Reno_Raines
Member
Japanese Beetles are eating here in central Iowa. They attack my Chinook hops first, then go for the grapes. I also have Cascade and Mt. Hood, they never bother them. Anybody else experience this?
I just read in Mother Earth News (June/July 2011) some techniques for controlling Japanese beetles with organic methods. It talked about chickens, ducks, and guinea fowl as great predators in the spring for the beetle larva. Also mentioned was creating habitat, such as bird houses, etc., for nesting pairs of robins and blue birds, which feed the insect to their young. Trap crops, like raspberries, might be something to consider, too. The article said that many commonly used prevention methods, like garlic-pepper spray, milky spore disease, pheromone traps and row covers, had high failure rates.
You can use pheromone traps to lure the beetles away from your hops (or other infested plants), the problem is that they can lure beetles to your yard from pretty far away and in the long run lead to a worse problem. One of the biggest hurdles to controlling Japanese Beetles is that they live in and hatch out of the ground, you can only control the grub population in your yard, if your neighbor doesn't or even several houses down you will still have Japanese beetles.
I have had Cascade and Mt. Hood for 3 years now and they have never taken even one bite out of them. The Chinook bine is 6ft away and they always destroy it. I go out with a bucket everyday and gather as many of them as I can and burn them. Also, there is some vine that grows in my yard that they may like even more than hops it has 5 leaves and is a pest that I must fight back every week or it will take over the place, I will post pics later.
Yes. That is the same stuff I have. The people I bought the house from 6 years ago actually planted it and were proud of it. I didn't know any better and also forgot the name. I just rip it out of the ground every few weeks, it grows faster that anything I have seen.
Sevin insecticide seems to work on Japanese Beetles, I used it extensively last year and there seem to be fewer beetles this year.
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