Due to the cold weather this season, my roses are just starting to open. I saw the first few beetles today. That's it until September. No sense even having roses in these conditions.

Since you don't have very many flowers now, maybe you could cut all the blooms and have a wonderfully fragrant house! Or you could put netting over them.

Good luck and I know you can remain spray free!!! (ducking as everyone who sprays gets angry at me) :) Seriously, I have no rose problems at all where I live. None at all except for a really long winter. So I'm just giving you encouragement, not judging anyone. :)

Carol

I usually don't spray but have been the last few days, the jap bettles here are nasty. I walk outside to get mail, they buzz my head, come in my face.

I mixed orthene yesterday. If I'm out, I'll walk with the spray bottle and spray them. There are so many, it's horrible.

Judy, I'm with Carol. Cut off your remaining blooms and enjoy them inside. Maybe they won't bother your leaves (but I know that Olga, Harry and others have had leaves skeletonized by the beasts).

Sue, none here yet...

Thanks everyone for your help and encouragement. They do eat up lots of my leaves too. I think I will bare it as long as possible. I have been cutting bouquets so I guess I just need to cut more huh!! Thanks a bunch, JUdy

Spraying doesn't really do much more than picking them off. There is very little residual effect from most of the insecticides, and any residual effect also harms bees and other helpful insects that might be on your roses. At least the beetles mostly eat the rose blooms and don't harm the roses too much. Here I don't worry much about the roses but I try hard to keep them off the cherry tree because they eat all the leaves on it and it really hurts the poor tree. I've actually taken to leaving the blooms on Sunsprite as my sacrificial rose with the hope that the beetles will bother it and not my other plants.

When I am tempted I think of all of the insects I enjoy. Butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, lightening bugs, praying mantis, earthworms... If you kill the beetles, you kill the others too. Always stops me.

Gardenobsessed, Thats exactly my point!!! I love the other good bugs more than I despise the blasted beetles. So yep I will keep a picking and a grumbling!!! This is my first year trying to go no spray and so far so good until........ beetles!!!!! ARRRRRGH!!

If you cut every flower, you will have fewer beetles in the yard. They will track rose scent across the neighborhood.

Spraying insecticide on open flowers is just wrong. Remove all the open flowers if you are going to spray. If you spray insecticide on the whole plant, be prepared for a spider mite outbreak.

"If you spray insecticide on the whole plant, be prepared for a spider mite outbreak."

To a degree, nature takes care of itself. (Except Japanese Beetles!) A wonderful example: My neighbor asked me to come over to look at a row of shrubs that had dying tips. When I went over to look at them she said she had just sprayed because she had these "funny looking black and red bugs" all over them and she was sure that was what was attacking her shrubs. After looking at them I sadly had to tell her the funky looking bugs she sprayed and killed were ladybug nymphs that were eating the aphids that were on her plants. If she had just given it a week or so, the ladybug nymphs would have taken care of the aphid problem and the shrubs would have been just fine.

As I type this I am experiencing the same exact scenario with my white birch trees. Loaded with aphids, brown tips, but also loaded with ladybugs and nymphs.

The JBs are tormenting my Lady Bird Johnson clematis right now. Is nothing sacred? For cryin' out loud, she's named for the First Lady, for pete's sake! And one who loved wildflowers to boot. They have no respect.

Most of my roses just finished their first flush, so there's not much for them to ravage rose-wise, except for Folksinger, who is in shredded tatters. It's hard to watch them flying around doing their evil work.

I feel a certain grim satisfaction every time I drown or squish one of them...

I get confused when people say to just cut the blooms and bring them inside....the JBs get inside of even fairly tight buds. Even if you squish them at that moment, the flower still opens looking all ratty and deformed.

What is the netting approach? Where do you buy it?

Sections of panty hose make good netting. I save mine for that purpose.

I have plenty of left over panty hose now that I am a SAHM. You too, Michael?

No, since the cat died, I'm loose on the town. But with roses and all, I get a lot of runs.

