If the main problem is creeping grass, it won't do a thing because the grass isn't seeding into the bed. How are the beds edged?

Paper with mulch on top works well. Weed killer is OK around the base of a rose since they work by being absorbed by leaves. Getting them on a stem won't hurt. I would still avoid spraying the stems, just in case, and make sure it's not windy. If you just kill the weeds, they'll eventually return. You need to fix the things that caused the weeds to grow in the first place.

I've used Preen Weed Preventer five or six times during the last 4 years in my rose garden only to find that Preen does NOT work.

Preen stops weed SEEDS from sprouting but it does NOT kill or inhibit existing weeds.

I don't know how you can hand-pull existing weeds and their roots without disturbing the soil. Weeds that are not completely removed will emerge again.

Preen must be applied at least 12 inches outside of a rose's drip-line. (If your rose grows 4 feet across, you can't apply Preen within 5 feet of the rose's trunk. That's a lot of un-Preen-treated soil for new weeds to grow in).

You will NEVER be able to plant any new roses after applying Preen. That's because Preen stays active for 12 weeks and you must re-apply Preen every 8-12 weeks. By the time you wait 12 weeks after applying Preen and wait until the new roses become "established", you've already applied Preen again.

Make sure that Preen controls the weeds that are in your rose garden. If it doesn't, it won't kill or inhibit your weeds. If Preen doesn't work, complain to Preen and they will refund your money. (But you would've wasted a lot of time and effort and suffered much frustration).

I hand weed, then Preen, layers (6) of newspaper, layer of manure or compost, and mulch (I had my layers in the wrong order earlier). No problems with water because I use a drip irrigation system in the main bed, with emitters close to the plants. Anything that is actively growing won't be
handled by Preen. If you can find a herbicide that contains Fluazifop-P-Butyl
(Ortho Grass-B-Gone is one), I have been able to carefully use it around
the roses without the issues that Glyphosate (Roundup) causes. Otherwise, hand
pulling it will be.

After I weed my rose garden and apply Preen, I'll apply a 4-inch layer of bark mulch on top of the soil to deter future weeds.

I was originally thinking about using layers of newspaper/cardboard but I was afraid that that would prevent air, water and nutrients from getting to the soil for my roses.

I'm redoing the edging to my beds right now, too. We have an abundance of natural rock in the yard, so I started with just a row of softball to watermelon sized rocks around each bed. One row is not enough! The grass just grows right over them and it's a &^%*$ to weed whack. So I'm redoing them with weed block fabric about 12-15 inches wide and covered with three rows of rocks now (they end up like little cairns or rock walls, haha!) and it's been much, much more effective against the grass-creep. I feel a combination of width and/or height at the edge and non-permeability is key.

I used trifluralin based Preem to double the chromosomes of roses.

http://www.rosebreeders.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=54849&p=59140&hilit=preem#p59140

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For those who use this version of Preem or are considering using it in your home garden, I suggest that you look further at the possible health effects. Here is a suggested starting point.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969713005949

Well Preen does work at what it's supposed to do.

I missed that it was grass that you are having an issue with. You can use something called Grass Be Gone safely in flower beds to get rid of the grass. I've used it on bermuda grass in my rose beds and it got rid of the grass and didn't bother anything else.

Weed block fabric will not work on grass. At least not grass that spreads through rhizomes like bermuda. It goes right through it. The only thing that keeps it out of beds is regular trimming with a string trimmer and occasionally a hard edger with a blade. I've had bermuda grow 2 feet under a concrete walkway to get into a flower bed.

I'm having great success over the last year with the weed block- must not be bermuda grass, thank heavens! That stuff is the worst!

Thank you for all the comments. They are useful. In answer to the question about edging: I am using two types. One is a cement block edging material available from farm and fleet stores about 2-3" wide, 6" high at best, and 18" wide. It sinks in after it's been there a while. On one bed I have patio brick that is put in the soil diagonally on a corner edge. I had to dig up most of the edging with a spade and re-place it. I do have the small spreading weeds that are more a problem in the summer.

And I have this persistent invasion of grasses into parts of these beds to the extent it is like pulling sod.

