They're looking better than mine against the beetle onslaught this year! What are you using to control them? I'm just flicking them into a container of soapy water as I find them. Beetle patrols twice a day (except on the days I work 12 hrs) hopefully mean I'll see fewer next year, but they're awful!

They are leaving my squash plants, lemon basil (regular basil seedlings have been devoured though), pole and runner beans alone though.

I'm glad the traps are helping! Could you comment more on the Prince? I'm interested in health (BS) growth habit, scent and thorns. That's a gorgeous picture so you've piqued my interest! ))

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I can comment. I have a small rose bed behind my downtown office. This is a photo of The Prince, today. It is coming up on its second bloom flush, but most of the blooms on the second flush are yet to come.

It is a David Austin rose. I have this on the south side of my office. In this small rose bed it has been mostly disease resistant, but I did get some blackspot on it this summer. This bed is fairly protected, and I increased my spraying after the blackspot occurred with Immunox, and I know once you have blackspot it is not supposed to go away the rest of the season, now I don't seem to have blackspot on any of the roses in this bed, which I cannot explain. Most roses in this bed do not develop blackspot even with very limited spraying because they are more immune to it due to the superior growing conditions behind my office.

My building is shorter than some of the surrounding buildings on the east and west side. These roses have reduced wind exposure. I have a microclimate here that is probably more on the order of Zone 6 or 7. The roses here generally have grown better than they do at my home. This year the roses in this bed have not done as well probably because we got down to 30 below twice this winter, and this spring and early summer we had a lot of cloud cover and a lot of rain, and this area is shaded in the early morning and early evening by the buildings.

At this location this bush rises to about 4.5' to 5.0' in height. It has a 4.0' spread. It has a perfume scent that spreads because of the reduced wind exposure. I have one of these specimens at home that is a runt that has gotten to 2.0' tall with no spread. It was in a bed I paid little attention to, and the one at home I transplanted into a better location two weeks ago. Hopefully it will start to develop better.

I used to take care of roses at a municipal park, and had a specimen of The Prince planted there, but I could never get the city to take down trees shading the rose bed. That specimen grew poorly due to shading. The colors on this photo are more true to life than in other photos I have taken.

Thank you Mark! What a complete description! I assume you're in Z5? I have a little cutting that will immediately receive better care. It came with a few others and rooted well, but I haven't really paid much attention to it. Since I rarely see it mentioned here it didn't "register". Luck you to have a rose garden at your work as well. I'm such a goofball, I miss mine when I'm away so having a garden at work would help with that! )))

I am in Zone 4-B under the traditional USDA hardiness map. The new USDA map tried to put us in Zone 5-A several years ago, but no one uses it. Like most Austins The Prince is very hardy.

(We have had enough incidences of 28 - 37 below F this past decade the USDA could more easily justify reclassifying us to Zone 3-B).

That's a good description for the horrid smell of these stupid beetles. My roses are all they're attracted too, and I don't have near that many (thank goodness!) so hand picking it stays - for now. I hate to spray, but if they get bad next year I'll cut the blooms off everything and use that Bayer Tree and Shrub stuff. I'll try nematodes in the spring first though.

Is there a city dump or heck, even a pond you have access to that the owner would let you dump the beetles in? I can't imagine being stuck with a garbage can full of them for a week, yuck!

We have a city brush dump, and I suspect I could take these over there. But it's too late this week because they are too well-fermented for my SUV. I'll wait to for the trash truck take them Wednesday. I have thought about taking them to the river or backwater to feed to the fish, but I don't know what the DNR would think about me dumping so many of them in there. I might sneak some into the back water just to see if fish come to the surface to feed on them. I don't know anyone with chickens. I will have collected another pound of them by tonight.