Just found one on the cuke plant. Do they harm cukes and tomato plants?
Do Japanese Beetles harm cucumbers and tomatoes?
I've never seen any on mine, but do have problems with the roses.
I find that they love roses, burning bushes and Kousa dogwoods. I have caught literally thousands upon thousands so far in my trap. So far the equivilent of 3 quart mayo jars full. I also dropped Grub X in the spring but JBs are REALLY REALLY bad this year.
Tom
Ditch the traps, they're luring the JBs right into your garden.
They're starting to attack the marigolds at one of the community gardens I help with...any ideas other than chemicals? At home I spray with soapy water, but I can't be at the garden every day.
The JBs are already in the area. Traps used with experience and skill are quite useful.
I have never seen the JBs bothering tomatoes or cucumbers. If you have anything more preferred, they will go for that. Here are some of their preferred chowing: grape vines including wild ones, red and yellow raspberries, plum leaves and ripe fruits, ripe peaches, hibiscus, soybean leaves, corn silks,, rose blooms, and no doubt a few other things.
Indy wrote; "Traps used with experience and skill are quite useful."
Sigh. I have neither. What I do have is plenty of room, so could you advise where best to put the trap to keep them from my garden? My poor little beans are suffering....
Margo
I would think the best thing to do is put them far away from the garden. If the traps attract the JBs I wouldn't want to attract them to my garden!
You place them 30 feet from the area you want to protect, it draws them AWAY from that area. They will be around your yard regardless of if you have a trap anyway so why not catch the little buggers. The traps work fantastically.
I've used traps and must add that they'll work if they're very far away from your crops (I prefer more like 100 yards) and IF you are constantly emptying them (I have friends that rig a trashcan w/ soapy water in it under the trap to catch overflow. When I've had the trap too close beetles come from all over the neighborhood and I have noticeably more than any of my neighbors. No traps for me at all this year.
Since I got rid of the traps, I've had far fewer JBs around.
They DO work fantastically to attract the beetles, but that can be the problem.
I have caught 4 1/2 quart jars full so far.
Jasmerr,
You can use Hot pepper wax spray on plants you want to protect. Read the lable.
I don't put out the traps unless the JBs get really bad... and then I put them as far away from the plants as possible... downwind of the plants you're trying to protect is ideal, otherwise the scent blows down to your garden and attracts them... I don't want all the neighborhood JBs passing through my garden on their way to the trap!
It may still be early, but I'm not seeing a ton of them this year... oh, I'm seeing plenty, but they're not stripping any of their favorite plants or blanketing the plum tree. I put down grub ex for the second year in a row, so maybe that helped.
If you (understandably) don't want to spray Sevin etc. on your food crops, you can spray it on a "trap crop." I grew out a dozen or so 'Spicy Globe' basil plants (this variety seems to be one of their very favorites) for this purpose... I'll spray them with Sevin and put them around the plants that are under attack. I will not pick any basil from these plants; their only purpose is to destroy JBs. However, I have sprayed a couple of plants in order to protect the rest of my basil patch and only harvested from those plants after they'd been pruned back hard a couple of times so that I knew I was picking only new growth that had never been sprayed.
That's a great idea. The trap crop should be one that does not attract bees.
Right. As long as you pinch back the basil every so often, it won't flower... and bees won't come to it.
I have a wild grape vine on the fence and believe me, it is an ideal JB trap crop.....no bees or food from it.. I have sprayed it occasionally.