Recycling the Death Jar



Japanese beetle

 I despise nothing more in the garden than the miserable creature,  Japanese beetle species Popillia japonica.  It is about 15 millimetres long and 10 millimetres wide, with iridescent copper-colored elytra and green thorax and head and was 
detected in New Jersey in 1916, having been introduced from Japan.

 I was feeling smug about my  rose gardens this year until just yesterday when I thought I saw one, then decided no, the body on that critter was not iridescent.  But that sighting raised my antennae to full alert status so last night on my patrol of the garden I looked carefully and crap, there was a Japper.  I cut it in half with my clippers and felt a great satisfaction.  We have had two days of hot humid weather and maybe that"s why they have arrived.  I did more internet research always hoping there may be a newly discovered cure but as of today, not so.  

One of the best sites for me was the University of MN extension where I learned these things feast on foilage of more than  300 species of  plants.  So much for other advice online to cultivate plants that the beetles avoid--we'd have to eradicate all our landscape and woods.  I also learned that this is the time of year they visit, last week of June or first part of July and so there was no need for my smugness.  They were merely awaiting their cue, as with everything else this year, they are a bit early.    http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/dg7664.html


Look carefully there is what will become my
first Japanese beetle death jar occupant this year

My day began early for this longest day of the year and one quick trip outside,  I knew it was time to bring out the Death Jar and invoke my killer, show no mercy persona.  

These beetles are laziest in the early morning hours so that's when I find it easiest to  swat them into the Death Jar.  Apparently they are late sleepers.  These pests are dominant only east of the Mississippi, so I did not encounter them in CA.  From my studies as an ARS (American Rose Society) certified consulting rosarian in CA and an advocate of not spraying pesticides that can be harmful to the rest of the environment, I adhere to a studied Integrated Pest Managment approach.   I do not spray  toxic insecticides because we have so many bees, birds, garden and tree frogs, toads, dragon flies and other Mother Natures good guys that I do not want to harm.  Besides I have long believed there l really is nothing to prevent nor cure the invasion of the Japanese beetles. 

My introduction to Japanese beetles was long ago, as a toddler in PA, I remember my grandma Rose would put a pail in her garden with water and kerosene into which she would drop the beetles, and which she sternly told me to not ever go near or I would catch on fire.  It was one warning I heeded because they were ugly and  stinky and since she did not like them I wanted nothing to do with them.  I remember her determination fighting these beetles by checking her roses and garden at least three times a day.  When she found them they went swimming in the pail.  If they fell to the ground she stomped them. Sometimes I'd spot  for her and race inside to "tell on the bugs"  she would come outside in a second and  catch them for the pail.   When the pail was as full of the uglies as she could tolerate, all contents, dead beetles and liquid were tossed onto Granpap's burn pile, I suppose the kerosene helped ignite the flames for their cremation.   

Oh no she has the Death Jar

Today nurseries sell Japanese beetle traps but my research shows they are not worthwhile.  The beetles have been  known to escape the trap (they don"t escape my Death Jar) and the scent of them attracts others.  Once they are in a neighborhood they spread and unless everyone attacks them and keeps after them, they have arrived.  One interesting tidbit about them is that it is not unusual for this pest to be abundant in one part of a town and not others, now that is just not "fair" to quote the occupant of our White House.   (Clue:  nothing is fair in life)  Just get over it!

Here are the first swimmers of this morning
Notice how they cling to each other
so they float together.

Here in  MN I find myself plagued with the   beetles.  Similar to my Grandma I I patrol my garden but I have a Death Jar (an old plastic Welch's Grape Jelly Jar that I save each year.  When I see a Japper, it's time for a swim.  Some say to  plop them into soapy water, but plain water is all I give them and sometimes a rose petal falls in with them.    Then I put the cap on the jar and let it sit in the sunshine, baking them one on top of the other.  I imagine their screams, "oh no she has returned with the Death Jar."  I would like to imagine that they would be so terrified that they would flee from my roses.  I would be merely hallucinating.   

Death oven baking

Better Homes and Gardens advice is: " The beetles release chemicals called pheromones into the air. These pheromones attract other beetles. So if you see a few of the bugs, they'll probably attract more. Get rid of Japanese beetles early, before they can invite more of their friends to feed on your plants."  So today was early detection and strike with a vengeance.  At last check not a beetle in sight, but there willl be no rest and I really fear leaving them next week when we  depart for our trip.  Last year my next door  neighbor called me, frantic, "Come see what bug I found on my flowers...."   I recognized it right away as a Japanese beetle and was surprised she did not know because she is a native of these parts.  She said she would get some spray but I told her there is nothing that works and that she should begin to harvest them and  showed her my  remedy but she was grossed out looking at  the Death Jar.  Later on she showed me the various sprays she'd wasted money on to no avail.  I warned her to save her $$ but she did not listen.  She has grandkids around and I find it potentially dangerous to have such spray poisons around children. 

