What's bugging you, Mid Atlantic? summer 2014

Beer.....

Geez SSG, remind me to hang out with you at the swap so I don't get bitten ;P

Haha, yes I have the power to lure all the Mosquitos to me.

How does that song go?

My bloodshake brings all the skeeters to the yard?

LOL!!! What a riot.

I think the original song is gross, mostly because I'm not sure what a 'milkshake' is or why it would brings all the boys to the yard....

OK----I have NO idea if what you all are talking about----BUT--I had an immediate
idea of what a "milkshake" may be.....

Jeff--you need to practice an association game here---or--is it just my
dirty mind at work??

G.

Sorry to disappoint you, Gita, but when people drink beer they are much more likely to attract mosquitoes. It's right up there with O-positive blood and pregnancy as a big draw!

Oh, yeah! I knew Beer had something to do with Mosquitoes--I just had it backwards....

All that yeast exuding through our pores....who needs a soda bottle?

I don't know G, I just assumed it was something gross so I never really wanted to know what it meant.

On a different note, here's a pic of a yellow swallowtail I took at a neighbor's house over the weekend:

Nice photo of a Tiger Swallowtail, Seq! :-)

Oh ok, someone at work told me it was a yellow swallow tail but I didn't know any better. Thanks for the id Cat :)

well, it is indeed yellow, right? ;-)

Seq, just so you won't be surprised, your yellow Eastern Tiger Swallowtail also has a 'dark' form that looks very much like a Black Swallowtail! At least all of the swallowtails have swallowtails!

PS Have you heard of the albino Redwoods?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140319-redwood-albino-chimera-california-tree-tallest/

Wow, that's really interesting Coleup, thanks for the article :)

MAF forum on ATP is created. Click on the link below and check it out!!

http://allthingsplants.com/thread/view/27827/Welcome-to-the-Mid-Atlantic-Gardening-forum/#end_of_thread

beautiful butterfly photo!!!

Thanks Sally, it was busily doing it's thing. There were a few butterflies at this fellow's house. I was surprised because I get none and he's only 4 houses away.

When I was walking about the garden yesterday, I noticed that the Japanese beetles are still around. Boy, are they doing a number on the plants this year. I've never really noticed or had any problems with them before. They've decimated the annuals that are in containers - I kind of get that, but they also ate a big patch of sensitive fern - huh??? Is that normal?

Terri--

JB's have decimated every bud and bloom of my Roses.
sometimes--the chewed up bud will hold 20 jb's--that is bizarre!!!
They just sit there--covering the whole bud--all piled up on each other..

My neighbor tols me yesterday that she saw one of these ;piles" on a bud
and dipped the whole bud in her dish of soapy water to kill them...
I appreciate that...
G.

wow!! I'm going to stop complaining about my June beetle problem because Japanese beetles sound so much worse! I guess I'm lucky in that the Jap beetle grubs prefer a specific area of my lawn, so by killing them there last fall I seem to have been spared an onslaught. I have more brown areas to investigate...if I find grubs the birds will be so happy.

Oh in addition to killing the ones I found, I put down Milky Spore.

Muddy--

I have not had this bad an infestation for many years Oh, I may see a few...

I really cannot find a reason why so many JB's are around--everywhere...
We have sold out--every week--of beetle bags and lures. People are so desperate....

Maybe some brighter brains can come up with a solution...

--Did the harsh winter contribute in some way? Most of us were hoping there
would be less bugs!!

--Did the grubs hang in longer than normal underground--and then had this massive
exodus up to the lawns?

--I am doing my share with a cup of soapy water-picking them off every day.
every little bit helps....

Perhaps--for the first time--I wil have to apply "Grubex" on my lawn.
BUT--what good does it do if ONLY one person treats her lawn? They will all just
come over from all the neighbor's lawns!

Judy!!!! Yooo-Hooo---You are always good at finding answers to things like this.
GO!!! Post your findings...

G.

coleup IS a very good researcher

This is the first year that I remember JBs eating my Dawn Redwood. They also find delicious the Summer Snowflake Viburnum, dahlias, the Katsura tree, chokeberry, pyracantha, ROS, and knockout roses. It's weird about the knockout roses though. I have a yellow/creme one and a red one right next to each other but they don't touch the red one. The yellow/creme one hosts all day long JB orgies on it though. I treated the Katsura with a systemic so it wouldn't get eaten to nothing. It took about a week to start working but now they don't touch it. Every day I go around the yard with soapy water and get as many as I can find. Then I throw them in the composter :)

Hm.... This is the first year that I haven't had a JB infestation. My crape myrtle (which they love) hasn't been touched, and the dahlias and viburnums have been left alone. I've seen exactly two JBs.

I wonder if it's the milky spores. I put down the MS about a year and a half ago, I think.

