Yes, They're Here

'Prairie Dawn'

Those who know ProfessorRoush and his blog well have probably been wondering; why hasn't he said anything yet about Japanese Beetles?  Does he not have them? Are they late?  Has he given up the good fight and surrendered to inevitability?

Surrendered?  Never!  I will never surrender to
these shiny-helmeted alien invaders!   Vile creatures they are, ugly, immoral, bereft of a purpose in life, content only to defile and despoil that which is beautiful and pure.   Patrick Henry stirred a nation with the words "Give me Liberty or Give me Death".  To stir a nation of gardeners, ProfessorRoush loads up the poison bottles and cries "Give THEM the Death they deserve!"

The beetles came early this year.  I first noticed them on June 15th, a few stray males (males are smaller and emerge first) which I handpicked and dispatched under the heel of my boot, gleefully grinding them into the nearest landscape edger.  I then took the nuclear option and malathioned every rose in the garden, creating in essence a chemical border fence to repel friend and foe alike.  My apologies to the bees and ladybugs of my region, but war is ugly and accidental casualties are as unavoidable in the garden as they are on a human battlefield. 

'Marie Bugnet'

All was well for a few days, but a couple of nights ago, I noticed the beetles were beginning to return, right on schedule with the bottle instructions to spray every two weeks or, "in severe cases, weekly applications may be necessary."   I guess it was necessary, but I waited until today, mowing day, to reassess and reinitiate the wholesale carpet bombing of my garden.

'Prairie Dawn'

One of their usual victims, 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', seemed free of beetles but Ms. Hastrup is not quite herself this year, recovering from a major surgery to remove a self-seeded clematis and rough dogwood from her interior. I first found beetles today on 'Prairie Dawn', a dependable, tall, pink Canadian rose bred by Harp in 1956. I've not written much about 'Prairie Dawn', but she's been there with me, all this time. You have to look closely, in the first picture above, to see the beetle in the flower above the pristine 'Prairie Dawn' bloom.

'Scabrosa'

I was more concerned when I found the loathsome creatures nibbling on 'Scabrosa'.   I've had trouble getting this rose going well and this specimen, at 2 years of age, is still barely knee-high, less than 2 feet in diameter, and she surely doesn't need the extra burden of beetles.

'Marie Bugnet'

It was finding beetles on 'Marie Bugnet' that strengthened my resolve and prompted me into immediate action.  My poor, innocent, virginal 'Marie Bugnet', now just a backdrop to a recreation of 'Caligula', beetles frolicking in mass orgy, 8 or 10 to a flower and in positions that are, frankly, not describable to civilized ears.    I can't fornicate in my garden, public nudity laws being what they are and lacking a good high solid fence, and I'm not about to allow the damned beetles to crap their frass on my beloved Marie while they madly make little beetles.  There are no doubts about what these beetles are doing, I'm just not sure if they know or care who's on top or underneath.

So, spray I did, wetting down the garden and beetles in a frenzy of rage.  The results are pictured at right, leaves dripping with insecticide and beetles glistening.  I can only hope I did some good, 3 gallons of toxic brew later, but it's hard to say.  I would feel better if the insecticides acted quickly and fatally, but soaking wet beetles continue to copulate with abandon right in my presence until I am forced through disgust and decency to look away.  It's only now, hours later, when I see fewer beetles and feel I've made some headway to keep Marie's flowers free of fornication and frass, that I feel better in my despair..

Hello, I'm Orange....ish

'Kaveri'

While mowing this morning, ProfessorRoush was also assessing the garden.  I've been absent for nearly a week and the garden has gone the way of teenagers who have slipped from parental oversight; in short, chaos and a sense of testing limits is radiating from the garden. We've lacked rain for nearly 2 months, the paltry singular decent rain of a couple weeks back merely a fond memory now.   Summer heat seems to be moving in for an extended visit, like a troublesome relative who doesn't know when to leave.   Weeds are hellbent on world domination.  

Asclepias tuberosa

I can see the buffalograss thinking about dormancy amidst the drought, and the redbud leaves are curled at nightfall, stressed and sullen.  The first rose flush has fled to the past, accompanying the peonies and lilacs along into memories.  Oriental and Asiatic lilies are budded up, but yet to color.   The garden is green, but not the green of early spring, it's now the deep green of late summer, spotted here and there by a hint of yellowed or browned foliage that has been burnt by the hot sun.   One has to look hard to see color, but it's there, hidden in shade, the early daylilies and lilies and perennials vying for attention beneath the shade.