The Gardens alive website offers various techniques, the most comical of which are 3, 4, 5.  I have added some comments to their advice below.   This is not rocket science nor gourmet cooking preparation.  

1. Hand picking can be very effective. Get around their ‘drop and roll’ defense by snagging them early in the morning when they’re slow and sluggish. Place a pan with some soapy water in the bottom below the infested area, reach for the beetles from above, so they can’t fly away, and they’ll drop right down into the water. (My comment who needs soap?)

2. Smother the beasts with a spray of good old insecticidal soap. Just be sure to spray the beetles, not the plants; soap sprays have to coat the bug to be effective.  (My comment,  right they hate a bath!)

3. Plug a vacuum cleaner (preferably a shop vac) into the nearest grounded outlet and hose the little nasties up like they was dust bunnies under a couch. (My comment, uh huh and to say nothing of vacuuming up leaves and petals too.  Oh I can just hear Jerry when I fetch the shop vacuum.)

4. Make beetle-repelling “bug juice” with your catch! Whiz a handful of the sucked-up beasts in an old garage-sale blender with a pint of water (this alone should make you feel much better!), strain the resulting slurry and spray it on your plants. Old time farmers swear that pests won’t go near plants that have been sprayed with the remains of their relatives. (My comment uh huh a blender for beetles...who"s  writing this Ima Gaarten?)

5. If you’re a wuss (or only have one blender), try making a more congenial repellent by whizzing up two cloves of garlic and a hot pepper in that pint of water instead of the pests. Strain, add a drop each of dishwashing soap and vegetable oil (or better still, insecticidal soap and horticultural oil), and spray it on the plants under attack early in the morning. (My comment,  we are not cooking  or manufacturing here and if this were so agriculture would have vat sized blenders to whiz up repel insects of all types...)

6. Or cut to the chase and soak plants under attack with one of those commercially available garlic sprays designed to deter mosquitoes; see last week’s Q (http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=572) for all the details. It should work even better than a home-made spray, AND the area will be free of biting bugs for a couple of weeks as a bonus!  (My comment, we live in  mosquito land, they are the national bird of MN.  Believe me garlic does not deter them)

7. If nothing less than an insecticide will suit you, make it a non-chemical, non-toxic one. The natural product Neem—derived from an Indian tree—should kill any beetles it hits and act as a ‘feeding deterrent’ to repel future attackers. (My comment  I have found Neem to be useless for everything else.  I suspect it is useful in making $$ profit for the sellers.  Better to do nothing and save your $$)

8. Birds DO eat Japanese beetles. So create a beetle buffet by placing birdbaths, feeders and nesting boxes near the plants under attack. And don’t chase away starlings! These so-called ‘pest’ birds feed on both the adults AND their grub-babies in your lawn!  (My comment, well we have and feed every bird known to the area including the gold finch nesting in a decorative by our front door.  I have never seen a bird after these bugs.)

One spray of the Kiss Me shrub rose

So I will continue my patrols, it keeps me busy but at least while we are home I can save some of the bushes from the gnawing of the beetles. 

Local deer have been so far successfully repelled by the Crop guard spay so Kiss Me, one  of Bambi's favorite snacks is blooming in glory this year.  Some sprays have 15 buds and blooms, I did get tired counting.  And the slight sweet scent is a reward to inhale/ 

But I did see that  another front hosta provided a munch for Bambi overnight.  Isn't it always something with nature's creatures?

Kiss Me Shrub in glorious bloom

Been BZ

Bumble  bee on salvia

This is the time of year  that I love, spring has sprung, the first roses are in bloom and offer fat promises of more to come with their buds, the peonies which are my next favorite flower after roses are  just breaking loose (of course we had rain yesterday--needed but it sags the peonies)and all the salvia and cat mint display a waving carpet of purple and lavender next to dusty miller in the rose garden.  The bees love the salvia and we have ever so many again feasting on the purple potion.  They make quite a racket with an incessant mmmmmm and buzz so loudly that it makes me laugh, especially when they want me to get out of their way as I monitor for a weed or unwanted growth around the roses.  I have heard that salvia plants are banned in some places because they are used to make hallucinogenic substances.  I have no idea if this is really true or not but if it is, that might account for my wacky B Z bees.  I used the salvia as fill in the middle of the rose garden and periodically I have to whack it back or it would take over.  Even more invasive is the cat mint.  Last year I dug half of these out to share and this year here they are again.   I really enjoy these perennials and their show. 