Googled "Why are there so many Japanese Beetles this year?" And one of the first results was from U of MD Extension
http://extension.umd.edu/learn/japanese-beetles-their-way-back-maryland

"We have been pretty much Japanese beetle free for the past 6 years and it has been great. Something happened in 2013 that is changing this blissful period. The drought periods in the summers of 2007 - 2012 kept the Japanese beetle populations suppressed and we saw only isolated cases of Japanese beetle damage. It started raining on a regular basis during the egg laying time for adult Japanese beetles in 2013 and there was a higher survival of Japanese beetle grubs in the soil which means more Japanese beetles in 2014. The cold temperatures of -7 F in January for a couple of days did nothing to reduce this grub populations. They moved deep into the soil to overwinter and did just fine.

Meanwhile, people have been planting ideal food in landscapes for the adult beetle. The bush type roses such as Knockout and Double Knockout roses have made a big hit in commercial planting sites and have been used extensively in landscapes over the last couple of years. These roses just add to the food sources for Japanese beetles in 2014. Little leaf linden trees, crabapples, rose of Sharon, hibiscus, and cherry trees are all favored hosts for Japanese beetle adults. If you are growing fruit bearing sweet and sour cherry, blueberry plants, apple trees expect a visit from Japanese beetles this year"

Read the brief article to hear about really bad years....Yep, every little bit helps.

Geez little leaf lindens are like candy to them. Those and black locust trees. They will completely defoliate both.

Our JB problem seem to be causing less damage this year. I would attribute that to applying BT last year. Since last year produced a bumper crop of grubs, the spore should thrive. Gita, GrubX works, but requires annual application, milky spore last for years, so averaged out the cost is much less. If you use both, the GrubX will eliminate the host and the spore will die off. The only place I use GrubX is on my iris to kill the grub that feeds on the tubers.

Adding a note, the horticultural oil I used on the holly and hemlock did a pretty good job on the scale and adelgid. I will respray the hemlock with a systemic this fall after the pollinators are done.

This message was edited Aug 19, 2014 2:57 AM

Sounds like a good plan for the hemlock Rick. I must ask though, what is BT?

My JB problems seem to be decreasing. The population is definitely on its way out, which is great. Now my dahlias are starting to shine!

knock on wood (ow, my head!) I have never had a big problem with JBs, but I have very few roses, because of other rose problems. And no linden, no crepe myrtle..maybe I just have few of the things they like most.
Had a LOT of green fig beetles last year, they love the Peanut butter shrub leaves.

Eww...those green fig beetles are gross. My wife and I wonder if they are blind because they're always running into things and falling down.

hahaha. maybe they're so fat, they're like the C4 cargo planes of beetle and can't dodge and turn! They can give you a bit of a scare..buzzing and big...

Yeah that's for sure. There was a swarm of them in our back yard and my neighbor's backyard earlier this summer. You could really hear the buzz of their wings.

ew I think a swarm of THOSE would push the boundaries of my tolerance

http://www.amazon.com/Inordinate-Fondness-Beetles-Arthur-Evans/dp/0520223233

Wow, how did you find the #1 book on my wishlist??

Lol

Bacillus is the genus and thuringiensis is the species of one of the original bio-controls used for grubs and larval stage insects back in the 80's, since then it has been engineered into a number of GMOs.
Bacillus popilliae, is what we are now using and calling milky spore, so my post should have read BP. But then everyone would have thought I applied crude oil. LOL
I have a great trap for the fig beetles. It's called a pool.

If you put down the 'BP' you wouldn't have any plants to worry about so in a sense it would work ;-P

So today I am under the magnolia. The magnolia by the way is LOADED with blooms! And I hear buzzing. There's a bee by one of the flowers. She's hovering there. I watch. She hovers over to the lower petal where some loose stamens (?) have collected. --The center of magnolia flowers has this cone like thing, and white bits that fall off, and collect on lower petals, see second pic here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnolia_grandiflora

Well she goes over and uses her legs to knock the white bits off the lower petal, to the ground. One or two at a time. Took a full minute or two to do them, several seconds of hovering and studying, and then knock, then study, then knock..Then she went to the center of the flower, and picked a bit or two off.

I guess really there is some explanation like- the pollen or nectar that they want is somewhere on the bit, and they examine it and discard what is no good. But watching this tiny creature at work, just amazing to see how "industrious' and 'planned' it seems. Why did she pick them off to drop to the ground, why not just examine each bit?

I am awed by her industriousness and your perspicacity in noticing it!

Very interesting! Now I want to know why it did that....

Yes, Sally how cool. And Happy, I got a vocabulary lesson - I had no idea what perspicacity meant, so I looked it up - perfect word choice :)

Beetles actually pollinate magnolia
http://pollinators.blogspot.com/2011/06/magnolias-and-beetle-pollination.html