You have to look closely beneath this volunteer Redbud in back of my house, but deep in the darkness there are small fires burning.   The prolific 'Kaveri' lilies are in full bloom, orange and rust-red in ostentatious display.   Lower, a self-seeded Asclepias tuberosa (Butterfly MilkWeed) has escaped from the prairie into my border and I happily provide refuge for it in exchange for the spectacular play of sunlight and shade on its blooms and for the butterflies it attracts.    Another neighbor under the tree, the daylily 'Spacecoast Color Scheme' exerts its own orange-red theme on the venue.  Floral fires in my landscaping are, this week, the pride of my garden. 

'Space Coast Color Scheme'

Beyond these, I welcome the daylily season that's just getting started and the Knautia macedonia taking over my front landscaping, and the Shasta Daisies blooming and all the other minor garden players who contribute to the daily symphony.  There is, however, no rest for this gardener in the foreseeable future.  The second flush of roses is coming and I noted today the first Japanese Beetle on a 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', a find that extended this weekend's garden chores with the necessity (in my view) of a good spraying of all the roses.  I am still in last year's mindset of all-out Beetle genocide, and so I sprayed and poisoned a good portion of the roses in the first preemptive strike of the season.   And then I rushed in and showered them pyrethrins away, leaving the garden to find its own way for another week.  

Later. Let's Play Global Thermonuclear War...

Those who are of ProfessorRoush's era will recognize the quote represented by the title of this blog entry, and some may even hear it in the voice of Matthew Broderick, overriding the computer pleading, "How about a nice game of chess?"   Broderick, in 1983's War Games, ends up regretting his choice as the runaway computer tries to set WWIII into real motion.  The Japanese Beetles currently invading my garden are going to regret their attack as well.

'Marie Bugnet'

Despite my calm surrender of last year, I am not nearly so complacent this year as I confront the onslaught of the Japanese Beetle Hordes.   I first detected them on Monday, 7/4/2022, 4 small males, happily resting among 'Blanc Double de Coubert', my early warning detector.   Those first spies were tried and summarily executed by crushing, momentary satisfaction in a minor tactical skirmish.   Then, Wednesday night, there were more, a dozen enemy combatants on 'Blanc' and on 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', a second front opened despite my earlier victory.

'Hope for Humanity'

I resolved, given the hot weather and my workload, to spray the first thing Saturday, a perceived opportunity to head off the main battle, but as I prepared my defenses yesterday these beasts stepped completely over the line.   They were on every rose when I went to reconnoiter.  They were on semi-doubles, doubles, and even singles like the Kordes hybrid of 'Rosalina'.  Past years, they've been attracted to 'Blanc', 'Fru Dagmar', maybe 'Martin Frobisher' or 'Morden Blush' in overflow, but they've left the reds alone.  This year they were on reds, pinks, and even my beloved 'Marie Bugnet.'  Is there 'Hope for Humanity' when they attack such a peacefully-named red rose?   Regardless, beetles fornicating on the virginal white blooms of  'Marie Bugnet' is a step beyond what I can abide.  Forget the calm internet recommendations for knocking them into a bucket of soapy water or for hand-picking them and crushing them.   Forget the controversary over the question of whether Beetle traps kill or simply attract more to your garden.   

'Blanc' with 10 beetles

All that changes when you look at this picture of 'Blanc Double de Coubert'.   How many beetles are visible in this small area.   I'll give you a hint...it's ten.   Ten individuals, with several in fornication mode.

'Rosalina'

If it is war they want, then war they shall have.  I'm going completely nuclear in my garden.  Yesterday I drenched everything in Ortho Rose Spray, labeled for beetles and all manner of creepy creatures.  You can see it in the pictures, all these beetles individually soaking in the insecticide.  Last night, they still squirmed and moved, leading me to doubt the efficacy of Ortho spray.   

'Linda Campbell'

During my afternoon reconnaissance, I expect the battle temporarily won, but I have little real hope of going out to find the beetles gone.  If yesterday's spray isn't effective, I'll be making the rounds of box stores today.   Perhaps something less-pyrethriny, my pretties?  Something less gentle, something more lethal?   You can't win a war by being nice.

Yes, there will be innocent casualties.  The bumbles in my back yard had better stay away from the roses, or they'll be swept up in friendly fire.   This fat bombardier on 'Raspberry Rugostar' was minding his own business, but less than 4 inches from this guy a beetle feasted on another bloom.  Must I chose a Silent Spring over a summer smothered in beetle frass?  It seems the answer is "yes."  Victory is by no means certain, but defeat and capitulation are no longer viable choices.

Fabulous Fuchsias

Buzz™ Velvet

Standing out, even from a distance, from the daylily yellow and oranges, from the hydrangea whites and green ornamental grasses, are a few eye-catching, awe-inspiring plants that are cheerfully dragging ProfessorRoush with them through the hot weather of late June.  Some might call them pink, some might call them "hot pink," but they are the definition, the epitome of fuchsia.   Fuchsia color without fuchsia genetics, you might say.

The most vivid, screaming at me from far away in the garden as I peer out my window each morning, is Buddleia 'Buzz™ Velvet', a  2014 planting in my garden introduced to commerce by the venerable British firm, Thompson and Morgan.  I've grown a number of Buddleia cultivars over the years, but this one and 'White Profusion' are the only ones that have stood the test of time and Kansas weather.  The latter may survive only because it's southern exposure and protection from north winds from the house behind it, but 'Buzz™ Velvet' is exposed out in the middle of the garden, protected only by some dead ornamental grass in the winter.     

Buzz, if I can use that shortened moniker, stands about 5 foot tall and is blooming its head off at the moment.   A dazzling vision from the house, I'm showing you the opposite viewpoint here, because looking from the deeper garden towards the house and barn, it is the backdrop to Hibicus 'Midnight Marvel' and the blue-foliaged seed-pod-ed remains of Argemone polyanthemos, the white prickly poppy that I allow to grow there.  Yes, I like Buzz™ Velvet, as do the butterflies who are all over it, all the time.

'Moje Hammarberg'

Marking the corner of a nearby rose bed, fuchsia-pink 'Moje Hammarberg' is also a bright bloomer, although a more diminutive one.   I've written of 'Moje Hammarberg' before, and I still have high hopes for this rose as a survivor in my garden.  He's still short, 2.5 feet tall at 3 years old, and he's a little wider at 3 feet around, but those loose fuchsia blooms are plentiful and were moderately untouched by the Japanese beetle invasion this year.  

 'Moje Hammarberg's lack of attractiveness to beetles is most interesting to me right now, almost as interesting as its fuchsia coloring.  He stands only six feet away, directly across from and mirrowing 'Hanza'.   'Hanza', has nearly the same color, the same rugosa foliage, a little larger bush, and the same loose bloom form, but it is a beetle magnet  In fact it is host for the massive orgy of beetles at the top of another recent blog entry.  The primary difference I can see between the bushes is not one of appearance, but of fragrance;  'Moje Hammarberg' has a little fragrance, while 'Hanza' is loaded with a spicy aroma.  Is that the attraction?   Are Japanese Beetles more apt to attack fragrant roses?   Or is the whole thing just one big fuchsia-tinted coincidence this year?   Inquiring gardeners want to know. 

The Surrender of ProfessorRoush

When the detailed annals of twenty-first century gardening history are collected and indelibly written to the internet, today will be noted as the day that ProfessorRoush grudgingly conceded his unwilling submission to the Japanese Beetle horde.   I have lost my solo battle here on the Kansas Flint Hills, completely and irrevocably, crushed by the sheer prolific mass of beetle fertility.  How many beetles do you count on the single 'Hanza' flower at the upper left?  There are at least 14 engaged there in disgusting Caligulan debauchery by my count.   

Poor 'Hanza'

I wave the white flag at last, an unworthy descendent of the heros at Thermopylae, Masada, and the Alamo.  Despite twice-daily rounds of the battlefield under the searing summer sun, hand-picking and crushing the chitinous slobs as they fornicated in their own frass, and occasional mass desperate dispersals of chemical weapons, I can no longer pretend to be winning and must face defeat.  I know the war was lost long ago in the eastern and southern United States, but the battlefront continues its westward move.  The closely-cropped beetle mass at the top is only the most visible today.  Looking at the greater picture (at right) tells the true story, with smaller numbers of beetles on all the nearby blossoms, foreground and background.  At night, I dream now only of the crunch of the beetle masses as they feast on the roses, of their laughter during coitus in the bright Kansas sun.   

Beetles on 'Martin Frobisher'

I blame my defeat on many factors, not the least of which is lack of a national sense of emergency.  Forget the concerns of ecology and species diversity, Japanese Beetles hold no value to the world.   The extinction of these lazy disgusting creatures would make no measurable impact on the world's ecology.  They have no enterprise, no natural predators, no redeeming virtues to promote their preservation, seemingly existing for the sole purpose of consumption, defecation, and procreation.  Where are, I ask, the chemists to create a poison aimed directly at the demise of this sole species?   Where are the enterprising engineers to envision a fleet of affordable micro-drones capable of capturing beetles to transport and release in the fires of  Hell?  Where are the biologists to create infertile clouds of male beetles to slow their spread, or to genetically manipulate a lethal virus specific to Japanese Beetles ?  Where is, Lord Darwin, the evolution of the insectivore who views beetles and beetle frass as a delicacy?   

