roses everywhere, in all parts of the country, grow the same way and are susceptible to the same bugs, mites, and rose diseases.  So rosarians in Southern California will care for their roses the same way a rosarian in Mainecares for his.  Same bugs, same insecticide.

I've used lots of different products over the years, including the ones the EPA has taken off the market because they were deemed hazardous. (I'm not quite old enough to have used DDT!)   The good news is that the newer pesticides that have replaced them are much more benign, are often as effective, are used less frequently, and are used in smaller doses.

The insecticide Merit is one of these products.  It’s a systemic that can be either sprayed on the plants, or watered into the soil where the plants’ roots take it up and translocate it throughout the plants.  A tiny dose, watered in once a month through the growing season, will keep all soft-bodied insects away from your roses and other plants.  It may be fanciful of me, but because I don’t see many, if any at all, dead insect bodies on or around my roses, I really do think that the bugs choose to stay away from my preventively treated plants, rather than actually eating them and then dying because it.

Merit doesn’t translocate to the flowers so it won’t affect bees and other good flower visitors.  On the other hand, it doesn’t prevent the flower-eating Japanese beetles, either, so a good contact insecticide, sprayed once or twice during beetle season will severely limit your garden’s beetle population and therefore most of the damage those nasty chompers cause.

Ann Hooper is a certified American Rose Society Consulting Rosarian, who grows nearly 400 rosebushes at her home near Boston.  She is the owner of Primary Products, a mail-order supplier of everything needed to grow fabulous roses.  Visit the Primary Products website at www.primaryproducts.com. Ann will always answer your rose culture questions.  E-mail her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .