The Finer things You Can Afford

As you probably already know, Japanese beetles prefer fragrant flowers like roses.  We have all found several of them nestled in a single bloom.  Instead of cursing them each day, cut off the fragrant blooms and bring them inside.  You will most likely look at the roses more indoors than you would if you leave them in the garden – and the smell is fabulous too!  Soon you will find that you have less beetles overall because they are attracted to the sweet smellingflowers and will move on to torment someone else’s blooms.  If you find yourself with excess roses, give a bouquet to a friend or a family member.  You can also place the roses in water and store them in the fridge for up to a week.  Or dry a bunch and make potpourri.  Add dried roses and lavender to a sachet of bath salts and find a new way to relax and unwind.  So be creative with them because anything is better than letting your beautiful roses get chomped by those stupid little creatures. 

I find myself wishing away the summer so the stupid Japanese Beetles will leave.  They are coming in less numbers but I am still picking about 25-50 off my roses every couple of days.  I am pruning off the older blooms because they seem to be most attracted to those.  I am also cutting off the more fragrant blooms and bringing them in prior to them becoming beetle infested.  I often find 7-10 beetles ruining one fragrant rose!  Bringing them inside attracts fewer beetles and I get to enjoy the rose rather than cut it off the bush and put it in my beetle juice (aka soapy water).  The soapy water makes it impossible for them to fly and it kills them while not harming the environment or beneficial insects.  It is easier to get a large bucket of soapy water and cut off the entire bloom or cluster of blooms and drop it in the soapy water because I find that I miss beetles when I try to pick them off when there are several huddled on one part of the plant. 

I am thrilled to report that I only found 5 Japanese beetles on my roses last night.  This is a huge improvement over the rest of the nights this week.  This shows that a pan of water with dish soap can get rid of them without harming the environment.  They were so bad this year that I was not sure this method would still work.  Now I can spend my time pruning and dead-heading my flowers instead of worrying about the damage from japanese beetles. 

My roses had about 1/3 of the beetles on them tonight as compared with last night.  It looks like cutting off some of the blooms infested with beetles worked well.  I only found one in my back flower garden so hopefully yesterday was the worst it will be. 

The Japanese Beetles are taking over my roses.  I literally pulled at least 100 of three bushes this evening, with some help from a kind neighbor.  There were so many clustered on the new blooms we just cut them off because the blooms were already so damaged.  We just pruned the worst spots and dropped the whole flower in the bucket because some blooms had 6 or 7 beetles on them.  Those flowers were never coming back anyhow.  The silver lining is that I found a few roses on the inside of the bush that were unharmed.  This is the worst year I have seen with these beetles. 

This is what damage from a Japanese Beetle looks like.  They do the same thing to flowers and many leaves.  It almost looks like lace within the leaf.  If left alone they can do this to an entire tree or bush.  I have seen them on butterfly bushes, roses, zinnias, cherry trees, burning bushes, and geraniums.  See my post on getting rid of Japanese beetles for more information.