Midges are tiny little gnat-like things. They are related to gnats and mosquitoes but these particular midges are too small to see and don't bite. No, worse than that: they destroy your rosebuds. See the little black dot in the center of the photo? that's all that's left of a rose bud, that should have grown up to become a beautiful Ferdinand Pichard flower. And in the second photo, once again, all that's left of a potential flower is a black thread.
The damage is done by the larval stage. After destroying your rosebuds and shoots, the maturing larva drops to the soil to pupate. Once that's done, it emerges as a winged adult and the females lay eggs on other rose shoots. Controls take two tacks. One is to spray horrible nasty chemicals on the rose shoots to prevent the larvae from eating the embryonic buds. The other is to attack the soil phase through either chemicals or predaceous nematodes. I use nematodes.
Midge is spread through the soil from infested plants. I don't share my reject roses because of that without taking all the soil off and dipping the roots in insecticides. Diazinon is the favorite but of course banned now. Myself, much as I love roses, I'm not going to poison my wellwater by using diazinon for midge! As they say, No Way Jose. That new Bayer insecticide is supposed to work real well but it's extremely toxic to both earthworms and honeybees, and it also gets into the groundwater. I don't see that that's an improvement over diazinon myself.
Basically, mice that are outdoors. They tunnel through the nice soft soil you dug up for the roses and then they eat the rose roots. But the majority of the damage done by voles is actually done by the dogs digging after the voles. Where the voles eat a few roots, the dogs can completey uproot and throw aside the whole rosebush, as well as rip open the sprinkler system, all in quest of those evil, yummy voles.
Lots of things eat voles - snakes, crows, owls, dogs, coyotes, cats. I use sonic gopher chasers that run off of batteries to keep them out of the rose gardens and the lawn. They work pretty well because there are plenty of other places they can go. In a more densely populated area where gardens are cheek by jowl the sonic chasers probably wouldn't work so well.
Not slugs but sawflies, relatives of wasps. Unlike wasps they don't sting, most sawflies and horntails use their 'stingers' to drill into wood to lay their eggs. Rose slugs lay their eggs on, you guessed it, rose leaves. The eggs hatch into what appear to be tiny green caterpillars. Dozens and dozens of them. But since these are hymenoptera, not lepidoptera, bt (see Caterpillars) won't work worth a darn.
When small, the larvae can't chew all the way through the leaf but just scrape off one layer, as you see in this photo. When just about ready to pupate, they're finally big enough to skeletonize the leaf, chewing holes all the way through. When you see those bare brown patches on your leaves, you've got trouble.
Best controls are to A: squish them immediately and B: use some nasty toxic chemcial like Orthene or some of the newer stuff. Spinnosads work, like Fertiloam Borer n Bagworm spray. 'Safe' chemicals won't touch these babies.
Now I don't mean frost. I mean single digit temperatures, or a sudden drop from above-freezing temps to the teens or so. Winter damage. See how the cane on the left is all yellowish, and the next one to the right is scrawny, and the rightmost one is splotchy? Winter damage. This happened when local temps dropped over a matter of a day or two from 60s F to about 15 F. I was scrambling to protect the sprinkler system let me tell you! I knew the roses would survive but I didn't want to face a shattered sprinkler system. Oh, this rose was fine, though stunted for a bit, but she's pulling through ok.
I don't cover the roses in winter. In a colder climate it would be necessary, but here we're borderline at best. USDA zone 7, Sunset zone 5. Temperatures not expected to hit 0 in winter, generally low 20s or teens are our winter lows. Or maybe not even much below freezing. When I have covered the roses, they've rotted under the cover.
Hey, not just any bugs, but ladybug larvae! Rosarian, spare that bug!
Seriously, you would not believe how many people see a bug on their plants and want to kill it immediately. They assume that all bugs eat plants! These bugs are a gardener's best friend though. They eat aphids!
Now this baby is a lacewing. You think ladybugs are good, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Lacewings, both green and brown, are the major aphid predators in your garden. Wish I had a photo of the larvae. Like the rose slugs above, but with 2 long curved sickles in front for catching aphids.
And yes, that is rose slug damage on the next leaf to the left! I'm betting lacewings eat rose slugs too!
That's no bee! That's a hover* fly. Look at it! How could you mistake that for a bee??? Look at the eyes, they're huge and triangular, where bees have oval eyes that don't fill up the whole head. And the antennae! short and clublike! Just like a house fly's! Bees have elbowed antennae. And only 1 pair of wings! All flies have only 1 pair of wings. Bees have two pairs. And the colors are different too! these flies are distinctly yellow like a wasp! Bees are orange. Plus when you see one in action, no bee can hover and dance like a hover fly can. Bees are slow and clumsy compared to hover flies.
Hover flies are important pollinators, and their larvae are major aphid predators. You like hover flies. I promise they don't sting. Flies don't sting!
* aka flower fly or syrphid fly.
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