Today's pyrethrins and insecticidal soaps are worse then worthless on adult beetles.  Yesterday I drenched these beetle clumps directly in modern insecticidal death and an hour later, they still moved and defecated on poor virginal white 'Blanc Double de Coubert' at abandon. I dream, at times, of finding and deploying an old bottle of DDT.  Would it be worth a Silent Spring or three to rid the earth of Japanese Beetles?  I hear now only, in my mind, the Beetle Voldemort laughing at poor Professor Dumbledore; "You've lost, old man."

Daylily 'Sonic Analogue'

Future minstrels will not sing ballads to the losing effort of ProfessorRoush, but upon reflection I take solace that I am a true descendent of those at Masada and the Alamo. After all, despite their valiant and principled stands, they lost too, surrounded by enemies too numerous to count, without aid from the greater world.  If there is hope for the gardening world, it is in Old Garden Roses, resistant to Rose Rosette disease and too early to be ravished by Japanese Beetles, and also in daylilies.  I leave you with this 'Sonic Analogue' daylily, seemingly immune at present to the beetle appetites.  I may have laid down my weapons, but I keep hope that beetle predators will evolve faster than beetle defenses and these daylilies will remain to brighten the rest of my summer days.

Sunshine, Lilies, and Beetles

ProfessorRoush has been waiting breathlessly for these 'Kaveri' lily buds to open, desperately afraid that a strong wind or the neighbor's dog would take them down prior to their display.  They seem to have self-seeded or spread over about a 10 foot area and they're all strong and healthy.  Not bad for a free gift from a gardening company!

And other lilies are holding sway right now, the taller accompaniment to the daylilies which are coming in.  To the left, Orientpet 'Purple Prince' holds a proud place as the protector of a 'Beautiful Edging' daylily on my front walk.

Nearby, this group of 'Yellow Dream' and 'Purple Prince' (below)  will brighten up the area in front of the garage for the next two weeks. You know from my previous posts how much I wait for and love 'Yellow Dream'.   Downwind from this group is always a sweet fragrance treat that I have to stop each time and admire.  'Purple Prince', himself, is maybe not so pretty (at right), but he's a strong and stalwart fellow in the garden.

And then, somewhere in the back garden, this first of Asiatic's paints it's blood-red way among my viburnums.   I always see this lily first, only to watch it fade as the rest come on.

Last but not least, this is obviously not on a lily, Orientpet or Asiatic, but I always try to mark the first arrival of Japanese beetles in this blog so that I can keep track of them.  And here one is, first found on June 28, 2021, on top of  'Fru Dagmar Hastrop', frass sprinkled among the petals.  Thankfully, the disgusting creatures prefer this rose and 'Blanc Double de Coubert' and leave the others alone.  The spray I'm using doesn't seem to make any difference, sadly.  I'm just hand-picking and gleefully smashing under my heels.  Quite a sad comment on the activity of an otherwise peaceful gardener.

Yuck! That's Enough!!!

As a veterinarian, ProfessorRoush tries mightily to love "all creatures great and small," taking his cues from James Herriot's classic memoir of that title, the latter borrowing his title from the lyrics of Charles Francis Alexander in the Anglican hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful.  And he (ProfessorRoush) usually does love all creatures great and small, even the serpents that hang around my landscaping.  Except Japanese Beetles.  And rose slugs.  And spider mites.  I don't see God's purpose for any of these creatures except to provide a plague to test the resolve of gardeners.  Maybe rose slugs were put on earth to feed birds, but Japanese Beetles aren't eaten by anything.  They just exist to eat flowers, and waddle in beetle poop while they fornicate and make more Japanese Beetles.   And spider mites are so small you can barely see them; what purpose is a plant-sucking mite?  Other mites, of the Phytoseiidae family, prey on spider mites, but why create a mite to just to feed another mite?  Oh, the theological cavern that I've just fallen into! 

But, ProfessorRoush digresses.  The Japanese Beetles came back right to central Kansas right on time in late June this year and I've been strolling around and smashing a few every evening for several weeks.  I even went so far as to spray insecticide on a few of their favorite roses while the roses were between bloom cycles just to see if it would quell their numbers, but as these roses, 'Blanc Double de Coubert' and 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' among others, came back into bloom, they had just as many beetles lounging around in their blossoms as before.  So I've hand-picked and hand-picked, gleefully smashing a few beetles each night under my feet and feeling like Alexander the Great rolling over Asia.  Right up until I came across the disgusting spectacle in the photo above.  The rose is pink and delicate 'Foxi Pavement'.  Look closely and you'll see beetles fornicating on top of beetles that are fornicating.  Disgusting.

