I have several questions:

1. Rather than mixing and applying one quart at a time to individual roses, I mixed 8 quart's worth in a watering can and applied as best as I could to 8 roses at a time. I poured for a few seconds on each rose and keep cycling through the 8 roses until the solution was gone. Then I rinsed off any product that got on the lower leaves with water. I didn't pull aside the mulch, but I did pour at the base. I'm sure that some roses got more solution and some got less. It was 95 degrees out there and I did the best I could. Does anyone else apply with a watering can instead of one quart at a time? Is it still effective even if the application is not exact?

2. How long does it take to start working against 1) BS, 2) JBs? I didn't apply to every rose in my garden, only to the 30 or so that's really bad off with both BS and JBs. When will I see it start to work? Do you see a big difference b/t the roses that didn't get any and those that did?

3. My rose garden slopes gently down to my raised bed veggie garden about 3 feet away. The adjacent veggie bed is currently fallow but will be planted with fall crops soon. When I applied, there was no runoff. I'm not going to water for the next 5 days to give the solution a chance to be absorbed by the rose. Does this solution migrate far in the soil? (For example, if you apply uphill, do the downhill roses seem protected too?) Any advice on how to minimize contaminating my veggie garden soil would be greatly appreciated.

4. I cut all my rose blooms while still in the bud stage indoors for the house, rarely letting any open outdoors. In that case, does this product still pose a danger to bees?

I can tell you that many, maybe most, posters on this forum do NOT use Bayer All in One for anything--and in fact disapprove of it and discourage use of it. You just applied a fertilizer and a fungicide as well as an insecticide--much more than you need. You may be overfeeding your roses if they were recently fed some other way, and using a fungicide when there is no fungus is needlessly inflicting the environment. And even if the insecticide kills JBs (and it may not), it also kills lots of good bugs and bees which are needed by the environment.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I personally think that All in Once stuff ought to be completely outlawed.

My advice is to deadhead all blooms. That alone should cut down on the number of JBs. I don't know how long JBs hang around your state, but there will be a limit and then they will go away. In the meantime, you have every right to curse the critters and rant and rave against them as much as you desire. They are truly despicable little monsters!

Kate

I don't particularly want any butterfly larvae--in fact, I use Bacillus Thuringiensis on my cole crops specifically to deal with destructive larvae.

I cut blooms into the house before they open, so when will bees have a chance to be poisoned?

I have never applied chemical insecticides before, but my spring flush has always been afflicted by tons of thrips.

I applied milky spore for years with no effect on the JB grubs.

Before this, I've always used organic means of control. Greencure, BT, milky spore, etc. I still fertilize with horse manure/alfalfa and mulch with shredded leaves. But there comes a time when just waiting for the season to pass is too much to deal with. Rather than turning this post into a philosophical debate about how bad All In One is, I'd appreciate more answers to the specific questions that I raised.

As far as JBs go, it will kill them after then eat the leaves or flowers. It probably will not stop your buds from getting damaged a bit. I never saw the bees affected by using the drench, but I can't be sure. If there are no open flowers, then they will not come in contact with it.

I have to be honest that when I used the drench, I did not have a thrip problem. I thought it was a coincidence that I started having the thrips after I stopped using the Bayer. I stopped using the drench because it became too expensive to use once I had 100+ roses. I also preferred to use the spray for disease because it works so well and I wanted to use organic fertilizers. However, since my thrip problems are SO BAD, I did decide to use the Bayer drench on a few roses that have bad problems with thrips.

I don't get a lot of JBs. I did put down Milky Spore a few years ago. I'm not sure if it's that or other things, but I only get a few. And the few that I saw were dead. Not sure if that was from the drench, but I can't really think of anything else.

I know you are like me, you want to be organic and do all the right things, but sometimes it's not possible. I also wish there was just a drench for bugs or BS, but there isn't. I think judicial use of the drench is fine. When I used it, I still had many bees, butterflies and other bugs. Just not thrips :)

Buford, when you saw no thrips, that's early in the season, right? In my garden, thrips disfigure the first flush, then seem to escape notice by June. Were you using the drench starting in spring? I'm thinking that if this drench works, I might use it once a year, in mid June, so it helps the roses through the worst of the JB and blackspot explosion that takes place in the latter half of June and all of July. By August, most of the JBs are gone in our area, and the BS is whatever had managed to take hold during June and July. So I can see a potential for using this product (if it works) to help my roses through the worst of the peak pest season.

Are you supposed to water again soon to help the uptake of the Bayer? I think that's the case with most soil drenches. You may want to read the fine print again just in case.

It's very important to mix it to the right strength, but it's probably not critical to get an exact number of ounces on each shrub.

I am also trying this new treatment for thrips Naturalis. It's a fungi that you spray on the roses that kills the thrips but not beneficials. It takes awhile to work, and you have to stagger it with the fungicide spray. I'm waiting to see if it works.

In the meantime, I will use the Bayer at least in the spring for one or two times on some roses and see if that lessens the thrip issues. It does help with BS, but I still think you'll have to spray, at least some of the roses.

Unfortunately, that's still a daunting task. It will encourage spider mites (I've had them directly on the flower, but not the rest of the bush!), and the dead JB's may serve to attract even more.