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When I was a kid growing up during World War Two the only jitterbug I knew of was the kind the young people of that era danced or was called jitterbugs. It wasn’t until I become a gardener that I learned that jitterbugs, in the gardening world, were really known as Japanese Beetles.
Each year we put out small yellow plastic traps in our orchard that had disposable attachable bags which fill up with Japanese beetles within hours of attaching them. These traps consisted of a pair of crossed walls with a bag underneath, and are baited with floral scent, pheromone, or both and let me tell you something when those bags fill with those beetles do they stink to high heaven. We then drop the bags into buckets of soapy water and drown them.
Unless we put those traps out the beetles will strip our leaves from those fruit trees in no time flat leaving just the stem with the long veins in place. Japanese Beetles also can devastate our strawberries, grapes vines, roses, cannas and crepe myrtles unless we protect them from them.
The downside of the traps is that Japanese Beetles will fly upwards of five miles in search of plants to strip and eat and we found that we were attracting all our neighbors Japanese Beetles.
When the beetle is in the lava stage they apparently live in one’s lawn and Milky spore (Bacillus popillae) may be spread over one’s lawn to suppress them. It is a bacterium ingested by grubs. However, it takes awhile for it to be effective. The grubs eat the milky spore and the spore germinates while multiplying in the grub and the grub dies. As I said it takes awhile to be effective, matter of fact between 2 and 4 years.
What we eventually wound up doing was the minute we see them we “hand pick” them because they sort of roll over on their back and fall into buckets of warm soapy water and they drown. Liquid dish washing soap is what we use and it creates a condition that does not allow the beetles to breathe because there is little air in the foam.
We also discovered by doing this we were attracting less Japanese beetles because beetles attract other beetles and as we were getting rid of them, we were seeing less of them.
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries and to take a walk through her pictorial garden or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books, including her new book, “The ABC’s of Wine and Beer Making”. Remember to check out her artwork, especially of her fruits and vegetables. Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site.”
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