It is really bad here too. No way I could cut all the blooms on 100 roses. They really love my golden celebration rose which is probably 6 by 5 at least. I just remind myself that I have about 2 weeks left before they are gone.

Just keep on drowning and cutting a few special blooms to protect them. They are leaving my reds alone for the most part but eating the yellows down to nubbins.

Do you have to use the toe of the hose? Will mid leg do?

Yes, you can tie it shut, or pick out a single thread with a needle and pull it to pucker. I used to use these threads in fly-tying.

You guys are killing me...

Thanks everyone, I guess! This thread has taken on a mind of its own, or should I say pantyhose lesson on its own. LOL! Judy

I'm no spray, but the first thing I did when I moved in here was put down Milky Spore. It's expensive, so I didn't cover everything all at once. But every year I add more. This year, so far, I am finally seeing positive results. I've had relatively few JBs and I now find almost no grubs in my soil.

Last year I used the fish net from my pond to collect them and then plunged it into a bucket of water with a lid (actually, it was a plastic 40lb kitty litter container). The kid keeps them from climbing on each other's backs and flying away again.

petals, I only break out the spray if I'm unable to catch most of them on the roses and drown them. At least then I can justify it by saying I'm missing too many and they are getting away to breed more for next year. I've been blessed the past few years in not having too many. They seem to love my Ebb Tide and no one else. My Teasing Georgia had to be cut down earlier this year and is only a few bare canes now, so less yellow roses to attract them.

I bought green tulle netting pretty cheap at Hobby Lobby last year after another poster shared the idea. It was pretty effective, but sort of a pain. Plus, if you are not careful bees get trapped under there, and that's not good for anyone.

I just love the panty hose. Funny!

Diane, the last 3 or 4 days have been horrible. The JB's are everywhere, yes, think of Olga. That's exactly how it's getting. They are devouring everything.. buds (yes, they get in there) foliage; my ornamental weeping redbud, then there are the perennials, I also have wild Mountain Laurels on my property, wild blueberries.. those too.

In a few days, the beetle bags are almost full. Yes, I know it attracts them but they were here anyway last year without, I'm like the only one here with a garden, everyone else has green landscaping, my yard is a gourmet meal, they are telling their friends.

If I think about it, I will take some pics of the JB's. My back has been bad so it takes everything just to walk out with the spray.

I do not like to spray, I have toads, turtles, dragonflies, birds are coming.. this makes me sick.

Sections of panty hose make good netting. I save mine for that purpose.

Ok, I assumed you were male?
I guess I'm wrong? lol

Ouf. I only have one or two rattly blooms left, and haven't sprayed so a lot of leafless. I'm going to cut down anyway, so I may miss the JB season this year. So sorry that you are having such problems this year!

Diane, FWIW, I never had them in Burlington County, yeah, a handful every season but no more then that. Maybe because I'm lower in South Jersey I'm seeing them?

Guess what I saw this morning? They were chewing on my pink/red dahlias! Honestly, is there NOTHING they won't destroy?

Because a female Japanese Beetle can lay 40 eggs in her lifetime, if you let her and her twenty female egg mates from last year live, next year they can produce 800 JBs. Maybe some skunks will get some of them. Moles might wipe out ten or twenty, but every female that lives ...do the math.

I may be the only person who has a good history with beetle traps. But when you say spraying is your only option, you are overlooking letting the trap catch them so that all you have to do is drown them.
The beetles will find your roses regardless. And the pheromones they give off while one or two are on a rose will attract more beetles. That's why the beetle traps have two different lures. one pheromone and one flower.

My part of the world has had horrific beetle infestations. We started putting up traps ten years ago. We had stopped the horrible multiplier effect that having a JB Target Plant flower garden can cause. We had gone from putting up ten traps to only putting up four. Then came three years of drought that finished the beetles off by encapsulating their larvae in hard clay.

This year?
I've decapitated three beetles. That's all I've seen and our first beetle date was June 6 or 7 for eight years. I will put a couple of bags out after tomorrow's rain, just in case any vagrants are around.