Hemerocallis 'Wisteria'

Please try not to let the scene you just witnessed cause any nightmares to disturb your slumber.  Or at least join ProfessorRoush in his efforts to avoid crawling into a corner and catatonically sucking his thumb to avoid the trauma of memory.  Here, maybe a picture of beautiful 'Wisteria' taken on the same evening will help.  Japanese Beetles don't seem to bother daylilies.  Or, perhaps you can take comfort from this morning's sky, a panorama I took at 6:00 a.m.  of the sky to the west and north of my front yard.  All things bright and beautiful, indeed.

The Arrival

I turned the corner last night, July 5, 2019, and there, right there on the top of virginally white 'Blanc Double de Coubert' in full-on public display, fornicating, yes FORNICATING, in flagrante delicto, caught red-handed (or, in this case, green-bodied) in naked embrace, were the first of the Japanese Beetles to invade my garden this year.  Immodest, immoral, deplorable and disgusting Japanese Beetles!

All right, all right.  My indignation is false, my outrage is fake, although this Japanese Beetle sightings is most certainly not "fake news."  I've actually been expecting them, waiting and watchful, forewarned and forearmed.  In point of fact, while I'm spilling the beans, these weren't the first Japanese Beetles that I saw yesterday evening.  I had already found one a few moments earlier on 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', cornered it, captured it, and crushed it under my sole.  On the first day, the total casualty count for the Japanese Beetle army at my hands was 6; the pair above on 'Blanc', the pair below on 'Applejack', the single stag male on 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' and another single male on a second 'Applejack'. 

They are right on time, these horrible hordes.  Based on a search of my blog, from the very first time I spotted one in my garden, 7/7/2013, to the beginning of last year's seasonal foray on 7/1/2018, they've never been earlier than July 1st, nor later than July 7th, with the exception of the fabled beetle-less summer of 2016.  My blog is full of beetles, and I noticed tonight that if you click on the search box at the right and type in "beetles", I've accumulated almost a dozen musings on these hard-bodied trespassers.  Go ahead, I promise it is an entertaining side-path through the blog.

Sore from recent marathon weedings of the garden, nursing what I suspect is my first ever episode of trochanteric bursitis, and in no mood to trifle with more garden interlopers after the earlier spring invasion of rose slugs, I've chosen the nuclear option this year.  Full-on, no-prisoners-taken, garden-wide thermonuclear war in my garden, insecticide at 50 paces, and may the human win.  My sole concession to the less onerous garden critters was to spray as early in the morning as possible so as to spare as many bumblebees as I could, but I'm in no mood this year to stand on the ethical high ground and spend every night and morning searching the garden by hand to interrupt and dispatch Japanese beetle couples in the process of making more Japanese beetles.  So this year, I'll spare myself the bursa-inflaming activity and spare you the daily body count, and I will simply report any spotted survivors here later.  To my fellow gardeners, ye of beetle-inflicted pain, the skirmishes have begun again.  Good hunting, my friends.

The Eight Ex-Beetles

ProfessorRoush is NOT, of course, referring to a mythical reunion of Paul, Ringo, George, and any ex-band members who may exist, because if I was, I would have spelled the noun of the title as "Beatles."  Instead, I'm obviously referring to to the barely-visible rear end of the demonic chitinous lout on the lower right side of the white flower here (and not the other long-snouted insect to the left).  Do you see the hiney of the Japanese Beetle in the lower left of the flower?  Look closer.  Click on it to blow up the photo if you need to.  See the bristling patches of white hair along the edges of its abdomen?




I was simultaneously amused and alarmed eight days ago, when, as I visited a local commercial horticultural facility, I overheard a gardening couple asking a store clerk what they could buy to kill Japanese Beetles.  Thus alerted that the blankety-blank beetle season was upon us, I vowed to be ever-diligent over the next few days, and, sure enough, on July 1st I found the first Japanese Beetles of 2018 on 'Snow Pavement', 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', 'Polareis', and, of course, 'Blanc Double de Coubert'.  The first two victims can be seen at the left, taken moments before I squished them into beetle pulp.  In fact, I found and squished eight beetles on that first evening.  The Ex-Beetles of my garden.





In another more typical picture of the damage that Japanese Beetles can cause to a beautiful bloom, I give you the traumatized bloom of 'Earth Song' that I discovered this morning, seen in the photo at right complete with the Japanese Beetle hiding in the center of the flower (please ignore the Melyrid at the bottom.  I see the latter insects all the time and they don't hurt the flowers).  By the morning of the second day of the 2018 invasion, my total kill is now 14 squished beetles.  Unfortunately, it should have been 15 squished beetles (one male escaped this morning by leaping off the edging brick before I could lower my foot in his direction).

