Question
I bought a mini rose from Home Depot the first week of August. Up until now it has been doing very well, showing a lot of new growth. I have it in my dorm room w/ its own special light stand and I have been trying to make sure I take care of it properly.  Today, however, when I took a look at it I noticed faint yellow flecking on the older leaves of the plant and when I turned those leaves over I found tiny tinny white crumb looking things under them, mostly where the underside of the leaf attaches to the steam. The 慶rumbs?will fall off if I rub a tissue over them, but it抯 really weird b/c the new growth of leaves don not show any signs of this. It kind of scares me that maybe it could be mites but I don抰 see anything that resembles webs on the leaves/buds. I抳e looked several places online but haven抰 found anything that matches up with what I抦 seeing. This is the first mini I抳e ever had so I don抰 have any idea of what to do. I would hate to lose my little beauty, especially out of my own ignorance.  I would really appreciate any advice you have to offer. Thank you!

Answer
When you grow any plant indoors it always gets some sort of insects. The warmth of the indoors active them into growth. I wonder if you rose has cottony scale or mealy bugs on it. You are right in that if it was spider mites then you should see tiny, short webs on the back of the leaves running from one leaf to another. Let's start with the mealy bugs or scale. Take a Q Tip and dip it into rubbing alcohol, then touch the white curbs with it. That will kill the scale bugs. However, when spider mites start, they are a yellowish white colour and there won't be enough webs for you to see. Now in case it is spider mites here is what you do as they are hard to get rid of. Take the rose out of the pot and wrap the soil right up to the base of the main stem with saran wrap or anything like it that will be waterproof. Then fill the sink up with 1 gallon of warm water and squirt in 2 teaspoons of liquid washing soap Holding the wrapped part firmly in your hand, dip the top part of the rose in the mixture  swishing the water around the leaves with your hand. Make sure all the leaves get rally wet. Repeat 2 to 3 days if necessary. It will help if you spritz the little rose daily because the atmosphere of house is far too dry for roses.