THE Japanese Beetle Thread (merged)

Heineken

Yes, JBs love pears. Not quite as much as they love plums and apples, though. Frank you poor thing. I can just see you sweating. You may want to consider moving to northern Wisconsin!
Put your pawpaws in the ground. Be very careful you don't damage the roots. They are quite hardy, so I don't see why you're worried about them.
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skyemoor

max_power29

what do they do about this problem in japan?
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Heineken

Max, in Japan the beetle evolved along with a full complement of natural predators. So it poses very little problem for Japanese farmers. When the beetle was imported to the US, it found itself like a kid in a candy shop. It continues to spread in all directions from its point of origin in New Jersey. I believe the expansion rate is something like 5 or 10 miles per year on average (or about the maximum flying distance of an adult beetle).
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Heineken

gg3

Looks like one thing we need is a project to develop an inexpensive open-source version of Surround. My guess is that the right type of clay soil, mixed with water, will do the trick. The key to this is an ultra-fine particle size and some means of getting it to go into suspension in the water (perhaps a small dose of a soap to break down the water surface tension).
As for the frequent respraying, that could be done with less labor than many of the alternatives; and one can always set up a fixed irrigation-like system to spray the stuff into the air over the crops.

Two more ideas that come to mind. One, soap foam as an insecticide: a small amount of soap added to water, vigorously shaken or pumped through a nozzle, kills many bugs on contact and should be tested on JBs.
Two, if JBs react to smells they leave around, I wonder what would happen if you pulverized a large quantity of JBs in water and sprayed the resulting stuff on a patch of ground. Would it serve as an attractant or a repellant..?
JBs are just one more reason to stop all this mindless globalization crap. God knows what else is just waiting to come over on the next load of 6,000 mile salad or strawberries.

frankthetank

gg3... That doesn't work. Already brought up on Nafex, i think. I remember hearing it didn't do anything. (the part about grinding up JB's and spraying the remains). Maybe you can scrounge up some DDT and try that? Smile

You might want to just do a trial run of a tunnel type setup and compare it to non tunnel tree. Other then that, you only hope is for next year to be a small hatch.

I'm redoing a bunch of my gardens this fall (after i harvest everything) and i plan on figuring out a spot for either a greenhouse or a cheap plastic covered PVC contraption for my future sweet cherries. I'm also taking out a row of scaggy lilacs (i hate them) and putting up a fence and some more arborvitaes. (The chafers i had covered my arborvitaes, but i don't think they were eating them, just breeding).
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gg3

In fact ariculture is outside my skill set (though our community has a number of people with relevant skills so I'm not worried). Question is, what's the probability of JBs crossing the Rockies and coming into northern California?
As for giving up apples, over my dead body. We can just wrap the trees in something or another if needed. I can live with more expensive apples or fewer apples, but I'm not about to give 'em up entirely and declare defeat in the face of a bunch of G--D--- bugs.

Re. natural predators in Japan: anyone give any thought to importing some of those species and getting them started here? Or would that unleash another cycle of eco-nastiness?
Re. using tobacco plants or smoke to kill the little bastards: any success? (I wonder about this: use the stems and other reject parts of the plant to burn for smoke in the fields?) And what about other types of plant smoke, does any of that work as a repellant? For example ordinary tree leaves collected in the fall?

No doubt if these little bastards make an appearance in California our group will open up a research project on dealing with them. Even partial successes seem to be worthwhile at this point.
BTW, climate change is going to make insect pest infestations much worse. There's the "pestilence" part of the proverbial Four Horsemen. For some reason I hadn't counted pestilence as being quite as serious a threat as plague and war. Live & learn...

Heineken

gg3, the Japanese beetle is far worse than you can imagine. Your comments display the usual, understandable naivete of someone who hasn't dealt with them. Surround (or any similar clay-based product you might want to invent) helps a little, but it doesn't work very well. That's the bottom line. Overall, I find it ineffective except on plants that are already moderately resistant to the JB. A tree like an apple or a plum will end up defoliated by the end of the season, no matter how assiduously you spray with Surround. When it rains and washes off the Surround, the beetles get a foothold and then never give up. They come in wave after wave, day after day, all summer long.

You can't just wrap trees against them. That will cause the tree to succumb to fungal disease. Air must circulate, full sunlight must strike the tree. Even small trees are quite large and you'll find that "wrapping" them is impractical. Perhaps a loose structure such as I described earlier in this thread might work, but it's a lot of extra work and money for every tree.

