japanese beetles and wild grape vines

[songbird]

while out wandering the place the other day i noticed that the japanese beetles have absolutely shredded the wild grape vine leaves and are quite heavily infested in them, which is why i'll have to keep hand picking them off the bean plants for quite some time. today, i'm going to go out with a large bucket with a little soapy water in it and see if i can knock the population back a bit.

usually i've been hand picking them off the plants and squishing them and leaving them for the birds to eat. so i will probably squish a few back there too and see how many get eaten.

the wild grape vines should be removed anyways as they are growing on a fence and will weigh it down too much again. we cut them back this past spring, but they've certainly bounced back. it's not an easy edge/fence to maintain as it is right along the bank of the large drainage ditch... in the longer term plan i'll probably remove it entirely as i think it is more work to keep up than the benefit it provides in rerouting deer to one side or the other.

songbird

[songbird]

hand picking has reduced the japanese beetle population by quite a bit, but the infestation continues.

i suspect the numbers of beetles letting out attractive scents is pulling in the beetles from the entire area (depending upon the wind direction).

the trend in picking and counts depends a lot upon the amount of wind and what the temperature is like when i get out to pick.

if it is cooler the beetles are not as active and i can often reach them before they let go and fall to the ground. if i'm able to get the container under the clump of beetles then most of them will fall in and be drowned. otherwise they escape until i get another chance at them.

if it is windy then they don't notice me getting nearby clumps of beetles and thus also more get into the container.

with that all said, the past few days i've been getting about 20 from the bean patches and between

50 and 100 off the wild grape vines. the peak last week was around 300 beetles one day.

as i'm seeing new growth on the wild grape vines that hasn't been getting shredded it has made a difference. mostly i'm doing this hand picking to keep them from shredding the beans too badly that they won't have a decent crop. so far not too much damage to the beans because i have been catching them early.

songbird

[Steve Peek]

The beetles leave a pheromone once they start feeding. You can kill every beetle on a leaf and the next day there will be more on that same leaf.