I've just come in from the garden, and I thought I'd share with you the two creeps that I fight battles with all summer.
First, the Japanese beetle. This insect is actually quite beautiful when the sun shines on it and shows its iridescent colors. Its beauty, however, doesn't make up for the fact that it can reduce a rose bush to "lace," destroy the blossoms on a beautiful echinacea, and eat the leaves from a weeping cherry tree, to name only a few of its favorites victims. Several times a day I go outside to collect these bugs in a jar containing water, soap, and a tad of ammonia. Cruel, you say? Oh, I don't think so. Japanese beetles arrive around the last week of June and stay through September, so the battle is never won.
Now for the next beauty, the tomato hornworm:
This darling arrives around August 1st. See the red "horn" on the end of its tail?
It's very hard to detect a hornworm on a tomato plant, because the green color matches the tomato plant's green perfectly. Sometimes the first clue is a stem stripped of all its leaves; sometimes its a spattering of hornworm doo-doo on some leaves. The hornworm grows to 2-3" in length, if allowed to flourish, and it can get to be as big around as my little finger, and I have fat fingers.
When I find hornworms, they suffer the same fate as the Japanese beetles: same jar, same liquid contents.
So how do you spend your summers?
Eww you gave me the heebie jeebies!! This year I've experienced my first Japenese beetle infestation....I'll have to give your little recipe a try. As for the horned worm, I do hope he stays away! Good luck with your daily battles, every day you're closer to winning!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the first Japanese beetles, Marg. They seem to be moving up the coast. The infestation will, I'm sorry to say, only get worse each year. We've had them for 7-8 years now, and we haven't learned to love them yet.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your saying I'm closer to winning the battles each day, but I fear this isn't true, darn it. It's Grammy D's stubbornness that makes me fight on, however.
Gross-the worm is nasty. The Japanese beetles are still here (my third or fourth summer, I have lost count)but they are next door in the field all over the goldenrod and various other bushes. I don't think they were there last summer so maybe they are moving out of town!
ReplyDeleteGross-the worm is nasty. The Japanese beetles are still here (my third or fourth summer, I have lost count)but they are next door in the field all over the goldenrod and various other bushes. I don't think they were there last summer so maybe they are moving out of town!
ReplyDeleteI remember putting those little suckers in the jar with you, while visiting one summer. Ick. I had some sort of bug problem on my pepper plants as you may recall...I ended up grating some Fels-Naptha soap, mixing with warm water, and squirting the plants. Bug problem solved! I wonder if there is anything out there you could spray with (at least the stuff you aren't going to eat) to get rid of them?
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