The Only Good Japanese Beetle Is a Dead One

So there I was, resting in my living room chair, drinking a Hansen's Mandarin and Lime soda (made with cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup), minding my own business.

And then I see it: something black flits by the window.

"Shit!" My sudden exclamation startles my husband. Not because I'm cursing--I do that a lot--but because it comes out of nowhere. "I bet it's a Japanese Beetle," I explain.

I get out of my chair and walk to the window, where I spy several black things buzzing about. For a moment, a very brief moment, I try to convince myself they're flies. But I know they aren't. They are Japanese Beetles, the scourge of the trees. And bushes. And garden plants.

In fact, I can't think of a single thing they are good for besides breeding and drowning. And for another fact, as you can tell from the picture, the damn things are already having kinky bug sex in my trees. (You are witnessing a menage a trois in this picture.)

Last year, we tried spraying the trees and shrubs with a cola concoction. It may have slowed them down a bit, but they came back stronger than ever. According to all the literature I've read, traps don't really work and, in fact, attract more Japanese Beetles to the neighborhood. The only thing that works is to go out in the early morning or late evening and knock the creepy crawlers into a bucket of soapy water and drown them. Apparently, the more Japanese Beetles you have, the more they attract. Their bug pheremones are powerful aphrodisiacs, so the only way to keep the population "under control" (I use quotation marks here because truly there is no controlling these beetles) is to kill off as many as possible.

So, for the next couple of months, guess what I'll be doing?

The Downside of Gardening: Bugs

The tomato hornworm has to be the creepiest caterpillar I have ever seen. I love wooly worms; in fact, when I see them, I crouch down and pet them, feeling their soft prickly backs. There is something very cute about these wriggly little ground teddies. (They remind me of bears for some reason.)

The tomato hornworm is the exact opposite. It has no fur, just white lines on its smooth green hide that look almost like creases (I try not to get close enough to find out for sure), or perhaps even war paint. They have a little red spiky cowlick on their rear end; the front end looks eyeless (again, I'm not going to get close enough to find out). What is most horrifying about this worm is the combination of its seeming eyelessness and its teethy mouth. [shiver] These things give me nightmares. They remind me of the sandworms in the movie Dune. And yet, to get them off the plant, I have to pick them off, and I'm always afraid that I'm going to squeeze too hard (they grip the tomato plant stems strongly, and are hard to dislodge) and be rewarded with a handful of green goo.

Earlier in the season I found about 5 and blogged about them; yesterday, I picked 6 off my tomato plants and threw them far into the yard in the sun, hoping that, like vampires, they would turn to ash in the sunlight or, even better, be spied and eaten by birds. I like birds. I don't mind feeding them. Today, I found this one and one other. Back to the hornworms in a moment.

Another creepy bug that I have battled before (clearly to no avail) is the Japanese Beetle. They are once again (or still, I'm not sure which) copulating in my greenery; unfortunately, this time they have picked my okra plants as their conjugal beds.

If you look closely, you'll see we have a couple of stray beetles who have either just finished having sex, are about to have sex, or have no interest in sex; you have a couple in the lower right caught in the act, and upon an even closer inspection, you'll see a buggy menage a troi happening in the upper left of the leaf. The only thing worse than thinking about bug sex is imagining one's parents doing it. [shiver]

And now, back to the hornworms. The only good hornworm in my book is a dead one--or one with parasitic wasp egg sacs all over its body, which will soon hatch and eat the worm. Second best is a hornworm that is about to become spider food.

I know spiders are good for the garden, but this one--a wolf spider, maybe? I don't know--is too big for my comfort. I've never really cared for spiders, and the bigger they are, the less I care for them. I have to pick okra around this sucker somehow. [shiver] It does make me wonder, too, if this monster is living in my okra, are there others about? Just thinking about that is giving me goosebumps and making my skin crawl.

I'd feel kind of sorry for the grasshopper, who was apparently dinner, but he's kind of creepy, too, all wrapped up in his spiderweb blanket, his arms across his chest as if he were lying in state in an invisible casket.

An Abundance of Tomatoes

The zucchini are definitely slowing down, and the plants look like they have a leaf mold growing on them--not surprising, given the mad rains we've had recently. I'll have to read more about the situation before I decide what to do with the zucchini plants. When I harvested today (3 zucchini), I only spied a couple of blossoms here and there, so it looks like zucchini season may be over. Wow, what a run it was!

The cucumbers are still producing heartily, and this evening I harvested 11 more. I'll definitely be making another batch of bread-and-butter pickles tonight. I gave away all but a couple of 1/2 pints that I had previously made, so I'll need to make a couple of batches this time...and I'm going to try a small batch of freezer dill pickles.

The tomatoes are coming on now. I pulled in 8 Beefsteak tomatoes, 4 Best Boys, and 57 sun sugar tomatoes. The first few Beefsteaks I harvested have been eaten in parts, but as they tomatoes begin turning more quickly now, it looks like I'll have plenty of blemish-free tomatoes soon. I had a couple in this batch already.