Salvia next to cat mint at sunset approaching

I really miss blogging but outside work beckons, well demands my attention and so there I spend my time.  Michelle asked me to post some blooms on Facebook which I did happily.  But as ever, once I get that camera going, I cannot just limit photos and find I have way too many to download and deal with.  So in the midst of effort I will post some of these lovely sights here to the blog.  The rose garden is a sight to watch  from our living room window, but I find myself called there from morning to evening and it is never just a minute or two.  The red knock out roses are in glory already--I had some concern as all put out red mahogany growth and then we had a frost.  Well, we were leaving for our trip and I had only time to snip them back with a solid lecture (yes I talk to my plants), "OK wise guys and gals, you know you are spurting growth too early for Minnesota.  But if you insist you will just have to toughen up because I cannot spend  time with you fixing your frost bitten tips.  So if you think you are big enough to bloom so early, you can just figure it out."  Several locals rushed to cover their roses when the frost came but I did not.  And it appears they took heed and have not complained.  The knock out roses have earned their keep because they winter without any special treatment.  That is another secret to my Minnesota roses, I refuse to baby them and bury them over winter.  They get a  heaping of mulch and clippings and they survive the snows.    



Red Knock Out roses,  by Bill Adler, WI hybridizer

Another champion Apple Jack rose, an Iowa Buck rose with Bon Chance
below it..Apple Jack adds to the feast of bees and the smell is
noticeable the minute we open the door

Close up of an opened nearly spent Apple Jack bloom with
many more buds to open yet

Front of the house from beyond rose garden  taken  as  sunset
approaches....notice the two dots from reflection on the camera lens.  I am intrigued
with this photo.  See the red knock outs at one end and the big
Apple Jack  anchoring the right

Red Knock Outs   Blue globe,  dragon fly with
vigilant smiling lady bug stick

First pink peo



Front rose garden looking down the cul de sac





The dreamy creamy peonies are the first to bloom out
along the back garden fence 

Even the tiny hens and chicks are running wild this year



First pink peony just yesterday.  I love these peonies even
with the black ants swarming them to open their petals.

Even as  a child I adored the  big peony  bushes off our front porch.  And I thought Mom a big grouch because she refused to allow me to  bring a bouquet inside admonishing me about their resident ants.  I learned soon after moving to Minnesota that she knew where of she spoke as I  brought a huge pail of peonies inside.  I could barely set them on the table before the ants came out and about.....oh me!  Mom was right.  I have heard that they can be sprayed to rid the ants but I am a natural gardener and do not use chemicals because we have so many beneficial insects and birds that I fore go anything harmful.  If it is bad for  a living creature it is probably bad for me too.  Now if and when those nasty demonic Japanese beetles arrive as they are bound to do here, I become quite violent.  I pluck them early morning and down into the death jar they go where they swarm and try to swim atop each other in a jar of detergent.  You see I do have a mean streak protecting my roses.  But it's all natural.   

Let me close today by introducing you to Van Gough, one of my cherished garden gnomes.  He was given to me by an elderly lady in CA who made him for my rose gardens there.  She was almost 989 and still doing ceramics; each year I bought something from her at a craft show in April or so at the Auburn Fair grounds.  Well, Van Gough is so named because he lost an ear, long ago who knows by what critter.  It was in pieces and could not be restored, but he still keeps his pleasant demeanor and annually he gets to set with the newest of our front Alberta spruce trees.    Blogger wants to post him sideways so I have removed the tree and try to show  Van Gough alone here so you can see the detail of her work and perhaps his missing ear which he does not seem to mind at all......he has adjusted, as we all must do when life gives us what we do not expect.



My apologies but I cannot get this photo rotated...Tilt

WTH Blogger?

Bambi's relatives = Devastation

I am still pouting and plotting revenge on the 4 legged  marauders who ravaged my rose garden last night.  Bambi's relatives have struck again. I know Bambi didn't do it because the tracks are too big, so I think this is the work of Bambi's relatives, the dad or brother as men have such little respect for finery and  there have  been multiple sightings  in our 'hood of a large buck!  One afternoon I was backing out of our driveway and noticed a big buck across the street standing in the neighbor's pines.  I stopped and waited not wanting to encounter it in my car just in case he decided to come across the street.  He did not.  Likely he was eyeing the rose garden guaging just when he might come for a treat. 

Bush trimmed

 I have been anticipating the blooms of 3 buds about 3 inches each on the Melody Parfumee rosebush. This is quite a big deal for this time of the year and for this area when we have had a hotter summer than normal.  Besides the MN  rose blooms just don't match CA size but I thought that this triplet just might.  I will never know now.   Such a devastating sight, 3 buds gone, trimmed before they ever had a chance to bloom, cut down before their prime. Maybe there is a poem somewhere in these words but the words I had this morning were not poetic.

