Another Year, Another Insect Infestation Attacking The Garden
Hey everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your weekends. I know I have been, especially with my steemit coins for 2018 coming in yesterday. Well, that is not the subject of today’s post. Instead, I wanted to talk a little about the insect infestation happening on our homestead.
Last year, we had a really heavy Japanese Beetle infestation. They mainly targeted our grape vines and a couple of fruit trees, but we were able to get the problem under control using traps to catch them. Well this year, they have come out 10-fold eating everything in their paths. I read somewhere that it can take a few years to greatly reduce their population.
These little guys have not only been eating our grapes and fruit trees, but they have started moving on to our garden plants like broccoli, corn, green beans. I guess one can say that they are not a picky bug, but we are going to try to get rid of as many as we can without using any chemicals. We like to keep our foods as natural and organic as possible, so the first course of action I think will be taken is to place our Japanese beetle traps back outside.
This was done last year and it seemed to work fairly well for us and we even bought a couple more of them to place on our property. If you haven’t heard of them before, the traps work by placing a lure to draw in the beetles which then fall into a bag that they cannot escape. Overtime, the bags can accumulate quite a few beetles, which then requires you to dispose of the beetles in the reusable bags, so that more can be caught. This will give us 4 traps total outside, so I guess we will have to wait and see if it works again this year.
I would be very interested to hear if any of you have a natural way that works for your Japanese beetle problems.
Thanks for reading!
Good luck keeping that under control. Hope they haven't done too much damage? They look like that are doing a lot more than just eating 😉👨👧💏💘💦💦🍆🍆
Thanks @welshstacker! Its getting to the point were we need to do something or it could kill some of our plants.
Yeah they are doing a lot more than eating! Believe me, I tried to find some that weren't showing their love but they literally all were. Haha!
Well done @knowledge-seeker! You successfully guessed the match result.
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Do you want to know your current ranking? Read this post
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard!
Do you like the SteemitBoard World Cup Contest?
Vote for @steemitboard as a witness and get one more award!
In our 1 ha. organic garden we have the Colorado beatle on our potatoes and we pick m of the leaves whenever we can. Say 20 minutes every other day.
I will occasionally see a few of those as well, but like you mentioned, nothing a good picking cannot take care of :)
There have been a few years in the past that some potato bugs have done a number on our potatoes before we caught them. Thanks for stopping by @goldrooster!
Well done @knowledge-seeker! You successfully guessed the match result.
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard!
Do you like the SteemitBoard World Cup Contest?
Vote for @steemitboard as a witness and get one more award!
I've not come across these little critters before! I hear you on the attack though - this year it's aphids and white fly for me.
Yeah they can be a real pain. I hope you are able to get yours pests under control. There is nothing worse than putting a lot of work into your garden only to have it destroy. Best of luck and thanks for stopping by!
Well done @knowledge-seeker! You successfully guessed the match result.
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard!
Do you like the SteemitBoard World Cup Contest?
Vote for @steemitboard as a witness and get one more award!
Thank you for your continued support of SteemSilverGold
Thanks @ssg-community!
sorry to hear about your Japanese beetle issue :( I hope the traps work for you. I appreciate you sharing the photos. I've never seen them before but now If I see those I'll know what we are dealing with.
Thanks @walkerland, I hope the start working pretty quick! Last year, it took a few days or about a week before we noticed significant results. I am glad that this might help you catch a problem early if you come across it :) Thanks for your comment!
Yeah, we got hit hard about 6 years ago. They killed my cherrybushes out completely that year. For the next three years my kids and I spent a lot of our free time picking ten off of the plants around the yard and garden by hand and throwing them in a bucket of soapy water. In the evening they calm down and they're easy to just pick off. I think that got rid of a lot of the mature bugs, cutting back on their egg laying. Since then, their numbers have decreased signifigantly. I see and catch 10 or 12 on the average day now.
I am sorry to hear about your cherry bushes @powellx5! These guys are a menace to fruit trees, bushes, and grapes. Right now we are dealing with what seems like hundreds or thousands, but as soon as we get the biggest part under control, we will probably go to picking them off. Thanks for stopping by!
Well done @knowledge-seeker! You successfully guessed the match result.
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard!
Do you like the SteemitBoard World Cup Contest?
Vote for @steemitboard as a witness and get one more award!