All plants have pests. Roses have their share of enemies but you can control them, and get five or six months of bloom, with no more time than that required to keep irises or chrysanthemums healthy for five or six weeks of bloom. Also, roses are pretty tough. They may look rather ratty if you neglect them for weeks on end but they will usually survive to another year when you can treat them better.

For new roses, pest control starts before planting, when you open that package from the nursery. As you remove each bush, look it over very carefully for crown gall, a bacterial disease. This may appear as a fairly large, roundish swelling, with an irregularly roughened surface, near the bud union or as small galls on the roots. Watch also for small swellings in the roots clue to root-/mot nematodes. Diseased roses are the exception rather than the rule but they occasionally slip through inspection. Any reputable nursery will replace such bushes so do not take the chance of getting bacteria or nematodes into your soil.

For established roses, pest control starts at spring pruning. If you prune before winter protection is removed you may have to repeat some of it after all the extra soil has been taken away. Cankers, discolored areas, and rose scales, round, dirty white shells, are usually near the base of canes, which may have to be cut at ground level. Prune healthy canes moderately but make each cut just above a bud. If you leave even half an inch of stub, the cane dies back to the bud and this dead tissue affords entrance to some of the weaker canker fungi.

Many people spend a lot of time painting pruning cuts to prevent entrance by carpenter bees and other borers. I have never painted a pruning cut myself but I sometimes have to doctor roses that have been treated with injurious materials. If you must paint, orange shellac is probably the safest and least conspicuous material. I do, however, often apply a dormant spray right after pruning, one part liquid lime”sulfur to nine parts of water, for this kills most of the scales, some of the canker spores spread around during pruning, and may slightly reduce blackspot, although recent research indicates a dormant spray has little effect. This spray must be applied before the buds have broken into identifiable young leaves; otherwise there will be burning.

A mulch is another way to prevent disease. Apply it after the first feeding and as soon as the ground has warmed up slightly. A good mulch makes a mechanical barrier between infective material on the ground and developing leaves overhead. More important than that, it prevents splashing. The spores of the blackspot fungus can be spread only by water; they are not blown by wind. When rain, or the hose, hits hard-packed earth it can splash a long way; when it hits a proper mulch it sinks in gently with little splashing.

Regular Treatment

Soon after your roses come into full leaf, start using an all-purpose spray or dust and keep it up every single week until hard frost. This may take only a few minutes a week, but the treatment must be regular if you wish fine flowers, unblemished foliage. In most of Mid-America the most important ingredient in a combination pesticide is a fungicide for blackspot. The well-known symptoms of this disease are actual black spots with faintly fringed margins scattered over leaves, and small indefinite dark lesions on canes. VVith some varieties, the leaves quickly turn yellow and drop; with others, there is extensive spotting but relatively little defolia” tion.

Copper, sulfur, ferbam, captan, maneb, zineb, and recently glyodin and phaltan have all given satisfactory control of blackspot under certain conditions. Copper may be injurious in cool, cloudy weather, sulfur in very hot weather. Black ferbam is generally safe but sometimes disiiguring. Widely used captan seems to be more effective in some formulations and areas than in others. Maneb controls blackspot and also Cercorpora leaf spot which is sometimes a problem in Texas, Arkansas, and other Southern states. Zineb is good for blackspot and also rust, which produces orange-red summer pustules and black winter pustules on underside of rose foliage in a few states. Glyodin is promising but, like sulfur, has to be used with caution at high temperatures. Phaltan may be marketed this year; it is still being tested.

The new organic fungicides, with the possible exception of phaltan, do not control powdery mildew, that white coating over buds and tender foliage which distorts blooms and sometimes blisters and curls leaves. Sulfur and copper control mildew fairly well but karathane (sold as Mildex) is specifically for this disease. It is included in some combinations but can be applied separately, at the rate of two-thirds teaspoon to a gallon of water. Actidione and one or two other antibiotics are effective against mildew but are sometimes injurious, causing a yellow Hecking of foliage.

