As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


My rose buds are covered in aphids! Ugh

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I was outside in my garden today, wandering around looking at the four Clematis that are currently blooming and checking to see if any of my roses or if the peonies had begun to bloom yet and I noticed that almost all of my rose plants had tons of aphids all clustered around the rose buds.

It’s been cooler than normal here in Toronto. They say our average temperature at this time of year is about 23 C (74 F), but it’s only been about 18 C (64 F) or cooler most of the month so far. I guess the aphids and slugs love these kind of temperatures, but so far it doesn’t seem like the Lady bugs do! I only saw on lonely Lady Bug feasting on aphids as I did my garden rounds.

Since the Lady Bugs aren’t going to eat all the aphids before they destroy my lovely roses I decided I’d have to go out there and fight them. So earlier this evening I went outside armed with a spray bottle full of water and a squirt of dish detergent and I sprayed all my rose plants and rose bugs with the mixture.

Die Aphids! Die!

I fully expect to go outside tomorrow and see dessicated aphid bodies stuck to my rose buds. Victory!

I’m glad it’s so easy to kill them!

As for my roses, so of the first flowers came out earlier this week. As usually Morden Sunrise was the first rose to bloom. It was quickly followed by Stanwell Perpetual and Charles Albanel. All of these rose are at the front of my house – surprisingly, since the majority of my roses are in the south facing back yard. You’d think the roses in the back would bloom first, but I guess not.

In the backyard, William Baffin has one rose open and so does Parade … all the rest of my many roses have buds that are in various stages – from just forming to just about to bloom. I’m sure that by the weekend most of my roses will have a few to many many blooms. It will be lovely.

Now we just need it to start getting warmer! Oh well … at least we don’t have to have the air-conditioning on so we’re saving money!

How’s your garden doing? Have you noticed a lot of aphids or other garden pests on your plants? How do you get rid or them.

I just remembered, we have one other major garden pest – the Lily Beetle. My lilies look awful this year. Their foliage is all raggy and they aren’t growing as well as they normally do. Anyone know of a non-toxic (no pesticide) way to get rid of lily beetles?






Comments

  1. I hope that the water and detergent spray worked well. I use a strong squirt of water with the hosepipe to dislodge them and that works if you do it regularly. I have a strange problem with my prize irises. The get regularly decapitated by birds! I haven’t found a solution.

  3. Lots of aphids on my roses. I’m going to attack them this afternoon with your solution of soap and water. Perhaps will add a bit of hot pepper sauce to spice things up?

    Other than that roses look spectacular this year. My Carefree Beauty is covered with blooms, so is Austin’s Golden Celebration. Sooo many buds on all – just can’ wait.

  4. Hi, I just stumbled across your blog while looking for information about getting rid of slugs.

    I’m in Massachusetts, so my garden is a little ahead of yours. We have a terrible problem with that miserable Lily Beetle in this area; they’ll eat my Asiatic lilies to the ground if I let them.

    I haven’t found any good way of getting rid of the Lily Beetles other than inspecting my lilies and picking them off by hand. They lay their eggs on the underside of foliage – they’re red-orange and in clumps – and easy to crush and wipe off.

    The most destructive stage seems to be the larvae, which I’ve watched eat a leaf entirely off the plant in about 5 minutes. Unlike the eggs and the mature beetles (with their telltale red bodies), they’re harder to spot. They’re absolutely disgusting, they heap their excrement on their backs as a defense, so they can look like nasty brown gobs a little smaller than your pinky nail. You have to crush them. I keep a couple of small flat rocks with me when I’m checking my lilies to crush the beetles and the larvae between. I’m not sure if they drown if you put them in soapy water, but they might.

    BE SURE to check the bottoms of your lilies, just above ground level and especially on the smaller, young shoots. The larvae tend to hide down there under the leaves. I’ve gotten lazy in the past, checking only the top two-thirds of the foliage for eggs and mature beetles, and later discovered tons of the larvae at ground level, happily destroying the growing foliage.

    Thanks for the slug info! And good luck with the beetles. It’s interesting to hear they’ve spread that far.

  7. That paint brush idea is a good one! I hate the little pests too – will have to tell my Mom, she LOVES her roses!

  8. Excellent idea using paintbrushes! We always just hosed them or unleashed hordes of ladybugs on our old garden in Salt Lake City. We just started working on the garden at our new house in Bountiful, Utah so we haven’t encountered any problems with that yet.

  9. Didn’t know that soapy water spray did the trick. Now I will be ready for the little devils.
    Thank You.

  10. I don’t think I’ve ever seen aphids before. I don’t know if we have them here, I’m a little further north than you are… We mostly have shadflies and mosquitoes. lol.

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