Japanese beetles in the garden

[cschick]

So, I live in an area that has spent the past few years under massive attack from Japanese beetles. Last year they almost completely destroyed my linden and birch trees, and so we gave in and used treatments (not Sevin, I tried the more expensive crystals you put down in the spring around the plants because I didn't want to be spraying Sevin weekly) on those trees this year but nowhere else. There are also traps up around our neighborhood, which aren't making a dent in the beetle population.

Last year, I didn't really notice them attacking anything in the veggie or herb garden, but this year they are munching somewhat on my broccoli, and my pole beans and sweet basil are basically covered with a living blanket of beetles. I go out there twice a day and knock them all off and sometimes drown them in soapy water, but it doesn't really seem to have any impact either.

So my lessons learned: Japanese beetles love pole beans but hate bush beans, love sweet basil but hate the non-flowering "pesto" basil. I think they're also what's been munching on the broccoli but I put in in early enough that it was mainly done by the time the beetle activity intensified (I have one remaining head to harvest, probably Sunday).

They apparently hate pumpkins too, since despite the fact that I knock all the beetles off the bean tipis onto the pumpkin plants beneath, no beetle has ever even taken a single bite out of a pumpkin leaf.

Has anyone found any treatment safe for consumable veggies that deals with Japanese beetles? Anyone want to warn me about other veggie plants they love, so I know what else to avoid in future summers?

[tammyswanson]

If you live in the country, you may want to buy some guinea fowl. We got them initially for the horrid tick problems we have, but they also eat Japanese beetles as well. We're down to 4 adults, who don't do much for the tick problem any more, as we have a lot of acres. When we had 20 of them we never had a single tick on us, and we didn't lose chickens to fox or coyote either. The more the merrier! Plus their eggs are really good to eat.

You can check out guineafowl.com for sources if you don't have a local one for them. They got a good forum too.

[Owen'nZoe]

Do you still have the traps up? Getting rid of them would be my first step. The general wisdom is that you want your next door neighbor to get one, so all of the beetles in the neighborhood are attracted to their yard.

That said, I do not have a trap and have tons of beetles. They attack the lindens, roses, plum trees (but not apple tree), sweet cherry (but not the pie cherry), hollyhocks, grapes and hazelnuts in my yard. I hand pick hundreds into soapy water every day and the next day they are back. They seem to have a preference for young plants that aren't established yet - last year it was the lindens and the plum trees (they were both two year old trees), this year it is the grape vines and the cherry tree I added in the spring. I had to wrap the grape vines and cherry tree in floating row cover material to save them, there were so few leaves left.

I'm not comfortable using chemicals for them in my yard personally (especially after reading "Silent Spring" ), but I do plan to put down milky spore very soon. It is supposed to work very well, especially if you can convince your neighbors to use it, too. Good luck - I hope you're able to find a solution!

[kittywitty]

We have plants in our yard they hate, so I keep them around even though I hate them just to keep the beetles off my plants. I think one of them is burning bush and then some native weeds. I have found that just leaving things they eat a lot of really helps. Except my cabbage. Those little brats love cabbage.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by Owen'nZoe

Do you still have the traps up? Getting rid of them would be my first step. The general wisdom is that you want your next door neighbor to get one, so all of the beetles in the neighborhood are attracted to their yard.

That said, I do not have a trap and have tons of beetles. They attack the lindens, roses, plum trees (but not apple tree), sweet cherry (but not the pie cherry), hollyhocks, grapes and hazelnuts in my yard. I hand pick hundreds into soapy water every day and the next day they are back. They seem to have a preference for young plants that aren't established yet - last year it was the lindens and the plum trees (they were both two year old trees), this year it is the grape vines and the cherry tree I added in the spring. I had to wrap the grape vines and cherry tree in floating row cover material to save them, there were so few leaves left.

I'm not comfortable using chemicals for them in my yard personally (especially after reading "Silent Spring" ), but I do plan to put down milky spore very soon. It is supposed to work very well, especially if you can convince your neighbors to use it, too. Good luck - I hope you're able to find a solution!

