My roses seem to be doing pretty well this summer. They are blooming, which is good. And they do not seem to be attracting hordes of pests, which is even better.
I don’t have a lot of cultivated type roses. You know. The fussy ones that need to be trimmed and maintained constantly. I have a couple of the old style bush roses around that were collected from other family members. The type where you grab a clipping, stick it in the ground and hope for the best. Then you end up with a giant, thorn filled monstrosity, just daring you to try to trim it back in the fall.
So a couple years ago it was somewhat surprising to find these rose bushes who are usually standing there screaming, “Come at me and I’ll stick you”, suddenly needing help defending themselves from little beetles. Japanese beetles, apparently. Although I have never demanded passports or anything like that.
But the Japanese beetles arrived and started munching rose blossoms. And munching. And munching. I believe there were also taking short breaks in their eating to produce more little beetles, because there was no shortage.
There are a couple ways to control Japanese beetles. You can spend hours picking them off, one at a time. You can spray them with something. Or you can set a trap. I went with the trap. I also sprayed some soapy water around, which might have been a bit of a deterrent, but I swear the beetles were just generally viewing it as “bath night”. So I had clean beetles, but not a lot fewer beetles.
The trap did work pretty well. It just is a bag with a bit of attractant. The beetles check it out, fall in the bag and die. Just as a note, a bag full of dead beetles smells really bad. Dumping the bag on a regular basis is a good idea.
That was a couple years ago. Last year, there were very few of them around. This year, I have yet to see any. They seem to be moving around the area, so they must be just eating in different yards in different years. So they’ll probably be back.
But I have my trap ready, just on case.
