Some insects always dream of sucking or chewing on rose bushes with a view to acquire all the necessary vitamins, essential minerals as well as other substances needed by them to survive as well as give birth to a new generation to keep the species going.
So if you are growing roses in your garden it is important for you to make a few vital decisions regarding the use of insecticides. In fact, all standard manuals on roses enlist an alarming number of chemical or synthetic insecticides. It is also important that you should be aware about how the use of chemical insecticides affects the natural balance of your garden. In fact, majority of these insecticides will eliminate a wide variety of insect species, as they generally affect their digestive or nervous systems adversely.
Such chemical insecticides not only eliminate the insects lodged on the leaves and branches of your rose bush, but also kill other pests that are in the soil when the chemicals spill over or wash away to the ground. It is possible that some of these creatures have been vital or beneficial for your roses and keeping them healthy. When the residues of these chemical insecticides are washed into the soil by rain or the sun degrades them, new pests emerge on the area where you sprayed the insecticides. However, the balance might have changed by then, as the number of insects has been greatly reduced due to the chemical insecticides.
It is worth mentioning here that all insects have predators. If such predators were not present in the eco-system, we would practically be forced to scrap off aphids and the likes from our cars and other utilities every morning. Therefore, when we spray the chemical insecticides on our roses, we not only kill the pests that we want to eliminate, but also their predators, which are beneficial for growing healthy roses. As a result, when other pests from different areas begin to re-infest the rose bushes, there will hardly be any predators to protect the plants from their damage. Often, this leads to very high populations of these pests, which may eventually not only devastate your roses, but also other plants in the garden. This problem cannot be brought under control and the damage will continue unless you spray the chemical pesticides again.
It is important to note that generally predators reproduce at a slower pace compared to their food source. If this was not true, then the predators would have consumed all their food sources rapidly and eventually die due to hunger. It means that it is essential that there is always a good population of the pests (food source) so that the predators can keep up a healthy population. What is most important in biological control is that you should be able to keep a sufficient level of predator populations with a view to prevent the harmful pests from damaging the plants.
When you spray an insecticide, it is very likely that majority of the pests will be eliminated. Nevertheless, there will always be some that will survive the onslaught. In fact, all creatures inhabiting the Earth are unique in their own ways and have some individual traits as well as their personal genetic codes. Therefore, the majority of the insect populations will be eliminated when you use a particular poison, there may be some others who will be able to tolerate the toxin. And if these insects manage to survive the spraying, they will certainly pass on their tolerance to their progenies. There may be a stage after several generations of these insects have passed that eventually all their new generations will be resistant to particular type of insecticides. Scientists have documented this phenomenon and it has certainly given rise to considerable concerns in the normal agricultural circles.
Gardeners in nurseries have been spraying the plants with insecticidal soaps for several years now. Basically, insecticidal soaps are not harmful or poisonous for mammals. On the other hand, they are very effective in getting rid of several species of insects. It has been noticed that after several years of using insecticidal soaps, gardeners need more and more of it to get rid of the same population of insects like aphids. Initially, they failed to understand why they needed more insecticidal soaps to get rid of the same populations of aphids, but some years later they uncovered the truth. The continuous use of this non-toxic insecticide had actually given birth to a new race of aphids that had become resistant to soap.
Before you start using non-chemical insecticides for gardening, you should first understand the fact that insects are also a vital part of your garden. You should know that just because a creature flies or crawls, it cannot be considered as an invader into your garden or something unwanted. In fact, if not all, most insects present in your garden are either beneficial for your plants or help you to control the populations of other harmful insects in your garden. Many of these insects may also help in pollinating the flowers in your garden, keep the soil aerated or perform several other tasks that will help to keep your plants healthy. Nevertheless, there will also be a number of useless pests that will eat your plants, including the roses. Therefore, if we want to be completely dedicated to do away with the harmful chemical insecticides from our gardening, it is important that we first change our attitude of being zero-tolerant towards all insects. In fact, we should be prepared to accept some amount of harm to our plants owing to the nature ways.
You need to realize that your plant's health is of utmost importance and, to a large extent, it depends on lessening the problems caused by various insects. If your plant is healthy, it manifests that it is growing on a healthy soil and its site is perfect. In other words, if you have fulfilled the basic needs of your roses, they will grow healthily and you will also face less number of problems. Remember, when a plant is growing robustly, it will be less susceptible to injuries or damages by insects. On the other hand, plants those under stress, which is the case with most plants, are more likely to be invaded by insects and, hence, damaged. This hypothesis is supported by solid evidence that hint that plants under stress give out some substances as well as sounds, which are discovered by insects. Therefore, it is sensible to keep your plants well-fed, as it will help to keep your plants healthy. It is similar to the fact that caring parents always feed their children properly to ensure that they do not become sick. Therefore, there is no reason why this should be different for our plants or gardens.
Gardeners across the world are continuously trying to find new variety of roses bearing attractive flowers with unusual colors, excellent vitality and striking forms. Any gardener who is dedicated to reducing chemical insecticide use in his/ her garden will always want to grow rose varieties having excellent resistance to both insects as well as diseases. In fact, different varieties of roses have noticeably different levels of tolerance or resistance to insects. Therefore, when you are selecting roses for your garden, it is advisable that you chose the varieties that will be more resistant to insects, thereby lessening your problems. What is promising is that these days gardeners are giving more importance to rose varieties that are more resistant to insects and disease. This trend is not only welcome, but has been due for long.
Diversity is always a wonderful asset of any garden. Majority of insects pass through a number of phases during their entire life span. If you have a wide variety of plants in your garden, you will actually be providing the predators with favourable sites where they can complete all their life cycles better. For instance, the grape vines host large groups of lady bugs during the fall and often their populations are in several hundreds. Lady bugs are the greatest enemies of aphids, on which they prey. While we are yet not certain why lady bugs gather in the grape vines, it is possibly that they use the place as a shelter during their mating season. Therefore, always remember that a garden can be deemed healthy if it has a vast diversity of all things, including insects.