Fighting Aphids

Organic insect pests usually begin with aphids, pink and green plant lice which cover new shoots and deform buds and blooms. Almost any pest spray and contact insecticide will take care of aphids, with the washing action of a spray more helpful than a dust. Still effective but presently out-of-fashion is nicotine-sulfate used with soap. Pyrethrum and rotenone, malathion, and lindane are now in favor. Small bombs, pressurized sprays, can be used to spot”treat infested buds on one or two bushes but are inadequate for general spraying. Despite their recent popularity with home gardeners, I am not yet ready to concede that hoseattachments give as good control of black spot as regular tank sprayers. I do admit that they can be quite useful for aphids, if properly adjusted so there is no danger of too strong a dosage. Malathion readily burns rose foliage unless used at low strength.

Leafhoppers appear soon after aphids. They are small, light-colored wedge-shaped insects, sucking always from the undersides of leaves, causing a white stippled pattern on the upper surface. They disappear in midsummer, come back in greater hordes in autumn. DDT gives excellent control; rnalathion is fairly good. The rose-slug, larva of a sawfly, is another early spring pest. It is very small, velvety green, shaped like a tadpole, and it makes windows in leaves by eating everything except epidermis and veins. It is readily controlled by rotenone, lead arsenate, DDT, or other pesticides, if applied early enough. To my mind, spider mites are the worst of the animal pests on roses.

Interest is reviving in the old shrub roses of our great-grandmothers gardens. To provide beauty with fragrance and nostalgic memories, no other flower has more distinction or appeal.

For all practical purposes, these roses are a necessary tonic for Midwest gardens. They thrive in spite of drought, below zero temperatures, weeds and hot winds. All grow without winter protection except those mentioned otherwise. Care is simplicity itself plant them as you would any other rose.

Feed each spring and water during periods of extreme drought. If blackspot or insects bother, use any good rose dust. Prune away only dead wood, as the new growth continually replenishes the plant. In this manner, the rose can live for 50 years or more.

There are types for all garden needs - tall shrubs for background or hedges, climbers and pillars for trellises, medium to low shrubs for foundation plantings, and ground creepers to hold soil on eroded banks.

These are the best-known groups with outstanding varieties of each: Rosa Centifolia (Cabbage rose) The original Provence rose is pale pink; Rose des Peintres has large deep rose flowers. ‘Vierge de Clery’ is white.

Rosa Centifolia Muscosa (Moss rose) - A mutation of Rosa centifolia. Peculiar moss-like glands cover the sepals, calyx, and stems. The heaviest mossed include white ‘Blanche Moreau,’ ‘Mme. Louis Leveque,’ salmon; ‘Mousseux Ancien,’ shaded pink, and old Red Moss.’

Rosa Gallica (French rose)-Rosa Mundi is a brilliant white striped with red. Cardinal de Richelieu is purple; Duchesse de Montebello and Empress ]osephine are blush pink and rose pink, respectively. Belle des-]ardins and Camaieux are both striped. R. gallica grandiflom has large red blossoms.

Rosa Damascna (Damask rose) - Sometimes blooms again in the fall. Mme. Hardy is a white hybrid, and Versicolor, better known as York and Lancaster, has some petals red, some white. Marie Louise and R. damascena are pink, and Kazanlik is a hardier variety having flowers of 30 petals.

Rosa Alba (Rose of York) - Single white with gray-green foliage. Alba plena is double white and the hybrids “Maiden’s Blush” and Celestial are double, intensely fragrant pink types.

Rosa Borboniana (Bourbon rose) - Tall hybrids; the original a cross between R. chinensis and R. damascena. In northern gardens, give Bourbons a sunny, sheltered location and hill up for the winter. The heavy, cupped blooms are beautifully shown by Coupe dHebe and Souvenir de la Malmaison,’ both light pinks. Mme. Ernest Calvert is rose, and Commandant Beaurepaire, pink splashed with deeper color. Outstanding as perhaps the most perfectly formed of all old calla roses is La Reine Victoria, rosy-pink shaded darker on the outer petals.

Shorter varieties are found in Rosa spinosissima, French, damask, alba and rugosa roses. They grow from three to five feet high, and could be placed in beds or the border foreground. They are tough fellows and can be used as foundation plants, also. The hybrid perpetuals and R. cbiaartsis are similar in foliage and type to the grandiflora class. They are neat, slim plants four to five feet high. Their use is in beds or in the perennial border.