The okra plants are tall and should be getting okra on them soon, and the pepper plants continue to grow slowly. My fear with the okra plants is that the Japanese Beetles seem to have found them. I have to go out and knock them into a bucket of water. It seems like these bugs will never die! Every time we think we have them eliminated or reduced to a manageable amount, they come back in greater numbers than before. We'll definitely be treating with milky spore this year.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 82
Cucumbers: 88
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 1
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 228
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 10
Best Boy Tomatoes: 4
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

The Rabbits Found My Garden

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.

The bunnies I have so delighted in watching finally realized that the fence did not yet extend all the way around the garden and helped themselves to mouthfuls of tender soup bean plants. I think we caught them in time, however; with a few leaves and the occasional blossom remaining, I think these bean plants will eventually rally. Only time will tell. I do wonder, however, why as a child I delighted in tales of Peter Rabbit outwitting Farmer McGregor. Today I have much compassion for the poor storybook farmer.

Hubby and I finished putting the rest of the garden fence up tonight in the hopes that we will be able to keep the bunnies from feasting on more beans or any of the other plants. (Especially since I need to plant my pepper seedlings.) I took a long shot of the garden while David was fixing the fence, and I have to say that even with a section not yet planted, the garden is looking amazing! And of course, the zucchini is producing like crazy. So are the tomatoes, and it won't be long before they begin to turn and I have some luscious, red, juicy tomatoes to eat! They're best straight out of the garden on a warm, sunny day, but frankly, I'll eat tomatoes just about any way I can get them!

The sunflowers and okra continue to grow. Not much to report there. The cucumbers continue to blossom and are still trying to overrun the dill and cilantro. Well, not really trying, actually, but rather succeeding. I do need to train the cucumbers up, and to that end, I purchased three large trellises at JoAnn Fabrics a few days ago. They are regularly $24.99 each, far more than I would ever consider paying; however, I happened to be endcapping in the store (searching the clearance endcaps for bargains) when I discovered that the wrought-iron trellises were 70% off, making each one just $7.49 each! Now that is my kind of deal! I'm going to try setting them up at the end of the fencing and train the cucumbers up the trellises. If it works, it should be much easier to harvest the cucumbers.

Today's zucchini harvest totaled 8, with 5 sun sugar tomatoes. The tomatoes are slow, but I suspect they will all ripen around the same time. It has cooled off again, so their growth will slow a bit. But as soon as the weather heats up and humidifies, they'll take off again. Without looking back at previous posts, I think I've harvested close to 40 zucchini already. I'm not sure what the poundage would be--maybe next year I'll invest in a scale and weigh my produce.

And finally, the bug report. David and I went out and attacked the bugs again. I added another inch of handpicked bugs to my disgusting beetle bucket, and David sprayed down the bushes and trees again. Just so you get a sense of how thick the Japanese Beetles are, here's a shot of just one leaf-worth--13 bugs. See how they have eaten the life right out of the leaf? And this is just one leaf of hundreds sporting this many bugs. How many bugs does it take to make a plague, anyway?

No, It's Not Soup. It's Bugs.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Japanese Beetles are a member of the locust family. After our initial infestation, much handpicking and spraying unappetizing concoctions on the foliage and shrubbery in our yard, we thought we had battled the beetles into obscurity. Or maybe the rains drove them away. Regardless, we thought they were gone.

The last couple of days, they've returned, dive-bombing our upstairs windows, trying to get to the light, I suppose. So I told David we should probably do a quick survey of the trees.

Holy. Beetles. Batman.

It definitely looks like we've been swarmed by a plague of beetles. They have turned so many bush and tree leaves into lace, and now they are attacking the iris leaves. So, once again, David and I headed out to the yard to strip it of beetles, with me handpicking and David spraying. The picture at the top of this blog entry shows what looks like "bug soup." Believe it or not, these bugs are not floating on the soapy water I drowned them in. They are stacked upon one another, two inches thick in the bucket. The picture at the right shows a side shot of the beetle bucket. See the shadow at the bottom? That's the beetle line. Ick.

We'll have to head outdoors soon tonight and do a beetle check to see if we've had any impact on the beetle numbers. I will be really glad when these beetles have moved on or died. They give me the creeps.

Will It Float? Testing Japanese Beetles

Have you ever seen the David Letterman show when they play the game "Will it float?" Let's play with Japanese Beetles...will they float?

As the Magic 8 Ball would say, "All signs point to yes."

Above, you'll see a picture of hundreds of Japanese beetles that I handpicked off several of our trees and bushes. According to the articles I've read, handpicking or knocking them off branches is the best way to eliminate the problem. The fewer Japanese beetles in your yard, the fewer they attract to your yard. So evening before last, I went beetle collecting, knocking them into this basin of soapy water. I actually had hundreds more collected from a couple of days before, but I had too much soapy water in the basin and accidentally dumped it before getting started. What you're seeing here is only about 1/3 of what I collected total in two days of collecting.

