Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

Maybe you haven't seen the movie, but TPP was amused to see a new green gardening product being advertised under the trade marked product name Beetlejus.  This must be pretty new because TPP hadn't notice it before, but supposedly this is a Bt insecticide for beetles!  Bt stands for Bacillus thuringiensis and when consumed the beetles soon stop eating (don't you like the sound of that) and then die.  Since humans are not susceptible to this particular bacterium, it is pretty harmless and can be used up to the day of harvest.  It works on Japanese beetles, adults and larvae, and hopefully on cucumber and bean beetles too.  And if it works on flea beetles, what joy!  This is not an endorsement because TPP doesn't do those, but an informative message, so no links to retail outlets.  It's an integrity thing. And so far this is untried by yours truly, but other Bt products have performed well. Not sure if this will work on butterfly larvae or not, the product label does not so indicate although the ads say "caterpillars", which beetles don't have. So doubtful it will work like on them.  Different strains of Bt for different insects. But you have to say the name three times.

Mid-week odds & ends

Rose, Pete - Always liked the guy as a scrappy player for the Reds. Hard to believe he'd throw a game just to make a few bucks betting, but when you break the rules and then lie about it, you've given them enough rope to really hang you. 
June rain - TPP has recorded 7.25 inches of rain this month when the area usually averages around 4.25 inches for the whole month. It's raining now and heavy rains are predicted over night. Never seen the soil so wet for so long in the summer. Weeds pull pretty easy, but all this rain makes them grow like crazy and totally weeded beds now need weeding again.
Lilies - June is lily month in our gardens. Mrs. Phactor likes her lilies, daylilies, oriental lilies, tiger lilies, all types. So some colorful masses of color are gracing the gardens, now if life just allowed us to sit on the patio a bit more and enjoy the show.
Sarah Palin - You know your irrelevance factor is climbing fast because our country's favorite incoherent commentator did not have her Phlox News contract renewed. Now she's really yesterday's news. Makes her quest for cash a lot tougher.
Confederate flag - TPP's Mother was a southerner from Mississippi. But she had the poor white perspective on race where you both lived the same way, sometimes right across the dirt road from each other, so played with their kids, and you understood that the differences were those of opportunity and money. And she got out via marriage. She'd cheer for the Arkansas Razorbacks or Mississippi women in beauty contests, but that was as much support for the "south" as she had. She did love gardenias.
Father's Day - The F1 remembered her Dad and brought many little gifts: rambutan, papaya, pepino, a blue cheese, a raclette cheese, some fancy coffee, a tamarind concentrate, and sour patch kid candies. How thoughtful! Rambutan in USA markets is fairly new, but tropical fruit that has to travel a long way is often not tip top produce. The leathery rind of rambutans and lychees should be red and pliable. Because they are often picked too green they may not have the best flavor. Some of these were pretty good, about 5.5 on the 10 point fresh tropical scale; they others were past ediblity. Made a great papaya salad with coconut, lime juice, cilantro, and hot sauce. Some of these orange-fleshed papayas are surprisingly good, maybe reaching an 7.5 to 8 flavor-wise, if you know how to pick them.
Currants - Picked several quarts of red currants from our 3 young bushes. This is enough for a year's supply of currant jelly. But today the aging back is complaining about work this low.
Japanese beetles - They have hatched, but no telling how big the population will be. Hoped the wet weather in combination with milky spore fungus would keep them in check. But bought some more netting from favorite fabric shop to cover new apple trees anyways.

Japanese beetle invastion - 2009

Japanese beetles have extended their range into my local portion of Lincolnland in just the past 3 or so years much to the dismay of gardeners. And the Phactor is not immune; his gardens are being consumed as much as everyone else's. So what can you do?

Japanese beetle traps are not the answer. Studies have shown that such traps can attract way more beetles than they kill, so while you may feel good about all the beetle bodies piling up, the local population may be higher than it would be without the trap.

Spraying plants with insecticide is not really the answer either both because no one likes spreading such nasty stuff around, especially on plants that you are planning to consume, but in small gardens, the beetles still cause intolerable damage. Last year they denuded two young apple trees while I was away for a long weekend. If the trees were sprayed, the beetles would eat until the toxin kills them and then they would be replaced by more beetles who eat until the toxin kills them, and so on until my trees are again denuded. Since the object is to prevent the trees from being eaten, not to kill beetles, this year the Phactor took another approach. Evaluation is continuing.

Light weight netting can be purchased at many fine fabric stores; the ladies are usually quite helpful. So far the netting tents over the young apple trees, held in place by extremely high tech clothes pins, seem to be doing an excellent job of thwarting the voracious beetles. Finer wedding veil voile could also be used to protect green beans or cucumbers from the small beetles that they attract. In the case of the cucumbers it isn't that the beetles eat so much but they transfer a wilt causing bacterium that invariably kills the cucumber plants (and their close relatives, cantelope).

Such netting is quite cheap, a nice alternative to more expensive row coverings.

Do the readers of the Phytophactor have other anti-Japanese beetle methods they would like to share?