My battle plans for the Japanese Beetle!

It’s early June and now is about the time that the Japanese beetle is due to make an appearance in southwestern Missouri. The green and gold colored beetle comes out of the ground in great numbers and likes to dine on over 300 species of plants. One year they ate an entire stand of flower right down to the stem!

Organic ways to combat them include growing non-attractive plants, using netted covering, and hand-picking beetles from your garden and drowning them in a bucket of soapy water. All of which are labor intensive exercises that often end up in frustration. Even covering your plants up for most of the month can be of limited effect if they come out of the ground underneath the cover! However, take heart. There is one proven way to combat these pests, although it will not make you very popular on the block where you live.

My solution came about when I noted that the bag traps which contain bug pheromone lures can actually cause the problem to get worst by attracting the bugs from neighboring yards. (Ah, I thought to myself, but what if I was to buy and place some traps down the block in a vacant yard? I could add some additional lures at that location to help amplify the effect). Now I only have to ask myself, do I have the nerve!