I generally use wood chips and mulch from the brush dump for mulch, but I have started to use grass clippings. If I used a shredded commercial bark product, which would be more ideal, I'd probably be spending $50 or more given the size of my beds, and I while I could, I wouldn't feel right about spending that every year.

I work a lot at my office. I love growing roses, but I don't have much time for pulling weeds.

Grass-b-Gone doesn't damage roses??? That report is surprising. Can anyone else corrobrate have a report? -- Sounds intriguing?

I can confirm that Fluazifop p butyl. Grass be gone ornamec etc really works at eliminating Bermuda grass. I am turning my higgedly piggedly roses into rose beds. Spraying the grass between the Ross have been a great idea. It's hard work, but most of the grass dies after two sprays.

I wouldn't spray it on the roses, but if there is drift, it does not cause damage as round up would. It's a selective herbicide and only kills grass. It's the opposite of the sprays you put on your lawn that only kill the broadleaf weeds.

Preen is a waste of money in my garden. I've also tried spraying weed killer, but that never ends well. I still have roses that haven't recovered from the last time I sprayed. I'll disagree that weed block fabric won't work. I have Crab Grass that has invaded everything and is blight to my existence, especially during the summer months. The only thing that has worked is placing cardboard boxes down and then cover it with industrial ground cover fabric. I wait a few weeks before placing mulch on top.

kublakan,

After you put down the ground cover fabric, why do you wait a few weeks before putting down the mulch?

Crab grass grows like a vine, so it tends to seek a way out. Another feature of crab grass is that it can spear its way through anything, so I like to wait a bit and catch the few week points where it spears its way through the fabric, pluck it out, and then put the mulch down. Also, the fabric absorbs heat and tends to cook the surface weeds underneath it. By waiting, I can spot the week points and address them before placing mulch that will invariably turn into a haven for weed seeds.

I will give Grass b Gone a try this week, it sounds wonderful. I hope it kills ground covers too, they're all over one of my rose beds.

With Ornamec, be sure to use a speader/sticker that's recommended for the main chemical.
We have used it before on Johnson Grass (cursed be the person who said this would be the grass to remake eastern pastures), and it really knocks the grasses back without damaging roses.
The past three years with abundant rainfall though got the invasive grasses going gangbusters.

This year, I've bought Ornamec as a concentrate and I read the directions carefully. The use of the spreader sticker may significantly improve the kill, and that would be a very good thing.

It will not kill ground cover since they are most likely broad leaf plants.

Grass Be Gone and Ornamec have an active ingredient of fluazifop-P butyl.

This active ingredient is banned in Norway.

"The reasons for the final regulatory action were relevant to: Human health

Summary of known hazards and risks to human health:

Fluazifop-P-butyl has shown in animal studies, rat and rabbit, that it causes effects on reproduction and that it is a teratogen. This means that it also has the potential to cause these effects in humans. The risk of this happening is higher for the workers than for the consumers, although it is also possible that residues can be high and thus also be a risk to the consumer too."

http://archive.pic.int/CH/Demo/embed/view_displayFRA.php?id=232&back=javascript: history.go(-1)#viewfra

Mark - mulch is definitely a long-term strategy for keeping the weeds from coming back once you really get the roots out. Other folks have some ideas for handling the weeds you currently have. I don't deal with Bermuda grass (thank goodness), but my Zoysia grass in the back yard spreads by runners and is pretty tenacious. With a thick (3-4") layer of mulch maintained during the active growing seasons, the grass is toast, as are most yard weeds. I "weed" now in my beds with two fingers for everything except dandelions, stray grass that sneaks in, and bindweed. Of course, you can't keep the mulch that thick right next to your roses, but protecting up to the rose drip line means that the rose can shade out most of its own weeds during growing season.

