Rose Thrips

My roses came up beautifully last week. Well, almost beautifully. There are lots of blooms, but it looked like the tips were rotted brown. After some looking, I discovered that they are being invaded by thrips.

Today, I looked at the blooms carefully. Sure enough, there were tons of tiny brown bugs all over. Eww... According to what I read, these are worse when the plants are stressed because it has been severely hot and dry. So, too much rain=black spot and too much drought=thrips. Great...

I pruned off all the blooms to kill off what I could. Then I pulled away the mulch from the crowns and applied Bayer All-in-One fertilizer for Roses. This is my second treatment for the year. It's supposed to fertilize, plus prevent against various rose pests and diseases, including black spot and thrips.

Hopefully the next round of blossoms will look better.