I don't do traps myself, there are none on my property. Some of my neighbors do them, and some of them just spray everything (not veggies) down weekly with Sevin now. *sigh* You can see the distinction between the food gardeners and the not-food-gardeners, those of us with food gardens are trying to avoid hosing everything down with Sevin.

I think our big problem is that we're surrounded by big patches of undeveloped grass fields and fallow farm fields. The beetles have lots of places to grow and develop where nobody is doing anything to treat for them.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by tammyswanson

If you live in the country, you may want to buy some guinea fowl. We got them initially for the horrid tick problems we have, but they also eat Japanese beetles as well. We're down to 4 adults, who don't do much for the tick problem any more, as we have a lot of acres. When we had 20 of them we never had a single tick on us, and we didn't lose chickens to fox or coyote either. The more the merrier! Plus their eggs are really good to eat.

You can check out guineafowl.com for sources if you don't have a local one for them. They got a good forum too.

I wish I could do something like this, but we are at the edge of a sprawling urban area and both our village and HOA ban anything regarded as a "farm" animal.

[tammyswanson]

Originally Posted by cschick

I wish I could do something like this, but we are at the edge of a sprawling urban area and both our village and HOA ban anything regarded as a "farm" animal.

Ugh, that bites. If that's the case, you should try that milky spore disease, my parents did that in the 'burbs and it worked for them for a few years. You can usually find it cheap online.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by Owen'nZoe

That said, I do not have a trap and have tons of beetles. They attack the lindens, roses, plum trees (but not apple tree), sweet cherry (but not the pie cherry), hollyhocks, grapes and hazelnuts in my yard. I hand pick hundreds into soapy water every day and the next day they are back. They seem to have a preference for young plants that aren't established yet - last year it was the lindens and the plum trees (they were both two year old trees), this year it is the grape vines and the cherry tree I added in the spring. I had to wrap the grape vines and cherry tree in floating row cover material to save them, there were so few leaves left.

I'm not comfortable using chemicals for them in my yard personally (especially after reading "Silent Spring" ), but I do plan to put down milky spore very soon. It is supposed to work very well, especially if you can convince your neighbors to use it, too. Good luck - I hope you're able to find a solution!

Oh, and BTW . . .

In general, as I think you can tell from my posts, I am not really in favor of using chemicals. I tend to be a "you live or die" type person for decorative plants. But since I have both some young trees I wanted to protect and some mature bushes which have just been getting eaten alive for several summers, as I said, I tried that treatment you put down once a year around individual trees/bushes that is supposed to protect individual trees for an entire season.

The positive: my young linden has not been eaten bare this year.My cotoneasters look healthy for the first time in five years. My young river birch unfortunately looks like it gave up the ghost after it was ravaged last year, so no effect there.

The negatives: it is a poison that gets drawn up into the plant itself (it works by pretty much immediately killing the beetles when they munch on the leaves). The plants also seem to have a greater than normal demand for water.

I wouldn't use this stuff anywhere near a fruit or berry tree, but it seems to work ok for decorative/shade plants. I will probably do it again next summer for the linden, but it's on the opposite side of the property from my garden.

(And I should have researched; if I had known that lindens were so desirable to jbeetles, I would have put in two maples instead of a linden and maple. Bad decision on my part.)

[mattemma04]

I knock the JPs in some water and feed to my chickens a few times a day.The JPs love my grape leaves,raspberry plants,and rose of sharon flower buds. I saw them on my currants,hazelnut,nanking cherry,and plum.OK they are just about everywhere except on my tomatoes!

I don't know if you could use the milky spore on them as adults,so their grubs would die.Check out the Gardens Alive catalog.They have some sort of clay based product I am thinking of spraying my grape plants with next year.

I read there is a predator wasp in the works.I would get them when they are on the market!

If you use the bags just put them at the corners of your property.I never got around to buying any,and I have plenty of JPs.They devore the wild grape plants in my neighbors yard then move on to my plants!

Also, I read that you want to get the first JPs in the spring.They are like scouts for the rest letting them know where the *good eats* are.Get rid of them and they MIGHT bypass your place.