Re: Basil is SWARMING with Japanese beetles!

Probably the easiest thing to do with potted basil is to use a physical barrier. Use something called Remay, which is a lightweight white spun polyester. Just put some stakes in or a tomato cage and drape this fabric over it. Make sure you seal it towards the bottom with bent hangers in the shape of big staples or some stones. This stuff is often used to keep out cucumber beetles and I'm not sure whether Japanese beetles can eat thru this stuff or not. When you need some basil just open a section, pince off some leaves and close it back up.

-al sung Rapid Realm Technology, Inc. Hopkinton, MA (Zone 6a)

Remay is useful, but it is not available in all garden centers, so you might have to make do with something like cheesecloth, which might be found in a supermarket (although there are fewer people these days who use such things). Maybe an old gauze curtain. Plastic window screening is flexible enough to make a cage around a plant, but it's more work than draping a cloth over it.

Since there's only one plant being attacked, the easiest and cheapest thing would be to take a jar of soapy water and just flick the beetles off the plant into the jar. Use your fingers. The beetles don't bite or sting. You will have to do it for a few days to get them all, but the materials are likely to be readily available. The basil plant will probably recover from the beetles' chewing unless it's completely defoliated. Even then, given good growing conditions, basil is a fairly tough plant and can sprout new leaves from chewed-off stems.

As far as the bag-a-bug is concerned, I wouldn't use it for a local problem. The trap works by presenting a pheromone to attract the beetles, which fall into a bag containing soapy water, where they drown. The Japanese beetles are strong fliers, so they will come from fairly far away to the trap. Since not all of them get trapped, you will probably find that you have more beetles in that area when you use the trap.

Holy Cow!

Now every tree in our yard is completely infested with the things! I found one store selling Bag-a-Bug.

The bags fill up in literally less than an hour, so I rigged up a big kitchen-size garbage bag under the lure.

The whole neighborhood is infested...it's biblical proportions!

Time for a massive planting of 4 O'clocks!

-- "In this universe the night was falling,the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered: and along the path he once had followed, man would one day go again."

Arthur C. Clarke, The City & The Stars