All plants have pests. Roses have their share of enemies but you can control them, and get five or six months of bloom, with no more time than that required to keep irises or chrysanthemums healthy for five or six weeks of bloom. Also, roses are pretty tough. They may look rather ratty if you neglect them for weeks on end but they will usually survive to another year when you can treat them better.

For new roses, pest control starts before planting, when you open that package from the nursery. As you remove each bush, look it over very carefully for crown gall, a bacterial disease. This may appear as a fairly large, roundish swelling, with an irregularly roughened surface, near the bud union or as small galls on the roots. Watch also for small swellings in the roots clue to root-/mot nematodes. Diseased roses are the exception rather than the rule but they occasionally slip through inspection. Any reputable nursery will replace such bushes so do not take the chance of getting bacteria or nematodes into your soil.

For established roses, pest control starts at spring pruning. If you prune before winter protection is removed you may have to repeat some of it after all the extra soil has been taken away. Cankers, discolored areas, and rose scales, round, dirty white shells, are usually near the base of canes, which may have to be cut at ground level. Prune healthy canes moderately but make each cut just above a bud. If you leave even half an inch of stub, the cane dies back to the bud and this dead tissue affords entrance to some of the weaker canker fungi.

Many people spend a lot of time painting pruning cuts to prevent entrance by carpenter bees and other borers. I have never painted a pruning cut myself but I sometimes have to doctor roses that have been treated with injurious materials. If you must paint, orange shellac is probably the safest and least conspicuous material. I do, however, often apply a dormant spray right after pruning, one part liquid lime”sulfur to nine parts of water, for this kills most of the scales, some of the canker spores spread around during pruning, and may slightly reduce blackspot, although recent research indicates a dormant spray has little effect. This spray must be applied before the buds have broken into identifiable young leaves; otherwise there will be burning.

A mulch is another way to prevent disease. Apply it after the first feeding and as soon as the ground has warmed up slightly. A good mulch makes a mechanical barrier between infective material on the ground and developing leaves overhead. More important than that, it prevents splashing. The spores of the blackspot fungus can be spread only by water; they are not blown by wind. When rain, or the hose, hits hard-packed earth it can splash a long way; when it hits a proper mulch it sinks in gently with little splashing.

Regular Treatment

Soon after your roses come into full leaf, start using an all-purpose spray or dust and keep it up every single week until hard frost. This may take only a few minutes a week, but the treatment must be regular if you wish fine flowers, unblemished foliage. In most of Mid-America the most important ingredient in a combination pesticide is a fungicide for blackspot. The well-known symptoms of this disease are actual black spots with faintly fringed margins scattered over leaves, and small indefinite dark lesions on canes. VVith some varieties, the leaves quickly turn yellow and drop; with others, there is extensive spotting but relatively little defolia” tion.

Copper, sulfur, ferbam, captan, maneb, zineb, and recently glyodin and phaltan have all given satisfactory control of blackspot under certain conditions. Copper may be injurious in cool, cloudy weather, sulfur in very hot weather. Black ferbam is generally safe but sometimes disiiguring. Widely used captan seems to be more effective in some formulations and areas than in others. Maneb controls blackspot and also Cercorpora leaf spot which is sometimes a problem in Texas, Arkansas, and other Southern states. Zineb is good for blackspot and also rust, which produces orange-red summer pustules and black winter pustules on underside of rose foliage in a few states. Glyodin is promising but, like sulfur, has to be used with caution at high temperatures. Phaltan may be marketed this year; it is still being tested.

The new organic fungicides, with the possible exception of phaltan, do not control powdery mildew, that white coating over buds and tender foliage which distorts blooms and sometimes blisters and curls leaves. Sulfur and copper control mildew fairly well but karathane (sold as Mildex) is specifically for this disease. It is included in some combinations but can be applied separately, at the rate of two-thirds teaspoon to a gallon of water. Actidione and one or two other antibiotics are effective against mildew but are sometimes injurious, causing a yellow Hecking of foliage.

