Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Battling Japanese Beetles

These little guys not so fondly known as JB's are back again.  With our cooler evening they arrived a bit later than usual, but we have three Rose of Sharon bushes they adore.  For years I dumped them into a bucket of water, feeling real icky about it ... and then I read about the birds that enjoy them and decided to just let them go through their cycle, since the bushes still produced lots of blooms and color.

Next to beneficial insects, songbirds consume the most pest insects in your yard. Grackles, meadowlarks, crows, catbirds, cardinals, blackbirds, robins, and starlings eat lots of grubs as they move to the surface of the soil prior to emerging as beetles. Starlings, robins, catbirds, and purple martins, blue jays, and cardinals eat adult beetles.

That has worked well ... along with neighbors no longer using the hanging traps that were sold to gather them up.  Current research shows they are more of an attractant and don't lessen population of them in your garden after all.  Gardens Alive has a great article with many suggestions on  Beating the Beetles.

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