Overnight, the marauders came and nipped all  the buds, chomping them like candy and further adding insult to injury by leaving their calling card, piles of skat in the lawn where I have  walked barefooted!  Fortunately this morning I had on flip flops and was not indulging my tootsies in the  morning lawn dew.  If you haven't seen it, here is just one deposit, I mean how rude,  they could at least have left this as fertilizer in the rose garden, don't you think?  Dine and dump has to be their motto.  When Jerry and his friends  deer hunted in the mountains on horseback in CA, I would stay at home and hope they didn't bag any.  When I was a little girl, and my uncle and others shot deer I would think it so mean and had to be reassured that it was not Bambi nor Rudolph.   So I have been a deer advocate but with the experiences here in MN, I have changed my attitude. 

In all our years in Newcastle, CA where we grew over 400 roses on 7+ acres, in the country we had no deer problem. But here in MN we live in the city limits no less and have wildlife issues! Deer are the bane of the existence of my rose gardens.

Chomped to the middle

 

I  did buy some a spray, Tree Guard developed at the University of Iowa  that local farmers use and that does seem to  turn them away, but I used the last of it around the bottoms of the bushes because we have been over run by  bunnies this year and the bunnies  chomped on all the bottom leaves.     This is our  2nd year  without the foxes in the hillside, they went to Florida during a harsh winter and never returned.  We enjoyed the fox and we had no problem with rabbit population but they have left us to battle the bunnies alone.    

 Meantime, I  did find a way to extend my  decor with wine bottles into the rose garden, shielding the bottoms from the bunnies.  It seemed to work, but nothing stops the deer who seem not to look down but prefer the eye  level tall buds and blooms.  

Wine bottle Bunny repellent

Melody is not the only rose bush they have enjoyed, Kiss Me along the drive was devastated a week ago, nipped in the bud too.  I will now wait for several more weeks for this bloom. 

Kiss Me in recovery

So with this start to my day followed by a good work out at Curves, I went  on about my errands in the heat and decided to seek solace in the Aldi's European dark chocolate bar.  While there I discovered a new cookie line they have added, Benton's which includes various flavors but one of which is  chocolate mint, which reminded me of my all time favorite Girl Scout cookie, thin mints.  I have never yet found an Aldi's product that I did not like, so I added both these to my cart and brought them home.  One more errand involved a trip to Woodman's to replenish my wine racks and browse their massive alcohol offerings.  A new mojito mix looked inviting so it  made it's way home  with me.  Colonel Wally, my laptop and kitchen TV bear welcomed the set up for my own little afternoon party. 

Wally welcomes the party

A trip to the local farmers' market, would take up the rest of my afternoon but  I did have  time for some refreshment, a  tall mojito and a few mint cookies.  Ummmm, delicious, my mood is now better.   

Afternoon break time

Tomorrow I will post my trip to the farmer's market, because my blog writer is acting up and I am beginning to get annoyed with the spastics of trying to post and add the photos.  Besides, it is evening and time for a nibble of the Aldi's chocolate bar!  G'night.

The roses are set but I am not

The roses have been fed, weeded, trimmed and now I am in from the sun.  Oh it smells so divine out there   in the rose garden and actually out front period.  What a sweet wonderful scent from the bushes fully in bloom!  Not  much  better than that!   I  will soon be back to listening to the  3rd session of "Building Great Sentences" by Professor Brooks Landon, a writing class that I purchased from the Teaching Company, but I have to let out more steam and what better place than here on the blog. 

I am  awaiting  return phone calls regarding my uncle Carl.  I  researched the medication recommended by the  consulting geriatric Psychiatrist  who is making calls to the facility where Carl resides.  It is "resperidone" and if I had  learned about this while I was in PA I would have had very swift action. He has been on it for  two months and initially when he had a urinary tract infection along with an antibiotic.   I noticed Carl is  a bit slower but attributed it to the aging decline.  I spoke with this psychiatrist who explained the need to keep him in a  routine, etc.  Yeah, well I know that too.  But today I learned that this drug can have very severe side effects, including cardiac arrest in the elderly and that it is primarily for  bipolar and or schizophrenic patients.  OMG my Uncle has dementia, not that!  I am really fuming about this, so there are going to be some answers today and or I will return to PA with a vengeance. Both the director of the facility and this psychiatrist are not going to ignore me.  I am not uneducated in geriatric care having more information than the average bear  from my professional career, so I will resolve this.  I cannot understand why he would not have prescribed Aricept or Nomenda, both of which are  commonly used drugs for dementia patients.  Well we are certainly going to have explanations about this.