those beetles!

What is everyones favorite and most effective way of ridding your garden of japanese beetles? What time of the day is best to treat for them, am when they are less active or pm when they are active?

Many folks hand-pick, the squish! (It's "backbreaking" work but somebody's gotta do it!)

Or knock them off into a pail of soapy water, then dispose of them.

Or, Neem oil has shown to have repellent properties towards JB's.

Or, you could plant trap crops, luring the beetles away from your prized plants. Good trap crops would be Mirabilis (4 o'clocks), white geranium, and/or larkspur.

Shoe

I have so many out here that it is necessary to trap them...with lures and bags. A dead beetle[100,000 rather] doesn't eat or reproduce. That is it doesn't reproduce if properly disposed of. There are grubs inside some of those dead beetles that can hatch out.
I also hand pick and also spray kill where it is not feasible to get them otherwise.

Milky Spore is great unless your area is too large as mine is. I would guess it would cost me $500 dollars and many hours to treat mine partially.

They arrived here about 15 years ago.

my entire yard is one acre exactly. would the milky spore really help? i have read about it and thought about it alot. also, i hand picked a week ago out of one of my rose buds, and jap beetles sting, the bite was so bad on my finger tip, it swelled double the normal size. i havent had a bite that hurt that bad since a wasp got down the back of my shirt when i was a teenager.

That's why gardeners use gloves, silly!!!

I go out a couple of times a day with my bowl of soapy water, a spatula, and a salt shaker! Tap the JB's into the water, salt the snails and slugs! Ain't life grand?

We are very lucky at this house to have very few garden insects. I noticed a few squash bugs and now they have disappeared. I gave a neighbor some starts and their tomatoes are covered with horn worms and cucumbers are being trashed by beetles. The difference is that our property has TONS (and i mean tons) of preying mantis, green, tan and brownish. I will see two or three just picking squash, several more searching (mostly in vain) for ripe tomatoes, and we find them all over the yard just wandering around.

My girls love them and come and get me anytime they find one. They found a huge one on the play set a few days ago, the girls put it in a basket and moved it to the raised beds. This morning i counted three in that bed, i have no idea how many there really are, they are hard to spot unless they are moving. I know you can buy the egg cases, but i think they are a bit spendy.

i would like to get my hands on a couple dozen of them!

I met a lady who uses Zinnias!!!!! yep they like the zinnias over the garden . She planted rows in her pumpkin, and squash and sure enough all the beetles are on her zinnias and none on her garden area, wow. If only the cuc beetle liked zinnias more than my garden.
i couldn't believe it , it really works . but let me check on the flower , i m almost postitive it is zinnias about 95% LOL
sue

Cuke beetles love amaranth (love lies bleeding and the edible grain plant). I meant to grow a trap crop of those in the chicken pen but didn't replant after I lost the first crop to drought.

Hi,
ZINNIAS!!!!!!!! How could I not know that one. I am going to the nursery today. Those dang JBs are eating me out of roses, dahlia's, and my poor cherry tree...
thanks!

I like the idea of trap crops, and I'm all for them, but I have to be realistic. I have three walnut trees and an ornamental plum, and those are *covered* in J. beetles. You'd think that would be my trap crop, right? But no. They still want to devour my pole beans, raspberries, asparagus, roses, and hollyhocks. Short of covering everything w/ row cover, I'm out of ideas.

I am very close to Sevin, myself. Just can't stand those nasty things. I didn't know they stung, though. Haven't ever been stung.

Sevin is very effective on Japanese beetles. Marigolds make an excellent trap crop. Jap beetles love them. Since no body in his right mind is going to eat marigolds, spray them with the Sevin. Instant beetle compost. Using a trap crop without utilizing some way to kill them is just hanging out the welcome sign.

If you mention Sevin on GW, you have to run through the organic scolds. Sometimes Sevin rightly used makes sense to me. The thing is to use it skillfully and safely as possible. ....liquid and evening applications are usually best.

I have trapped over 100.000 JBs so far this year. It is getting old hearing the old regrain...."Don't use traps." Hey, I have the beetles in my area already and this is the best way I know to get rid of them....certainly organic too! Milky spore can be useful...it depends. I spent $60 on my daughter's yard on Milky Spore. and of course you will never get all the neighborhood to join in.

I wish the person[s] who brought them to our shores..........had an inkling of the misery....

Okay, what I was *going* to do is plant tons of amaranth in the chicken pens and let the chickens do the beetle control. Maybe next year....

I find that the beetles prefer tree[plum and cherry types], shrub [Rose of Sharon and rose blooms], bush[hibiscus], cane [raspberries and hollyhock], and vine[grape] leaves the best...along with ripe peaches. I had some zinnias last year...don't remember the beetles going for them. When you have some of the magnets mentioned above, they pretty well seem to leave the softer garden plants alone.

