I don't know how you guys do it.
I have the utmost respect for you, but I'm not sure I'd have your courage and faith.
I think I'd give up.
I wonder if JBs eat Plumeria?

Jeri

I feel your pain. My JBs are just now starting to wind down and they arrived in June. I have seen the odd JB in October. It is a losing battle unless you live in a densely populated neighborhood where all the residents employ Chem Lawn. I have such a friend, and she has no JBs. Out where I live the houses are further apart and JBs can fly quite a distance.

Summer is a tough time of year for rose growers in the northeast.

Hang in there; autumn is coming.

Barbara

It's got to be discouraging. I have thrips all winter (no JB's here, thank goodness.) But with a 12 month season, I can enjoy them all winter. To have such a short season and have most of it taken up by insect damage, man, as Jeri says "I don't know how you do it,."

I lucked out this year and didn't have many JBs. One good side effect of the drought I suppose.

Jeri, my plumeria bloomed this year after 6 years! It was lovely. I still have one bud on it. I didn't see any JBs go after it.

Right now I'm fighting aphids on my milkweed. I have plenty of butterflies and I want them to be able to lay eggs and raise the cats. My fingers are stained orange.

Ophelia, JB populations cycle up and down with rainfall in the preceding late summer/fall. When the population is high, the season lasts longer. Hopefully they'll be thinning out soon. Hope you have a good fall in the garden.

Jeri, my plumeria bloomed this year after 6 years!

*** They're special, I think.
And lovely and strange, among the roses.

Jeri

I still have JBs here too. I've given up on the roses, but I hate that they are eating my fall raspberry crop. I'd have a ton of raspberries if only they'd leave them alone. They've thinned down a bit though. I think last night it was one beetle per rose. I haven't been able to kill them lately though as the mosquitoes have been eating me alive the second I leave the house in the evening.

Yes! I never ate one raspberry this year because it's too disgusting knowing that the JBs have been eating, pooping, and mating all over them. Next year, and it may be totally stupid and useless, but I'm going to buy some small mesh netting to cover at least a few of those bushes with, and see what happens.
Michaelg - now that you mention it, it WAS pretty wet last year. I remember mowing the lawn right up to frost, and I can usually stop some weeks before that as the grass is all browned out and stops growing. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a dry fall.
Thanks for the sympathy everyone.

I can't believe it but this year I only found a couple of JB's in my no-spray yard-----
One good thing about once-blooming roses they are finished blooming by the time the JB's get here----

I have no idea what happened this year but I love it !!!

Florence

Oh, I could have written this post myself....

I know exactly how you feel, (unfortunately). I have yet to actually see certain roses looking like ROSES....they look more like shredded toilet paper thanks to those... (insert nasty word here....) beetles. Certain roses are particularly vulnerable and seem to lure the beetles, so much that I end up cutting all their flowers off. The worst afflicted rose is Irish Hope (light yellow) which never even gets out of the bud stage....the beetles drill right through the unopened buds until it looks like Swiss cheese! Then there's all their nasty deposits which they leave behind....yuk. I have several buckets in which beetles are swirling around in the water refusing to drown, and several where they've finally expired and I've been too busy to empty....boy, do those STINK.

People always talk about how they would never grow once-blooming roses, but around here, with the length of Japanese Beetle season....most roses are only going to bloom successfully in June and then for a couple of weeks in mid-Sept. when the beetles are finally gone.....then just when the buds make an attempt to unfurl...ZAP...the frost gets them!!!

Living in New England isn't for sissies!

I know I can't help you, but if it helps any....I feel your pain!

Celeste

Grub Control applied this year had little effect on beetle grubs thus beetles would not have been affected by it's application. My Master Gardener training taught that grub control needs to be applied in mid August after the newly laid eggs hatch to have any effect on a Japanese beetle grub population. It is most effective when the grubs are newly hatched and actively feeding on your grass roots.
I only had a bad infestation of beetles for a few days. They arrived in mid June (two weeks earlier than normal), and have just left (a few hangers on still) but overall damage was not that bad. I don't spray either.
I kept the roses watered, mulched, deadheaded, and weeded and this has been my best year for continuous blooms in the 6 years I've lived here.
One thing I don't do is get all uptight about the Japanese beetles. I keep plugging away with the roses because, like you said, "hope springs eternal."

Jeri
It's said Japanese beetles are moving west a few more miles each year. They've acclimated some to colder weather and are now in many northern areas they weren't in a few years ago. For your sake, all west coast gardeners, and the grape growers, I hope the mountains stop them. Until our birds and other preditors learn to like them, they'll continue to be a summer scourge.
I believe the farmers growing more corn and fewer soybeans this year has kept our population of beetles down. They love soybeans and grapes.

