Hello there, i am new to gardening. This forum is nice, i just came across it while googling for my problem. I hope some of you can help me, i would truly appreciate your advice. I am a mere beginner so i really need some experts to point me in the right direction.
After moving to a new home, we decided to surround our backyard with roses. what else but the sight of the roses flowering making dirt so enjoyable and the air fragrant so we ventured on this task. We picked up alot of roses from our local nursery and planted them, none of them died - knock on wood. The problem that started was aphids. Those little damn green creations straight from hell! they are on every rose we have.
So in the begining we tried lady bugs. We didnt want to use chemicals so we did that. We picked up so many ladybugs its a party! close to 400 ladybugs released at night over 3 days span after wetting the ground so as we were told by the nursery so they hit the ground and feel like a nice environment to populate. After 5 days these things were flying left and right, it was glorious! but unfortunately after 2 weeks, all the ladybugs were gone and the aphids population didnt get reduced much with all those angels flying over them.
at this point we moved to the next youtube suggestion, soap + pinch of cayenne pepper. tried it ever other day for 2 weeks, did not work!
Neem oil ? done that too for few weeks...
So we guessed there was no alternative but chemicals. We bought sevin insect killer and sprayed every 3 days the roses up/down/left/right/all angles and over the span of 2 weeks, still not dead!
keep in mind before applying any of the above methods, we would cold water spray the roses in case the aphids jaws were stuck on the plant and we wanted to knock them out clean before applying the method recommended. They kept saying when aphids are knocked off, they just move on to new plant but that wasnt the case, the damn buggers kept claiming up withiin hours to the same spots.
We moved after sevin insect killer to all-in-one rose & flower spray concentrate. DID NOT WORK.
please help, we are really down to our last straws. The children are terrified of the green things once they get close to the roses to smell them or touch them. We dont know what else to do.
After moving to a new home, we decided to surround our backyard with roses. what else but the sight of the roses flowering making dirt so enjoyable and the air fragrant so we ventured on this task. We picked up alot of roses from our local nursery and planted them, none of them died - knock on wood. The problem that started was aphids. Those little damn green creations straight from hell! they are on every rose we have.
So in the begining we tried lady bugs. We didnt want to use chemicals so we did that. We picked up so many ladybugs its a party! close to 400 ladybugs released at night over 3 days span after wetting the ground so as we were told by the nursery so they hit the ground and feel like a nice environment to populate. After 5 days these things were flying left and right, it was glorious! but unfortunately after 2 weeks, all the ladybugs were gone and the aphids population didnt get reduced much with all those angels flying over them.
at this point we moved to the next youtube suggestion, soap + pinch of cayenne pepper. tried it ever other day for 2 weeks, did not work!
Neem oil ? done that too for few weeks...
So we guessed there was no alternative but chemicals. We bought sevin insect killer and sprayed every 3 days the roses up/down/left/right/all angles and over the span of 2 weeks, still not dead!
keep in mind before applying any of the above methods, we would cold water spray the roses in case the aphids jaws were stuck on the plant and we wanted to knock them out clean before applying the method recommended. They kept saying when aphids are knocked off, they just move on to new plant but that wasnt the case, the damn buggers kept claiming up withiin hours to the same spots.
We moved after sevin insect killer to all-in-one rose & flower spray concentrate. DID NOT WORK.
please help, we are really down to our last straws. The children are terrified of the green things once they get close to the roses to smell them or touch them. We dont know what else to do.