With a little research however, I just tonight discovered that, despite my vaunted prowess as a Japanese Beetle Terminator (Hasta la vista, beetles!), I'm winning a small tactical skirmish, but losing the strategic war.  As if Rose Rosette Disease and Japanese Beetles don't cause enough damage in my garden, the long-nosed brown insect to the left in the first picture above is NOT a harmless flower beetle.  The Internet informs me that it is a Rose Curculio Weevil (Merhynchites bicolor), another flower-eater and civilization destroyer sent to my garden by the demons of hell.  I should be just as diligent handpicking these little snouted monsters as I am the Japanese Beetles, and yet I knew not of their existence prior to this.  It seems to not be enough that I have one beetle enemy, the crunchy critters  have now enlisted allies.  Saints preserve my roses!

Stalking Beetle Sign

Slowly and stealthly, the sly hunter stalks his prey beneath the searing sun.  He knows this foe, has studied its habits, sought out its secrets.  Bare hands and intellect his only, but most lethal weapons, sufficient for the moment.  Each perforated petal, each sullied sepal, mere arrows pellucidly pointing to the presence of another plump Popillia. The beast hides at night, beneath flowers folded for shelter.  At morning, the target is torpid, stuporous and stuffed by the night's chill and previous evening meal, difficult to find, but easily caught and easily dispatched.   But as the sun rises, so the creature is ever more foolhardy, warming to feast and fornicate, flinging frass over flower.  Brazenly breeding without heed to predator or voyeur in the daylight, it lives to eat, procreate, and preferentially die at the hands of the ancient hunter, the latter ever more determined, ever more skilled, at beetle genocide.

ProfessorRoush has spent several days now, morning and evening, examining the garden flower by flower, foliage by foliage, as intent to his purpose and unaware of its ultimate futility as Custer at the Little Big Horn.  After my initial discovery of the beetle re-invasion, I found more of the insects that very evening, lots more, and I've found a few every day since.  During the past few days, the beetle numbers are dwindling, and yet, my skill at finding them seems to improve every hour.  I subsequently feel responsible to pass on my hard-earned hunting skills.

Initially, I concentrated on the beetles lounging without care in the center of my flowers, swiping them into the palm of my bare hand even, as disgusting as it sounds, while they were paired in flagrante delicto.  As quickly as I could, I then dropped them onto the stones edging my garden beds and gleefully stomped them into beetle pulp.   I know it sounds barbaric, but I have to truthfully state that the crunch of a beetle shell brings a smile to my face every time, a brief moment of insectopathic glee.

But I have learned, as all great hunters before me, to stalk the dwindling prey less by sight and more by stealth.  I recognized quickly that beetles were often hiding beneath petals that had holes chewed in them.  Look at the perforated flower at the upper left.  A slight change in elevation and angle to the view of the same flower at the right, and voila, one finds the culprit hiding in the shade, easily collected and dispatched.  And I've given up beetle crunching, time-consuming and ultimately, probably, detrimental to my Karma, in favor of the time-tested method of knocking them into a cup of soapy water, to drown in silence.

I've also learned to read "sign," a polite hunting term that refers to the technique of following the   poop trail of a prey animal to its lair.  The droppings of an insect are more properly known as "frass," and Japanese Beetles leave more then their fair share behind, wallowing, eating and fornicating with glee right in the midst of it, like chitinous pigs at the county fair.  At the lower right of the picture of Blanc Double de Coubert on the left, you can see frass on the petal there. Where there is frass, there are beetles.  I have also decided that it is much more sanitary to sweep the frass along with the beetle into the soapy water of a cup, rather than into my hand.        

For the time-being, those are the best lessons for beetle-genocide that my vast experience can pass on.  I suppose I could erect a wall that reaches above their flight paths, perhaps even cover it in solar panels, but then I'd be making a social statement rather than a gardening one.  Good luck to everyone in your own beetle battles.

 I also hereby apologize for my previous aspersions against Blanc Double de Coubert and her beetle magnetism.  I've since found beetles on 7 individual roses, and so, while Blanc remains the beetle champion, she's not the only one to blame for luring them into my garden.

Blanc & Beetles

ProfessorRoush's cardiovascular health was tested this morning as I had a bit of a shock while enjoying my garden.  I went out for a "spot check" of things and got excited about how many blooms were being visited by bees, and then I saw this bloom, of Blanc Double de Coubert, that wasn't being visited by a bee.  Instead, I found the first Japanese Beetle of the season (in fact, the first of the last two years since I didn't see any here in 2016).  

Curses.  A brief panic ensued and then I settled down and looked the bush over closely, finding around 6-7 beetles in all, lounging in the blooms, creating holes in the petals and depositing frass all over those virgin white blossoms.  I took great pleasure in knocking all of them into the ground and grinding them into the hard prairie clay.