Also, they are very difficult to control chemically. Powerful insecticides still kill them on the plant, but very soon they reappear. I've seen them chowing down quite happily on insecticide-coated foliage. Perhaps they die later, but the damage is done. They are quite robust; you can forget things like soap and smoke. It's only a matter of time before they are fully resistant to standard insecticides. Remember, they attack all summer long, so whatever measures you want to attempt must be maintained all summer long. Impossible.
Their numbers are vast; there may be trillions of them. Once they get a foothold you will never, ever see the end of them.

I think their eventual arrival in California is an inevitability. The miracle is that they're not there already, given all those nutcases with motivation to introduce the bug there deliberately.
And yes, the problem will worsen with global warming. Warm winters are very favorable to them. The decimation of birds, which take some JBs, also favors them.
Frank's tunnel idea offers the best hope. Expensive, though. I'm planning on a cheaper, modified version of that involving posts to which transluscent insect barrier is attached.
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"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog

"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
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Lore

I’ve been busy as of late, but not so much that my wife and I haven’t noticed our yearly feared invasion of the JBs here in the Carolinas.
The only good thing is that I've made the decision to retreat to my "fortress of solitude" in Northern, MI within the next couple of months. They are still on the fringe of where I will be, so I guess the reprieve won't last very long.
At least my hope is to die before those dang fire ants make it that far north.
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frankthetank

Heineken-Speaking of California. Check out these pics from a guy that grows (stone) fruit (among others) in that state. I think i read somewhere in his post that he doesn't even spray. The guy is drowning in plums. Too bad a shack out there costs 400K.
LINK TO FRUIT PICS
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skyemoor

Heineken

Less woods should make your JB situation worse than mine, not better, since they prefer a "turf" environment. So it's a real puzzle to me as to why your JB population is so thin, Skyemoor. I suppose it's just natural variation. Since JBs fly so far, the characteristics of one's local flora may not make much difference, as long as your plants of interest are ones they also like.

My property has on it right now untold thousands of JBs. Probably many millions. They are everywhere. When I'm outside they fly into my face. I even saw them eating an ash tree, which they're supposed not to touch. If this year is like last year and the year before it and so on, this situation will prevail, with minor fluctuations, until mid-August, when the population finally begins to tail off noticeably.

Needless to say, by now I strongly subscribe to your philosophy of planting only relatively JB-resistant food plants. My three Japanese plum trees and two apricots, which have been growing strongly, are a sorry sight, their foliage ravaged. I'm on the verge of cutting them down and throwing in the towel, as I did with my apple trees last year. However, I may give it another year. Over the winter I may build some scaffolding around these trees to which "summer insect barrier" or Reemay can be attached, as I discussed earlier. Something similar to Frank's tunnels, only much simpler in design. I have the feeling that if one can just get something loosely over the top of the tree--something that admits sufficient sunlight and allows for good air circulation--traditional fruit trees could still be possible in a JB-infested environment. It may also be necessary to cover the vertical axis around the tree, maybe halfway down the tree's height. When I get my scaffolding in place, I could experiment with different arrangements of the insect-barrier panels. You don't have to stop every last beetle, just the bulk of them.

I'm very surprised that my strawberries, supposedly a JB food, have scarcely been touched. They are in three large raised beds with bird netting over them. Maybe the bird netting, which has fairly small holes (maybe 1/2 inch on a side) interferes with the JB's landing pattern? Or maybe the Surround I've applied to the strawberries is doing its job? A mystery. Anyway, my results suggest that strawberries are OK with JBs, assuming you have the right setup. Boy are those strawberries delicious. People who've eaten only supermarket strawberries all their lives have never tasted a strawberry.
_________________
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog

"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother

skyemoor · Last edited by skyemoor on Thu Jun 21, 2007 1:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

Berries In our effort to compile a list of JB resistant plants, common berries not bothered by JBs (according to
usagardener.com);

(Update: Blackberries removed per Heineken/Madpaddy)
Black Currants
(Blueberries also removed through further research)
Strawberries (though JBs can feed on roots)

I will likely clear out my raspberries and replace them with something else, as we already have blueberries. Note the above list does not include less frequently mentioned berries, so consider it incomplete.
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Madpaddy · Expert Joined: Jun 25, 2004 Posts: 1989

Heineken says JBs are especially fond of blackberries.
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