As for expense, my mulch is free and more than ample amounts for my 750+ roses, as well as being one of the best substances to improve organic material in the soil. Leaves, lots of dry leaves, preferably chopped up so they don't blow, but any kind is good. I just use the leaves as they are, since everything is planted so thickly you can't even see that once everything is growing, and I kind of like the look. If you want the more tidy wood chip look, put down 2" of leaves and layer your wood chip mulch just a 1" layer for cosmetic purposes and to hold the leaves down. That's a way to make the most out of your mulch budget. Another advantage of leaves is they don't bog down the mower when they ooze out into the lawn as wood chips would, and once my husband mows past them it ends up being a relatively neat barrier.

Of course this works best if you live in an area with deciduous trees, but even if you're in a newly planted section of town, everyone in the older neighborhoods puts out lovely bags of free mulch all fall. I have my regular "customers" that I've asked for their leaves so often, I have free permission to stop and snag them any time. I use the bags to winter protect my roses still in the bags, then spread out the leaves as mulch in the spring. Lazy gardening at its best! You may not have access to leaves this time of year, but it's worth thinking about collecting some this fall to use next spring.

Cynthia

I found 3 bottles of Grass B Gon at Walmart tonight, will give it a try tomorrow. HD and Lowe's don't carry this product. Is concentrated Grass B Gon available?

Why not? It won't kill roses........Sam, what happened to your post?

Cynthia from Nebraska,

Do you have a shredder or chopper of some sort for the leaves you collect?

Sam, It's Ok to be emotional, you didn't have to take them down. I couldn't keep my eyes open after reading your posts, didn't know who Deborah Koons Garcia was (I think that was the name you mentioned),some of the stuff in your post was educational but pretty deep in an area which I have no clue. May be I will give it a try in the back yard-chemical free, but the front I really need the help of Grass B Gon, don't have time to pull. 3 bottles won't hurt much. :-)

I have some big trees in the yard, I will try to save some leaves this fall, normally I just push leave piles to the curb for the town to collect.

Most of my leaves from 5 big trees go to the curb, and the town collects all the leave piles from the curb for compost. The lawn mower does come with a bag, I'd have to find it, have never used it. I guess I can start from leaves. I will check into this Symphony of Soil. Thanks for mentioning it.

There is a tool called the hula hoe that I've used to quickly clear grass at the edge of rose beds.

There is an organic version of Preen, or if you can find corn gluten, that is an organic weed suppressant too.

Or just get down on your hands and knees and pull like I do. Totally organic, guaranteed! I have 5 beds, some big, some small, and I do them all by hand several times a season. I gives me a good opportunity to get up close and personal with the roses so I can see how they are doing and if there are any problems. It's good exercise too!

Thanks Sam, can't wait to watch the symphony soil. :-) I am sure I will learn something from it. I will try to find a hula hoe tomorrow at HD/Lowe's. Thanks for the idea Zack.

I sprayed 3 bottles of Glass B Gone last night (sorry Sam :-( ), but the grass still there, not gone yet. Does it really work? Anyone knows?? :-) I have high hope on this product, one of my front rose gardens has grass all over the bed. I don't have the time to pull. Today I got 95% of my roses pruned, I have about 500+ roses, and got 60% of a dog -big Komondor groomed(but 4 legs), now I am BBQing chicken, it's 9:30 at night. What a day! Tomorrow, I have one dog's 4 legs to groom, and 2 New Dawns, and a few of other roses to prune, what a weekend. Really don't have the time to pull grass. :-) Cheers

Sam, I can't find this symphony of the soil DVD, it's not available on Amazon, Ebay I guess you're lucky working for a college. Cornell has it on May 14th, but it's far away from me. I will keep my eyes open on this one, and check the local colleges. Thanks again

I am by Lake Erie (The Great Lakes).

What's a troller?

A Troller is:

A fisherman who uses a hook and line

A relentlessly dark snowstorm in the middle of the woods in the dead of winter

A person who intentionally or pointlessly yells and swears and insults someone with no or some purpose. (Trolling can be conducted as a self-entertainment to the troller by causing a ignition in chat or in a internet (gardenweb.com) forum.