Fighting Aphids

Organic insect pests usually begin with aphids, pink and green plant lice which cover new shoots and deform buds and blooms. Almost any pest spray and contact insecticide will take care of aphids, with the washing action of a spray more helpful than a dust. Still effective but presently out-of-fashion is nicotine-sulfate used with soap. Pyrethrum and rotenone, malathion, and lindane are now in favor. Small bombs, pressurized sprays, can be used to spot”treat infested buds on one or two bushes but are inadequate for general spraying. Despite their recent popularity with home gardeners, I am not yet ready to concede that hoseattachments give as good control of black spot as regular tank sprayers. I do admit that they can be quite useful for aphids, if properly adjusted so there is no danger of too strong a dosage. Malathion readily burns rose foliage unless used at low strength.

Leafhoppers appear soon after aphids. They are small, light-colored wedge-shaped insects, sucking always from the undersides of leaves, causing a white stippled pattern on the upper surface. They disappear in midsummer, come back in greater hordes in autumn. DDT gives excellent control; rnalathion is fairly good. The rose-slug, larva of a sawfly, is another early spring pest. It is very small, velvety green, shaped like a tadpole, and it makes windows in leaves by eating everything except epidermis and veins. It is readily controlled by rotenone, lead arsenate, DDT, or other pesticides, if applied early enough. To my mind, spider mites are the worst of the animal pests on roses.

Let’s Face It

We may as well face it, almost a century has passed since we dipped into Rosa X odorata (tea) blood and the modern rose passed into a new phase. The genes have been wound so many different ways from an ever increasing number of species roses. (Should you call me a hybrid Irishman” just because a remote ancestor named Dennis” came to America some 200 years ago, and his offspring intermarried into French, English, German and Welsh families?)

Where do the modern large flowered bush garden roses get their robust stems? Not from tea! Where do the sturdy big flowers come from? Not from tea! From whence do they get some cold resistance? Not from tea!

If we must single out some ancestor common observation would move us to use the name “hybrid gallica.” But this leaves us with the current problems. For in addition to gallica the modern roses have a fair representation of seven other major species roses in their genetic makeup.

It’s Gone- Let It Die In Peace

Actually the name hybrid tea well served its purpose some 150 years ago when it told the world that a new species was being dipped into and new emphasis was to be placed on “ever-blooming.” (Due credit for everblooming should be accorded Rosa chinensis - all too often we give it all to Rosa X odorata, the tea rose.)

Some of us now want to dip into Rosaecae to secure really good sunfast hardy yellow roses. If we are successful in this shall we immediately begin to call our roses “hybridecae”?

For goodness sake, I hope not! I feel sorry for the families which set a plate at the table for the dead family member. We should honor the dead but the dead ought not to dictate to the living, for the dead change not and life is a constant change.

Turning to my visitor I said, “l would just call it a large-flowered everblooming rose.” He perfectly understood these words. So d0 I. Do you?

Other Problems Arising

I have seen a few roses grown singly on two or two and a half foot stems which would rival any hybrid tea for form and beauty. Yet these may not enter in rose competition for the really top awards, for those awards are granted only to hybrid tea classification!

Thus by a “name” we rule certain roses out of top competition. Why should we single out this or that great knockout rose and say, no, it may not compete for we choose to call certain other roses hybrid tea although like the old hybrid ‘Peace’ they get their color from Rosa foetida, their stem from R. gallica, their plant from gallica chinensis tea?

You may object, “Well why worry, these are only exceptional cases.” Let me point out that as you begin to enter the desert, water holes may still be plentiful but this does not mean it is safe to ignore providing for conditions that are immediately ahead and are even now causing difficulty.

What roses and plants covering the landscape will be sold six years from today? The plants are now in nursery seedling flats today. Check them, brother, check them.

They are getting better and better and we have bred almost all the tea right out of them to make room for better genes. Sure, we will hang on to the wide color range of tea and it will reinforce the repeat blooming and perhaps help with health but from hereon in tea is only another brick in the new rose building.

To be very candid, let us all admit that the only current value of the name hybrid tea is that somehow the public associates a “monthly” rose with the name hybrid tea.