Collecting beetles is not a pleasant job. First, I feel sort of guilty since I am drowning some of God's creatures. It just doesn't seem nice. Plus, as previously blogged about, many of them were engaged in, um, intimate pleasantries, which seems like a double whammy. (Although perhaps they died with smiles on their little beetle faces.) After I'm done collecting, I feel like I have bugs crawling all over me until I take a shower. It's probably simply protestant guilt, but nonetheless, it's a creepy feeling.

Meanwhile, David was spraying our heavily infested trees, bushes, and lawn with an organic mixture of water, "lemony fresh" Joy dishwashing liquid and garlic (although he also added Coca Cola and castor oil for fertilizer and varmint control--apparently, moles hate castor oil. Can you blame them?).

Today, a quick check of the trees and bushes show only a few beetles remaining. So either the handpicking and tree spraying is working, or the steady rain yesterday drove them off, or they are dying after mating, or they are migrating to a better climate. How's that for certainty? I will be glad when I don't have to look at them any more.

Who Knew Bugs Got So Busy?

I have to admit, I really hadn't noticed that bugs had sex lives lives until photographing Japanese Beetles for this blog. I suppose I knew they had to have sex in order to procreate, but thinking about bugs having sex is, well, almost akin to thinking about your parents having sex. Ewww. This is my last bug porn post, so enjoy it while it lasts.

The Japanese Beetles have migrated to a new tree set that I can actually get close to, so before I go knocking them into soapy water and drowning them, I decided to photograph them in their new setting. And, lo and behold, the bugs were having get-togethers in this tree, too! Since I was able to get closer shots (I wish I could figure out my macro settings, but maybe I don't want to get much closer than this), I began to notice that the various pairings are fond of one particular position...and yet, I discovered variations on a theme.

In this picture to the right, the male (I'm assuming he is male) has his front legs in the air. They aren't waving wildly; they are just...there. If they were waving, I could imagine him saying, "Whoa, guys, this bug chick is awesome!" But maybe he's paralyzed with ecstasy? Saying, "Look, Ma, no legs?" Dunno.

In the picture to the left, we see bugs with no legs out, bugs with only one leg out, and bugs still seeking a partner. I feel kind of sorry for them.

But this final picture is my favorite. These beetles are keeping their legs close, and that's a good thing, because they are living on the edge, baby! They look like they are about to fall off the leaf. It is good that bug sex apparently does not require much movement, or this would be their last encounter. Not sure if the bug above and to the right of them is simply there or is a peeping Tom. Are beetles voyeuristic, I wonder?

Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid

In one day, the zucchini plant I took pictures of last night has decided to blossom. The blossom in the foreground will open tomorrow, and quite possibly the one in the background as well. The beginning of the Day of the Zucchini (a la Day of the Triffids) is here! Beware! If you see zucchini plants wandering the streets...cover your eyes and run!

On the bug front, I still see no sign of the Japanese Beetles in my garden--they have decided that they prefer copulating in my decorative trees. I mentioned yesterday how they eat holes in the leaves, creating a kind of lace-like effect. The picture here shows an example of the damage they have wrought in just one day. We have not yet had the opportunity to douse their fiery passions with a soapy water mixture, and today, I'm wondering whether that's a good idea. If we make the tree an unwelcome marriage bed for them, they may decide to take up residence in my garden. But they are also too far up and out on the tree for me to be able to reach most of them in order to scoop them into a bowl of soapy water. Does anyone have advice for me that includes neither chemicals nor the admonition to join them in their insect frenzy? Please?

Bugs Really Bug Me

I looked out the window this evening after working in the garden. I thought I saw black spots, so I closed my eyes to rest them, then reopened them. Black spots. I shook my head (I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish by that) and then looked again. Black spots. So then I looked more closely, and realized that the leaves of the trees that vine around the upper deck were covered with black spots. And the black spots were moving...and glinting in the sun.

Crap. I know that glint. It's Japanese Beetle time.

I've had run-ins with these buggers before. They are voracious leaf- and fruit-eaters. They nearly destroyed my okra crop a couple of years ago. When they eat, they reduce the leaves of whatever plant they attack to a fine lace and leave other leaves looking like they have been burned by fire. Then they lay their eggs underground, where the grubs overwinter so they can come back and destroy my plants again the next year.

So you can imagine my distress when I saw them, especially with my garden doing so well. I downloaded a couple of documents about getting rid of them. Apparently traps don't work well. My best bet, according to the literature, is to go out in the early morning when they are sluggish and knock them off into a bowl of soapy water. It's too late this year to plant flowers and other vegetation that do not attract them...by the time they matured, the beetles' migration/mating season will be over. I don't want to apply chemicals, so other than the soapy water trick, there's not much I can do. I'll spend time knocking them off tomorrow, and David will spray the trees down with a soapy water mixture. We'll hope that's sufficient. So far, I haven't seen them in the garden, and hopefully they don't like what I've planted so far. Maybe the onions will keep them away.

And trust me, these bugs are "gettin' jiggy wit' it," and in my trees, no less, and in plain sight, where my children (read: kitties) can see them in their pornographic glory!