I watched it online here:

http://www.symphonyofthesoil.com/

:-)

~Christopher

Omg, people called me that in a thread! English is not my first language. I have mentioned Sevin works on spyder mites in a thread, and people who don't spray telling everyone there I was wrong- Sevin shouldn't work for spyder mites, but I am the one who sprayed. Sevin is pretty much all I used for the past 7-8 years for 500 some roses. Why do people try to stone me there just because I mentioned Sevin? It's people's own choice in life what to use and what to eat and what to wear......many years ago a nursery told me to use Sevin for JB, then I started to use it for other bugs as well year after year. It works for me. It's ok for people don't like it, don't use it. But name calling is not a nice thing to do. Thanks Gary for letting me know. They can't hurt me by name calling, just make me stronger.

Thanks Chris for the link, I will try to make some time tonight. It sounds interesting.

If you are talking about the RRD thread, no one yelled at you. We gave you information about how Sevin would not prevent RRD, despite what you read elsewhere.

No Buford, it's called "Is this spyder mites?" Michael G did, and he even got a follower ceclty (7 VA) to report him everything I said in other threads about Sevin. :-) They should be husband and wife, I just don't know their ages. :-) Cheers

Hi Mark- sorry I didn't catch your question earlier. I don't intentionally chop up my leaves, though I bought a leaf shredder years ago, I'm wayyyy too lazy to use it. I just spread out the leaves around the roses and if necessary put some wood mulch or pre-chopped leaves on top of the loose leaves to keep them from blowing. I say pre-chopped leaves, since some of my neighbors thoughtfully chop up their leaves for me in the bags they leave at their curbs. An easy mulching strategy and it feeds the soil too.

Cynthia

And did I misquote you or did you make those false claims about Sevin? If you're going to insult me publicly, at least have the decency to spell my name correctly.

False claims? I have been using Sevin for years. Do you use it? If you don't use it where is your case??!!

You have yet to show a single scientific study to back any of your claims of Sevin's efficacy (although you were asked several times to provide such information). Therefore your claims have no substantiation. Any person can appear on an internet board as a purported expert and make claims or suggest that others follow their advice. Without documentation to support their position, they have only anecdotal evidence from one isolated location.

And by the way, since you live in zone 6, how could you have anecdotal evidence regarding the efficacy of Sevin as a treatment for fire ants? Fire ants only reside in the deep south.

PS: I don't use Sevin because it is quite hazardous. If and when you recommend its use to others, you should also recommend use of PPE.

Dear Cecily, I am not an expert here, I am still learning from everyone here, it's a great forum. it's a discussion thread, I was showing support and telling people what I know, I have tested Sevin in my own rose gardens for years, not just 1, 2,3 years. It takes care almost all my bugs issues but rose midges. Shutting people up with a different view, it's not a good deed, it shouldn't happen, but it did.......but hey, life goes on. You can continue your believes, I can continue running my tests with Sevin. Next test: try Sevin on carpenter bees if I see them again tonight. Another thing, I mentioned clearly in the fire ants post, I wasn't sure if we have fire ants here, but Sevin works on little and big black ants. If you read my posts you'd see it. We do have some fire ants up North here, not too far from me though. please see the link: http://globalnews.ca/news/1421066/what-are-european-fire-ants-and-how-to-get-rid-of-them/

And Sevin does kill fire ant, please check this link:

http://ipm.ncsu.edu/small_fruit/fireant.html

Hazardous word can be different things to different people, peatnuts can be Hazardous, it can kill people. It's all depends on how you use it and how you handle it. Xray can harm people too. I am sure Sam knows all about that. Anyone should have garden gear for spraying, it doesn't matter what you spray. Thanks for mentioning it though, now I know it also can be called PPE.

I am sorry Mark, it's your thread here, it went to a detoure. I sprayed weed B Gone in the yard, it works pretty fast, I can see the difference, and sprayed Grass B Gon 2 days ago in the rose beds, will have to check and report back later. Thanks! :-)

Now please excuse me, I have to plant Julia's Child and 3 ZDs in the garden before dark, I have 60 mins.... and then gym.

May roses bring peace to all, we are all here for a good reason! :-)

Cheer

Isummersrhythm_z6a:

I am just trying to control weeds while working way more than full-time, and having too little time to pull weeds. If I were retired and could spend my time in the garden, or if I worked for someone else 40-hours per week, I wouldn't say.

