Japanese Beetles - The Plain Truth About Traps... And A Tiny New Winged Hope!
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Article by: Fred Davis Every year visitors to our gardens , Landscape Wallpaper here in Maine bring questions about some problem or other in their gardens. , Five Key Factors that Affect your Potted Plants in Winter Not surprisingly, many have to do with near-Biblical hoards of Japanese Beetles, and the relationship between burgeoning numbers of these destructive insects and those readily-available pheromone lure beetle traps on merchant's shelves. Well, what about Japanese Beetle traps? Do they really work? Or are they -- as more and more of us are finally realizing -- part of the problem? You may find my response to the following frustrated gardener's recent emailed plea for help enlightening. . .if not encouraging: "Help! Japanese Beetles were especially bad this year. We put up three traps and had more beetles than anyone else in our neighborhood! What did we do wrong?" Some things simply resist explanation, while solutions to other pressing gardening , Abatement and Confronting Legitimate Issues problems are so patently apparent that I'm surprised everyone hasn't already deduced the answer. To get to the core of the problem, during 2004 we conducted a survey of sorts, asking garden , Cordless Blowers visitors about their experiences and thoughts on the subject. About half of those queried felt there were increased populations of Japanese Beetles that season; the other half said there seemed to be fewer. Not surprisingly, most of the more beetles half had installed commercial pheromone traps in their gardens , A Teak Bench: The Perfect Complement To Any Outdoor Space or on lawns. , Growing and Caring for Rhododendrons and Azaleas Japanese beetles literally flocked around those traps! If anything can be faulted for increased numbers of these rascals in the garden, , Patio Chair Covers it certainly wasn't the above gardener. If trap manufacturers , Getting Tulips to Bloom for Two Months in Your Garden had bothered to print a simple advisory on the label, more folks would have been in the less-beetles half. Seems to me it wouldn't have taken rocket science to anticipate the hoards that would be drawn to precisely the wrong spot. . .the banquet table! You see, beetles are attracted to traps from hundreds of feet away. Putting those traps in the midst of a garden , Fish Health in Hot Summer Heat is tantamount to sending out engraved invitations to the salad , Reasons to Garden Organically bar. True, many of them will eventually get caught in the trap but not before they inflict serious damage to nearby expensive or treasured landscape , Wallpaper plants. If that's been your experience, you would be far better off buying traps for your up-wind neighbors to hang in their yards! , Taming Your Outdoors Next year, if you feel you must purchase traps, locate them upwind and away from your garden , Controlling Spider Mites (we found that 75' to 100' was an optimal distance for our circumstances). Just determine from which direction the prevailing wind comes and locate the trap there. A light , Spring Wild Flowers breeze will carry the pheromone scent across your yard, , Back Landscaping Ideas - A Guide To Evergreen Trees And Shrubs beetles will detect the odor and fly out and toward the direction of their demise. Simple. . .cleverly deceptive. . .and notably effective. Finally a predator! - A Tiny Winged Hope. Imagine, for a moment, that spring , Avoid Common Gardening Errors is about to burst upon the gardening , Grass Varieties scene. Adult Japanese Beetles (Popillia japonica) emerge from the ground, take wing, and begin a search for our roses, , Five Key Factors that Affect your Potted Plants in Winter grapes, hollyhocks, maples, and Virginia creeper vines. . .not to mention mates! Since their introduction from the Orient in about 1916, these wretched little jewel-like insects have been the bane of gardeners and market farmers. The only marginally-effective controls during much of that time were hand-picking, application of BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) to lawns , Understanding Weeds - But mostly How to Kill 'em and mowed areas, or the spread of dangerous chemicals. Now a new "star" has emerged onto the gardening , Teak Patio Furniture scene: Istocheta aldrichi, a small Tachinid fly whose primary goal in life is to locate small beetles upon which to glue their eggs. It was actually introduced in 1922 specifically to parasitize -- and therefore control -- other destructive agriculturally-important insects. Their general appearance is much like common houseflies, the difference being that tachinids nearly always remain outdoors , How To Find Cheap Flower Delivery In Your Area and feed chiefly on nectar, honeydew and, occasionally, pollen, deposit only eggs, and have extra bristle-like hairs on their abdomen. Common houseflies, on the other hand, have much shorter abdominal "hairs," seek out malodorous garbage, rotting carrion, smelly outhouses, and leftover food , How to Create a Zen Garden scraps upon which to deposit their live-born larvae ("maggots"). Tachinids have more or less recently developed a taste for Japanese Beetles. Here's how they get the job done:
There are a great many types of tachinid flies that "specialize" in parasitizing a wide variety of insects including caterpillars like cabbage loopers and moth larvae and, of course, beetles. Field studies have consistently shown that from 40 to 50% of Northern New England Japanese Beetle populations are currently being parasitized by this very efficient little fly. So, follow these two very important new "rules": If, while scouting your garden , How to Grow Cooking Herbs for Japanese Beetles, you spot one or more small, 1 mm whitish dots glued just behind their heads, don't -- repeat: don't -- destroy them. I know that's going to be difficult for most gardeners, but it's been shown that those beetles very shortly fall , Getting Tulips to Bloom for Two Months in Your Garden to the ground to be quickly destroyed by an even more aggressive foe than us. . .and those beetles will never have the chance to lay any more eggs or harm your cherished plants! , Working with Landscape Contractors Also important is avoidance of toxic chemicals -- or even natural , Growing and Caring for Rhododendrons and Azaleas insecticides -- that might destroy or hinder the highly-desirable activities of just about any outdoor, , A Teak Bench: The Perfect Complement To Any Space nectar-feeding fly. It's all part of keeping a good thing going. . .and being a responsible gardener!Fred Davis is a Master Gardener, Master Composter, , Lawnmower Maintenance Tips That Help Produce The Best Lawns lecturer, and long-time nurseryman. He and his wife, Linda, own and operate a popular perennial , Cordless Blowers nursery in Palermo, Maine, and maintain a no-frills gardening , Taming Your Outdoors information website at: http://www.HillGardens.com/ |
  
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