Fighting Japanese Beetles

I am not the world’s best gardener. As a matter of fact, I am lousy with plants. But, there are a few plants in the summer time I do okay with.

One is my petunias. I love planting them and tending to them because they turn out so beautiful, make me feel accomplished, and are easy to take care of. If you would like to read more, I did write a hub on planting petunias.

The other plant I do all right with are Knock Out roses. You plant them and can leave them alone if you want and just watch them bloom. I normally try to deadhead them – meaning cut the old buds off so the new shoots can come through quicker. (I feel so big using the gardening term “deadhead.” Learned it last year, and I feel so proud.) You do not have to deadhead the Knock Outs, though. They will grow back anyway.

Both petunias and Knock Out roses are a good investment of your money for a beautiful yard.

Last year, I kept hearing about the dreaded Japanese beetle and how destructive it was. Then I experienced firsthand what those little bugs could do.

They look like a cross between a June Bug and one of those brown bugs that beat themselves against any type of light. All my plants were victims to this destructive little critter. They were hanging in clumps off my plants.

My husband and I found a fix for them that just amazes me. It is called BAG-A-BUG. You can buy them at Lowes or online, and I am sure you can find them other places too.

They are amazing. The Spectracide tablet you place on the yellow vane that you hang in a tree attracts the beetles.

You need to place them away from your house and plants so they will not be a nuisance as they fly by. The bag literally catches thousands of them in a day.

You will want to buy replacement bags; the money you spend is well worth saving your plants, and it is not very expensive to buy a box of bags.

This summer I had not heard anything about the Japanese beetles on the news like I did last year. I didn’t give it much thought and figured we were in the clear. Then, in the past few days, I noticed my petunias were being eaten – the flowers, not the greenery. Then I checked my roses. The bush had been full of buds about to bloom a couple of days before. Now, the buds are gone and the leaves are eaten with barely the stems in place. I could not believe they had arrived so quickly and had already taken out my petunias and roses. Fortunately, they are hardy plants and will recover.

The bag is shaped like an hourglass so once the beetles get in, they are trapped. A warning: You will want to change the bag almost daily or every other day because once they fill up the beetles on the outside will go back to your plants. Also, they stink to high heaven if you don’t get rid of the bag.

Hopefully, your area is not inundated with the Japanese beetles. If it is, get Bag-A-Bug in order to save those lovely plants. I do not mean to sound like an infomercial, but these bags really do work.

My husband got the Bag-A-Bug out and put it together at the kitchen table. When he walked out the back door, he was immediately swarmed by the beetles. They were a cloud around his body. I wish I could have snapped a picture of it. It would have been a blur, though. He raced to the back fence, hung the bag in a tree, and ran out of the cloud of beetles.

Later, I just had to see if my plants were safe and if the bag was working. I flipped a couple of bugs off, but that was it. They had almost all migrated to the bag. I went out to check the bag, and the beetles were all clumped around the opening. It was like the beetles’ version of getting in to see The Beatles after the show was sold out. The bottom part of the bag is probably the size of a man’s hand, and it was already full.