Unfortunately, in the Midwest, few roses that can be grown well without a chemical assist.

In the Arizona and California deserts few roses can be grown without near daily water supplementation, but water is in short supply.

Does this mean we should stop growing roses, corn, soybeans, apples, nuts, fruit, vegetables and livestock in the Midwest and California - I don't think so. We would have inadequate food supply.

This thread wasn't started to declare war on anyone's methods of growing roses or weeding. This is a forum for seeking help. I recognize about one name from when I came on this forum in the mid-to-late 1990s; I have not posted much for the past 10-years.

If we have 40, 50, or 100 roses, we are not truly farmers with acres and acres of ground. I suspect our overall environmental impact is quite small. We still need to be respectful of overuse of chemicals.

If any of you walked and detassled 3 acres of corn in Iowa, you would appreciate that the number of plants in our rose beds are microscopically few in comparison, as compared with 3-acres which may take you 3-days or more to walk and completely detassle. That does not mean we should be disrespectful of our environment. I lean toward the environmentalists. But, as rosarians our overall environmental impact growing roses is quite small. In Iowa, a little chemical assist is necessary, or we would either be entirely unproductive in our economic pursuits due to lack of time, or the only people with roses would be over 70 who were still healthy enough to do gardening, weed roses, and apply organic solutions every 48-hours.

The way each person chooses to tend their own property is their own business. Posting repeatedly on a public forum encouraging others to follow their example (and insulting anyone who disagrees with their cultural practices) is the issue. There is no credentialling process for one to join this forum and someone can recommend questionable practices to novices who honestly don't know better. Therefore the CRs and other experienced rosarians do attempt to correct false or inappropriate (or downright hazardous) recommendations and I believe that is a positive thing. Rose forum members have been polite when attempting to hold a discussion with summersrhythm, she is the person using insults and "humor" in this situation.

Summersrhythm., your apology is a nonapology "you guys could be a nice pair" and I don't accept it. Your sense of humor is offensive to me, please do not address me with "humor" in any of your future posts. Thank you.

The information I have shared was not anecdotal, it was from a leading scientist working on RRD Research. The speaker was Mark Wyndham from the University of Tennessee. And I've had RRD in my yard. That, of course, is anecdotal.

I am not against using chemicals, even Sevin. I am against misinformation and the uncaring use of insecticides and not caring about their effect on the environment. There is nothing on the American Horticulture page about using Sevin to stop RRD. Only miticides. If you really want to go that route.

kublakan I feel that you have missed a very important point in your presentation.

Perhaps a real life experience will illustrate what I am referring to.

We knew a family in which the husband was a heavy cigar smoker. We made every possible excuse not to visit them at their house as the smell was horrible. When I was out of town the wife died of lung cancer. When I next saw this man, he stated to me something along the line: "with all the money we have given you scientists to cure lung cancer, why haven't you?"

I was shocked. How could he have lived in the U.S. and not known the dangers of smoking?

Since then I realize that as a scientist it is my responsibility to share my knowledge concerning the use of dangerous chemicals. I advocate the Precautionary Principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

-------------------------------------------------

Also you use the term chemical as if all chemicals are bad in every type of application. To me, this appears to be trying to argue from the extreme. For example: your point 1) "1.) The use or non use of chemicals is personal choice with equal consequences. Don't use chemicals and you have a full time job on your hands trying to address problems as they come. Do use chemicals and you eliminate beneficial insects as well as potentially affect the environment."

I think it's time that we should cool down. Take a step back and remember to be kind to each other.

We should remember that on the other end of a posted message is a human being and the ways we say things may hurt someone's feeling no matter how right we think we are. We share the knowledge of what we know and let people make their own judgments of what will work best for them. I feel confident that we are "old" enough to make that call.

I concur Bayarea. My sentiments were intended to parallel yours. Henry, I am not in disagreement with your points and your story resonates with all of us, I'm sure. Buford, I see your point completely. The transmission of RRD is a serious matter as are the effects of the usage of dangerous chemicals.