Yes, I have them too and mine have barely started to leaf out. It's the cool damp weather. Once it gets hot and dry they'll disappear...until fall when it's cool and damp again, lol. You can blast them or just take your fingers and gently wipe them off.

Yay! I wish the birds were hungrier!

Ladybugs have helped a great deal in controlling aphids in my garden. As the weather got warmer (~ >80 degrees in my zone 9B for the last week or so), the aphids seemed to disappear. Good luck and happy gardening.

Hi, Susan. I am struggling with the aphids too. It just sickens me when I come home from work and take the afternoon walk around the gardens to check for buds and see what looks like hundreds of those green bugs on just one stem. I have read that you can use diluted dish soap in a spray bottle and that's what I've been using. I can say that it is effective to a certain degree but in my garden it seems like I need to do it daily. I haven't seen any evidence that I am "overspraying" with my lime basil Palmolive. But I am not an expert and maybe someone with more knowledge will weigh in.

Alas, I am also struggling with these tiny worms that curl up on the back side of the leaves and turn them to lace.

Sidos-House,

Sounds like aphids and rose slugs are attacking you at once... :(

Thanks, Jim, for naming the hungry worm for me. I indeed have rose slugs as well as aphids. We live in the country and all summer long, it's one regiment after another of insects.

I read an article recently that said certain plants repel aphids. Two that were mentioned were Geraniums and Basil. Perhaps planting some geraniums in your garden might help. Has anyone had luck with this?

Once I retired, I had time to wash the aphids off and I stopped my two spring bug sprays. I have been amazed at how the ladybugs have taken over and kept the roses mostly clean. Sure, I have to hit certain roses with the hose randomly but it is so much better than spraying and killing ladybugs, bees, and praying mantises. I am a believer. But--I felt I just didn't have the time to do this when I worked full-time.

In almost every case the aphids will subside after a few weeks owing to the buildup of predators. The main ones are syrphid fly larvae, ladybug larvae, lacewings, and tiny wasps. The best control measure is just to wipe off the encrusted growth tips twice a week.

I hate them too!!! I swear they are sucking the life out of my baby plants!

Yikes. I think I have rose slugs too. My foliage is not so much laced but more like "chunked" and there are odd brown (almost bronze) spots. Anybody know what that is and best organic control? I've never used insecticides and I don't know why ladybugs don't like my garden *boo hoo*
Susan

We do not have aphids.

We will probably see a few, eventually, and we will wash them off. And we will probably see some rose slugs. (Those go "pop!" when you squish them.)

Our neighbors weedy "lawn" hatches out a good crop of ladybugs, and what they can't handle usually draw a good crowd of bush tits -- those guys eat aphids like mad, and move on.

Aphids aren't worth the effort.

But if any of you decide to try the dish soap thing, BE CAREFUL. I know one exhibitor who lost his entire spring flush of bloom to dish soap which, when the sun hit, scorched EVERYTHING.

SO not worth it!

Jeri

So far, I have been fortunate with the diluted dish soap spray on the aphids. I spray in the evening when the sun has gone behind the trees. I would say it has been 75 - 80% effective. I haven't had any scorching personally and I am indeed concerned about that so I am trying to be thoughtful about how I go about it rather than panicking, just spraying in the evening and where needed.

Regarding the rose slugs. I never realized they are sawfly larvae and I had sawfly totally decimate a couple of beautiful large plants in my garden last year. I have always squeezed the little slugs but there are so many this time of year that it would be like a sentence in purgatory to try and get even most of them. I decided to use the garden safe insecticidal soap and again did my spraying in the evening.

I can very much understand that other people have strong opinions about how to deal with insects. It's a difficult topic! My opinion is if you're worrying yourself sick, go ahead and do something about it as safely and conscientiously as you can. I took absolutely no action the first two years I started my gardens here convinced that since I lived in the country a natural balance would occur. The first year was fine but the second year the bugs came, herds of insects of all sorts. I still do very little but if there is a problem I do try and address it.

And on a final note, I plant herbs everywhere. Research may or may not show this to be an effective preventive measure against marauding insects but in my heart I believe it is. I also believe they can, and especially lavender, be something of a deterrent against deer if planted next to your beloved (and tasty) specimens. Not a foolproof method, no. But if there are other things to munch and the deer population is not overwhelming, yes.

This post was edited by Sidos-House on Wed, Apr 24, 13 at 9:11

After checking my roses and their resident rose slugs later this am, I don't feel very convinced that the garden safe insecticidal soap had much effect. No scorching still from the diluted dish soap for the aphids and they seem under control overall but I will keep a close eye on the roses. It's been overcast here for the past few days and when sunny not very intense.

Soap takes 24 hours to kill--probably longer when the weather is cool and moist. It does work on rose slugs, but of course you have to reach them on the underside of leaves. That is about the same amount of trouble as flipping the leaves and smushing the worms.

Do an image search for rose slugs to see what kind of damage they cause. Young ones just scrape off the lower cuticle of the leaf, leaving translucent white windows, angular in shape. Larger ones eat all the way through and can skeletonize the leaf.

Thanks so much, Michael. I have mostly tiny ones. But there are definitely some bigger ones munching too. I tried my best to get to the underside of leaves with soap, smushing as I went too. I don't mind a little damage, it's part of the process after all. But on the other hand, I want to prevent bigger problems later on in the summer too -- and grow a healthy, good looking rose. I'm glad to know that it just takes a bit of time for the soap to do its thing. In the past, I've been pretty much hands off with any treatment of the roses - just developing their soil. Most do fine but look a little raggedy in late summer. And now that I'm trying to grow some of the older roses, I want to give them the best treatment I can :)