Usually bareroot plants come from the grower bareroot, are potted up at the garden center (if they don't get sold bareroot). Some cutting grown roses are also being sent out bareroot by growers. A cutting grown rose sent out as a liner or other small size, as miniature roses have been done for some years, would be shipped in the pot with potting media on it.

I've had rose midge appearing here for years, although there may not have been much activity recently. It gets in vegetative shoot tips here, haven't thought I was losing buds. Main effect seems to be to force branching, by killing tip. Infested tips are easy to spot, probably could be snipped off and burnt or bagged and put in trash. This would probably put quite a dent in the infestation. I have never done anything and as I said earlier may have had them dimish on their own at this point.

That is reassuring, bboy. I once lost all my grape vines to the grape leaf skeletonizer so I was feeling nervous about the impact of the Rose Midge.

Rose midge is of growing concern in the NW, but the distribution is very spotty at this point. They affect mostly flower buds, actually they rasp the base of the new buds when they are just forming. The larvae are difficult to spot. This site has some excellent pictures.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Midge

I haven't found any more damage. Cecil Brunner and mini White Cloud have their first blooms now.

ZD for me also but followed closely by Jacqueline Du Pre with Sombreuil right behind....then it will be Happy Child a few days later...oh, yes one early bloom on Buka Vu......the scents are intoxicating! jwww

If you could see the bug, then it's not rose midge. Rose midge is entirely too small to see. Nothing about grafted v. own root makes one more susceptible to midge than another. Bare root plants can still be carrying midge, our local pest expert recommends that any rose from a garden harboring midge be bare rooted and then the roots dipped in an insecticide solution before moving it to another garden.

You can lose an entire bloom cycle to midge. I have. The first year I had significant midge problem in my garden, I didn't realize it until I realized it was way past time for the roses to start blooming and I had almost no flowers still. They grew fine, but no blooms. The subsequent bloom cycles usually are better, the midge mainly seems to hit the first cycle but that's the most highly anticipated flowers and the ones you need for any exhibitions.

From what I recall, it was a certain ownroot rose nursery in NorCal that was the locus of the first confirmed rose midge populations on the west coast (it's an east coast native) and it was plants from this nursery that were spreading it around and introduced it to the PNW. Or was that how it was introduced into California gardens? don't remember but it was definitely an ownroot rose nursery spreading it. Rose midge shows no preference for living in the ground over living in potting soil.