Those who have read my past statements about Blanc Double de Coubert are aware that she is far from my favorite rose, and not even my favorite white Rugosa.  In the past,  I've found it nearly impossible to get a perfect picture of her; petals are always browned by rain or dew, blossoms don't last long in the Kansas sun, and the bush is just generally a mess, as you can see in today's impromptu photo at the left.  She's short and squat and has been a prima donna in my garden, demanding close supervision and extra care unbecoming of a Rugosa.  And now, to top it off, she is the Japanese Beetle Magnet of my garden.  Today, out of about 30-35 roses currently in bloom, along with some early Rose-of-Sharon and among scads of blooming daylilies and hollyhocks, she was the only plant with Japanese Beetles on it.  The only one, and believe me, I scrutinized every other bush in my garden for signs of a second stealth attack.  Why Blanc?  Something about the degree of whiteness that is attractive while nearly-as-white Sir Thomas Lipton (also blooming and without beetles) isn't?  Something about the fragrance that is different from all the other roses in my garden?  All in all, this is just another reason for me to really not like this rose.

I will remain vigilant for the next few weeks and make sure to watch this rose and others for any further Japanese Beetle mischief.  I'm trying very hard to keep these blasted bugs from establishing a breeding colony in my back yard and I may have to go back to the traps I previously employed.  Squeezed between beetles and rosette disease is a hard place for a rose gardener to keep his chin up.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetle....

No!  I won't finish saying it.  In the 1988 Tim Burton film, Beetlejuice, the obnoxious ghost perfectly played by Michael Keaton, appears after the third repetition of his name.  So, I won't even think of Japanese Beetles lest I call them forth.

Opps.  Too late.  I found this little demon pictured in the photo above on July 4th, hiding in 'Golden Showers' at the Manhattan City Park Rose garden.  I've been expecting them to arrive soon, because I found my first last year on July 7th.  I didn't find any on July 4th this year at the KSU Rose Garden or on my own roses.  And, believe me, I looked carefully.

However, I had previously put some Japanese Beetle traps out at home, and inspecting this one, a Rescue! Trap, on July 6th, I found three males and a female, all of which I subsequently and thoroughly smashed to beetle pulp.  This trap was sent to me last year as a trial by a marketing agent for the Rescue! company and I believe it is a superior trap.   If you want to purchase one, it is currently $8.34 on Amazon.com.   I particularly like the strength and thickness of the collecting bag and the zipper closure at the bottom which lets the bag be emptied and inventoried as often as I like.  Those of you who have ever smelled the eventual stench of a "nonemptyable" trap know exactly what I'm talking about.  A competitor's system in a different area of my garden hasn't captured any beetles yet, but I don't know if that means that the Rescue! trap is also simply better at attracting the beetles or if it is just positional coincidence.  I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, I've raised the drawbridge, stationed lookouts at observation points around the ramparts, and readied the cannons. And, thanks to this trap, there are at least three male and one female Japanese beetles who won't be fornicating on my roses or producing any future beetles in this season.

To Trap or Not To Trap

I hope that Shakespeare will forgive me for my corruption of his prose, but that is the million roses question, isn't it?  Conventional wisdom holds that the use of Japanese Beetle-specific traps will increase beetle damage on plants adjacent to the trap sites.  You can find that "wisdom" repeated everywhere, Extension articles, Internet blogs, over and over, accepted and final.

Well friends, ProfessorRoush had a mentor who once said to me "If I wrote that the sky is green in a book chapter of an authoritative text, in 10 years the entire world would be repeating that the sky is green."  Phrases like "conventional wisdom" just raise my hackles, because if we've learned anything from the past millennium, it's that "conventional wisdom" often isn't worth a darn.  If we followed "conventional wisdom," all maps would still be Flat Earth-oriented, we would still believe the Sun revolved around the Earth, the New World would never have been discovered and I wouldn't be trying to garden in the hell-hole of Kansas.

In the throes of anguish that Japanese Beetles have finally reached Manhattan, Kansas, I set out to look at some of the actual research behind the no-trap recommendation, and I can already tell you that the question is far from settled.  Most of the statements that Japanese Beetle-specific traps increase plant damage and don't affect beetle numbers are referenced back to two papers in the Journal of Economic Entomology, 1985 and 1986, authored by F. Carter Gorden and Daniel A. Potter from the University of Kentucky.  The papers indeed reach the referenced conclusions, but if you examine the materials and methods of their research you'll discover the interesting fact that they placed their traps at 1.2 meters above the ground in both studies.  I already knew that a more recent study, by Alm in 1996,  found that a height of 13 cm above the ground was the most efficient trap height, which just happens to also be the average height that Japanese Beatles fly around a garden.  The 1985 and 1986 papers, for those metrically-disadvantaged, had their traps at 120 cm, so, in essence, they were expecting these lumbering insectoid rocks to find the traps approximately 10 times farther off the ground than they normally fly.  Thus science advances gardening.

