The Japanese Beetle Solution
If you’re growing a garden for food, you’re no doubt familiar with the little, shiny red menace: Japanese beetles!! Here where we live, they show up in June, and do their best to eat every damn grape leaf on the arbors over the summer. The skeletonized leaves are depressing to see- the grapes continue to grow all summer, but if the leaves are impacted with enough beetle damage, the entire crop can be lost by the end of the season… right before they’re ready to harvest.
Many people have the first instinct to run right out and buy any one of a vast assortment of pesticides on the market, and spray their plants to the point of dripping. Kill those little beasts in their tracks, right?
Wrong.
Well, it’s a bad idea to go that route with grapes, anyway.
Japanese beetles will feed on many types of foliage, such as:
*Apple
*Plum
*Pear
*Peach
*Roses…
*Kiwi
-that’s just to name a few! Some pesticides are considered “Safe” to use on edible plants, but this is, at best, translatable to “Use at your own risk”! At one time, they sprayed DDT on children to prove how safe it was- remember that? Years later, we know that exposure caused miscarriages, various cancers, etc. So, yeah- I’m not a fan of pesticides, but if you’re willing to risk it and really need a quick fix to the Japanese beetle problem: spray away if you wish!
Grapes in particular are a unique challenge when it comes to these little buggers, because any pesticide or chemical you use on your grapevines will tend to flavor the grapes. This problem isn’t restricted to pesticides, either- it goes for fertilizers, fungicides and other “helpful” chemicals as well!
Really, who wants to prune, baby the grapes all season, and put in all the work of making wine, jelly, jam, raisins or whatever- only to discover a nasty chemical aftertaste? NOT US!!! This is one of those instances when going strictly organic is a real pain in the butt, BUT… good things come to those who work for it, right?
We have discovered one way to at least help, a little bit, with these nasty beetles. There are several types of traps on the market which usually use a pheremone-based lure to attract the little guys. They get a little punch-drunk on the bait and fall into a bag below, where they are trapped and can be disposed of.
In our situation, we have seven grapevines split between two locations in the yard. I bought four traps, and as soon as I saw the dreaded red bastards in the second week of June, I place two traps near both grape installations. These traps catch and hold several beetles- at least a few a day, which helps! By mid-July, however, the damage to our foliage and the presence of rampant beetles is still a problem!
I suppose we could festoon the surrounding trees with beetle traps, and spend a small fortune on this endeavor. Looking at how many beetles are actively eating our grape leaves, however, compared with how many the four traps have effectively caught… I have to wonder if adding more traps baited with beetle-sex pheremones wouldn’t be sort of like playing Marvin Gaye for the pests. Seriously, at least half of the beetles I see are mid-coitus, as it is. Sometimes, there’s three or four of them having a kinky conga-line party. I want to get rid of them, not provide a red-light district for their depraved crop-killing sexcapades! So, really… the only method we’ve found so far with a tangible and immediately obvious result is: CATCHING THEM BY HAND! Yes, folks; science and technology are no match for the dedicated hands of the would-be grape grower, in this case… though, as I said, the traps are working, though not nearly as effectively as I’d like. I can catch more by hand in fifteen minutes than the four traps will, over a couple days’ time! If you’re squeamish about bugs, don’t worry: they can’t bite or sting you (though their squirmy, pokey little legs in your hand might give you the shudders). Luckily, beetles aren’t the smartest of prey, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble catching them. It’s also a FANTASTIC idea to give this job to your kids as a chore, by the way!!
Obviously, you can just grab them off the leaves when you see them. Squish ‘em, throw them down on the ground and stomp on them; feed them to your chickens, ducks, or the puppy who’s not-quite-right in the head. I find the easiest way to get them, however, is to drown them.
The beetles have this escape maneuver, where they lift their legs and roll right off the leaf when they sense danger (picture a parachutist falling out of a plane). In mid-fall, they’ll take wing and buzz off, effectively escaping. To counter this tactic, take a plastic cup and put two or three inches of water in it. Whenever possible, hold this cup below the leaf that has a beetle on it. This way, if it tries to roll away and escape when you try to grab it, it’ll usually plunk itself right into the water. Also, they sometimes will have a pretty good grip on the leaf, and it’s easy to lose your grip trying to pry them off without tearing the foliage. If they fall or you drop them, they’ll still usually end up in the water… and of course, the ones you do manage to pluck from your precious plants? Throw them into the cup too!!
You can add a couple drops of liquid soap to kill them faster, but plain water will drown them effectively, eventually (overnight will do it for most of them- just leave the cup somewhere it won’t be knocked over). Right now, in mid-July, I’m making at least one pass around all our grapes, once a day. I’m picking off at least 100 beetles, every day- often twice that many, when I make multiple passes over the course of the day. Our commercially bought traps have maybe 200 in each of them, caught over the course of a month… like I said, the traps help, but they’re no match for investing the time and effort in becoming a Beetle Terminator.
Check us out later this season, to see the results of our efforts with the grapes! We’ve got our fingers crossed, hoping for a bumper crop, despite the challenges like this!