I do agree Farmer, with the trap crops. THey are just invitation to eat and mate but her garden is dancing without the Jbettles. I have marigold but i never see any eating the marigolds. They do love my butterfly bush. maybe next yr i will plant butterfly bush and spray it with sevin?? for a trap crop?
Lost all my cuc and squash to teh beetls , watermelon gone too. :)
but i still have maters!!!!!!!!!!
sue

ok, the day after my first post about this "rice bugs", i went to the garden center. they recommended the product called eight. i used it and it worked. they like it better than sevin they said. guess the difference is the mystery "one".
ha

Indy we had 7 plum type bushes, an your right ,the beetles loved them. We are doing a redue of our lansscaping trying to find things the beetles don't like LOL :)
we do have a tree in the back yard that the beetles love , but the bees do to. So that one stays.
sue

I generally use organic methods when I can, or at least start with a "little gun" and work my way up... but when the hordes of Japanese Beetles appear, the only thing that saves my little fruit trees and a couple of their other favorites is to spray once or twice with Sevin. They really love my crepe myrtle too, but that tree is pretty big now, and (knock on wood) the beetles don't seem quite as bad this year (they arrived a month late though, so we'll see), so I figure it can handle the damage without needing to be sprayed.

I planted a couple of containers with 'Spicy Globe' basil (their very favorite), and I spray those with Sevin as a trap crop and set them near the plants I want to save... you can use trap crops just to draw beetles away from other plants, or you can make them more effective by poisoning them. Since beetles like the basil better than the "friendly" bugs, this method makes sense to me... I wouldn't spray my zinnias with Sevin, because butterflies love zinnias, and I love butterflies.

I haven't noticed any evidence so far to support the notion that JBs devour 4 o'clocks and then die from eating them... too bad! That would've been a good answer to the problem!

thats sounds like a great idea critter.:)
sue

i read today in our local paper, instead of using sevin to kill anything moving, that we should use the stuff by bayer. it only kills what chews on the leaves. you buy it in a concentrate and feed it to the plant. it soaks it up and absorbs the poison. that way you dont hurt the pollinators or freindly bugs. i will check it out for next year. our beetles are about capoot now here. none too sonn!

I really don't want to use anything systemic on my fruit trees (poison apples! I'd end up like Snow White!), but the Bayer stuff should work on roses etc.

I did put grub ex all over the lawn and in the orchard area this spring... when very few beetles appeared in June, I thought it had done the trick... we have started having JBs, guess they were just late this year, but so far have had to spray only once with Sevin on the fruit trees. So, I'm not sure if the grub ex helped or if this just was a less bad year for them... but I'll probably plunk down I think it was $20 for another bag next year!

i really want to do this milky spore thing but i need my neighbors to do it too. wont see alof of benefit for a year or two probably. if i use grub ex, does it kill the nice little friendly worms too that i have in the garden?

I use Bayer on my roses. Here in Va. in my backyard I hardly saw any JB. Was this a normal season?

I'm from your area, and they have treated around there w/ Milky Spore on and off for years, I believe. Makes a big difference.

i was told they come out the 3rd week in june, and sure enough they were there. i was very persistant. they did not win this year.

Good for you! Did you have success with lure traps, sprays.... ??? I saw you mentioned using "Eight" (sim. to Sevin). BTW, with regard to spraying times, I try to spray insecticides in the evening when the "good" pollinators etc are less active. And if you're going to spray, the other tip that I like is to use a "sticker-spreader" product like Turbo... although a drop or two of dish soap will act as a surfactant to take care of the "spreader" part, this stuff definitely helps sprays stick longer, even if it rains the next day.

I don't have a beetle problem here (thank goodness) but when I found a bunch of squash bugs in my tiny pumkin patch I pulled out the dust buster and vacuumed the nasty things off the plants. It worked really well to get the tiny immature bugs too. I just wish the dozens of frogs in our yard thought they were tasty.

OK you VA neighbors, I need to get these dang things! So, it sounds like Sevin on trap crops and roses (or eight????), Milky Spore (what is that?) and grub X.

I did the grub x thing ... still so many JBs I could spray all month and still have left overs. They don't even like my bug traps this month.

Has Milky Spore become any easier to apply? I remember helping my dad (ages ago, LOL) mark off the lawn and dig out little plugs of grass, then apply a measured amount of Milky Spore into each little hole... talk about tedious!

I am hoping somebody will post and say, oh, you just pour the bag into your lawn spreader! hahahahaha

lawn spreader?? i just use my husband. :)

As wonderful as my DH is, and as much as he dislikes the JB's, I think digging a little hole every 12 inches over the entire lawn to apply Milky Spore would be beyond him. Peg, would you bring your DH up for a weekend?? LOL

Sure! What color do you need him in? (John Deere Green?) lol

If he's willing to work on conquering the JB problem, I don't care what color he shows up in! LOL

Yeah, I know.... you say you'll send him, but I know you want to keep him all to yourself.... LMK if he's all inspired to do more after he finished applying Milky Spore to your yard! hahahahaha

Okay, I'm now having very good luck applying neem every 5 days or so. The beans are no longer blemished, and the beetles are much, much reduced. It's manageable! Seems to deter the bean beetles too.

I wish i could win the battle on the JB's but my neighbor wont do anything !!!!!!! She has a row of trees that the Jb's just love, but she wont spray . Nothing. They don't attract bees or birds or butterflys just the darn JB's, I think next yr i will spray her trees. muahahahahaha
if milky spore is hard to apply i can see why many people don't use it
sue

It would have to be really really hard to apply to make it not worth 15 years of freedom from these pests. I applied nematodes and that was a bit tricky. But worth it!

so true zeppy, i am with you there. If i apply it in my yard will the JB's stay on her side? LOL
sue

Wish that were the case. Same problem here...