 I also reviewed a 1998 Journal of Arboriculture paper by Wawrzynski and Ascerno that found that mass trapping over 15 acre area caused a 97% reduction in Japanese Beetles within 4 years.  Consequently, I really question if "conventional wisdom" hasn't been keeping gardeners from using the best tools for this particular job.   Commercial traps that use both floral attractants and pheromone lures are demonstrably effective, and the one pictured here is readily available and performed pretty well in a 2003 report by Alm and Dawson. 

What does that mean for ProfessorRoush's garden?  It means that I'm going to buck the conventional wisdom and trap the bodacious beetles out of my garden for a couple of years to see if I can slow down the Beetle Invasion (For baby boomers, I'm referencing the current Japanese Beetle Invasion as opposed to the 1960's Beatles invasion of the U.S.A).  Based on the research available, I will place my traps as close as possible to the recommended 13 cm height and I will place them at least 30 feet away from the nearest important plant so as not to attract beetles right onto my roses.  I will empty the traps regularly so the dead beetle stench doesn't drive others away and I will make sure the lures stay attached.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I've already caught three hard-shelled fiends that won't be breeding little beetles for next year.  I hope that it is simple logic.  Less breeding, less beetles, more roses.

Huns at the Gate

History doesn't report what the reigning Roman Emperor said when the Huns first reached the gates of the Eastern Empire, but I do know what ProfessorRoush said today when he saw this metallic green creature munching away on a rose.  Unfortunately, my verbal outburst cannot be repeated in print, nor orally in the presence of good Christians or children, so my response will also be lost to future generations.

As I fearfully predicted last year, the frontier of expansion for Japanese Beetles has shifted west and they have reached Manhattan, Kansas.  I was walking my garden this morning, taking pictures, when, from twenty feet away, I saw a dark spot at the center of a bloom of 'Topaz Jewel'.  On closer examination, there he was, a solo advance scout for the Japanese Beetle horde.  A few seconds after I took this picture, he wasn't nearly so complacent because he found himself between a rock and a hard place, the latter represented by the sole of my shoe.  It was barbaric, I know, not to offer him a last meal or a chance to redeem his soul, but spies are not subject to the niceties of the Geneva Convention, at least as I understand it.  At least this particular spy won't be reporting the location of my personal paradise back to his buddies.

I know, I know, where there is one Japanese Beetle there must be more, but this scout wasn't fornicating with a fellow member of his species as they normally are found, and so I conclude that he was alone.  I immediately inspected every rose in my garden and found no others present this morning, and you can bet that every morning and evening for the next few weeks I'm going to become close friends with every blossom in my garden. 

My second proactive move of the day was to go to the K-State Rose Garden to inspect the roses there and I hadn't gotten ten feet along the garden before finding another Japanese Beetle in 'Jen's Monk', pictured at the left.  Again, I could find no camp followers for this scout so I concluded he was alone, although I did find two specimens of an unknown beetle, shown below, elsewhere in the roses.  I don't know the identity of these latter interlopers, but both flew away when disturbed, rather than dropping moronically to the round as Japanese Beetles do.  The confirmed Japanese Beetle I found, however, was summarily executed on the spot.   


By eliminating the beetles as they are found, I hope to delay my eventual defeat and keep their numbers down until their natural enemies, such as Tiphia wasps, can aid in the war effort. According to this USDA pamphlet, peonies and knotweed, both of which I already grow, are good nectar sources for the wasps and fly predators of Japanese Beetles. I know the first years of invasion in a new area are the worst for destruction and then an equilibrium is reached.  Perhaps my Purple Martin allies will help me keep the beetle numbers under local control for a few years while the rest of the environment catches up.  I'm a little concerned about the blooms on the top of my seven foot tall 'Sir Thomas Lipton' being an unguarded back door for invasion, so some help from the avian equivalent of a stealth drone would be most welcome.  To my Purple Martins, I say "Good Luck, and Good Hunting!"


Addendum 070713:  Found one Japanese Beetle, a female this time, on 'Folksinger'.  Hopefully, there are no children to mourn her loss.  I also found one of the "different beetles" on a rose.  I'm going to have to catch the next one and send it to K-State entomology.

Addendum 070813:  Found another male last night on 'Morden Sunrise'.  Then found two beetles this morning 'Folksinger' (one male and one female, the male escaped). 

Addendum 071113:  Found another male on Therese Bugnet.  Collected this one and preserved to show the Master Gardener's group and to prove I'm identifying them right!

Addendum 071313:  Found another Beetle on 'Sir Thomas Lipton' where I could see it (I still can't see the top).  They've resorted to trying a stealth entry into the garden.

Addendum 071613:  One beetle on 'Martin Frobisher'