We've had so much rain the last few weeks that it's literally ruined nearly everything. Some plants actually drowned. The roses are about the only thing that still look good. They are getting absolutely huge! Only now the JBs are the worst I've ever seen, so though the plants are doing very well, I have no blooms to speak of. They are ravaged. I swear those things are evil. I mean what's wrong with this picture? All I'm trying to do is grow some flowers for cryin out loud. If the beetles leave by September, there may be a few plants that will flush before the frost hits. Then the winter kills them back to the ground. June will be the only beetle free month, but the plants are so small that it's nothing spectacular. Yes there are always once bloomers. I have a couple, but I'm not digging up all my roses to replace them with once bloomers. Just whining out loud. OK I'm done now.

Mike

I too feel your pain. Nothing but nasty looking lily stalks from the orange beetles. JB's that are still munching their way thru roses and a few other plants (they totally ignored traps that we and our neighbors put out). Grasshoppers, rose slugs and a bad case of spider mites on other plants.

This is the worst year for bugs that I have ever had and my gardens show it!

I'm so sorry you are having such a bad JB year! But let me tell you my recent experience, which might give you some hope. The summer of 2005, for me, was incredibly horrible for JBs. It was just like what you are describing - I was completely in despair, they ate everything (not only roses, but rose of sharon, crape myrtle, dahlia, etc etc) and they stuck around til frost. Summer of '06 was bad too, but maybe a little better. This summer, however, has been really good! I did have JBs during the main season (very end of June to first week in August) but they were not NEARLY as bad - they left the dahlias and crape myrtle alone, minimal damage to roses of sharon, and even some of my roses were able to bloom. By now, they are mostly all gone, I am currently even able to have Heritage and Vanity blooms, two roses that are among their favorites in my garden. I do use GrubEx treatment (I do one treatment in April, one in August, and have been doing so since the bad year of '06) so maybe that is helping. As far as the weather is concerned, I don't seem to remember that last fall was particularly dry, but ... Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to get at is try not to be too discouraged! This may very well just be a really bad year for you, and next year (or the year after) may well be way way better. Just hang in there, and just make sure to always spend lots of time enjoying your spring flush, before the JBs come! And you might try the Grubex ...

Good luck!

We've had a much drier season than usual-which is good for blackspot (haven't been very good about spraying)....but, JBs started 2 weeks earlier than usual (about a week after our first roses started blooming!) Grass around here is very brown. Many oriental and OT lilies were stunted and didn't bloom.

I've been drowning about 150-200 a day most of the season. I'm about to give Lagerfeld away, because only about 10% of its blooms look good all summer. It's one of the first roses to be eaten all summer long.

There are still maybe 50 JBs a day here, but I was hoping they'd be completely gone by now. Bought the GrubEx...husband will put on this weekend, hopefully not too late in season?
I didn't know you needed to put it on in the spring also.
:0(
Phyl

Thanks everyone - I do plan to hang in there because no matter how frustrating it all is this time of year, after a long, cold, white Vermont winter, the gift of color and fragrance is so overwhelming.
I'm also distressed to hear that the Grub Control I reluctantly used may have gone down at the wrong time of year. Last fall I specifically didn't buy it because the package said to put in down in the spring. This spring I did buy and use it exactly as directed on the package, but I only used it at all because the infestation is getting so bad. Imagine what it would be like if I didn't hand pick thousands of the miserable creatures every year and thereby prevent some of them from procreating!

I was going to post the same thing opheliathornvt. =( It's been 2 months of beetles here, too. Poor Mary Rose has not been able to show a flower since early June. The JBs are so impatient for more roses throughout the garden that they're eating the buds before they open. I'm pretty squeamish about bugs in general, but I've taken to squishing these little devils between my fingernails. The numbers have definitely waned by now, but the ones that remain are hovering around the roses & hibiscuses. It's very discouraging.

Several years ago we had three MONTHS of Japanese Beetles. Now we've had several years of severe droughts.
The spring and summer and soon to be fall extreme to exceptional drought has knocked the JB populations for a serious setback.
I watched a June Bug (looks identical to JB but five times larger) trying to lay her eggs and she couldn't get her rump to go into the clay. I smiled. Then I stomped her.
Talk to your county extension agent about when to apply the grub killers and if reapplication is needed after heavy rainfalls.
And for those of you with horrific problems this year, next year consider starting to kill them at the earliest possible emergence (or before with grub killers).
Drought or human intervention (I do believe in beetle traps and have used them for going on ten years - our drought has helped but populations were declining because there were fewer females to lay 40 eggs each because they lived fast and died young.) Even ducks can only eat so many.

When exactly is Spring in Northern New England? Our Spring rose flush is usually in June. The beetles usually show up at the end of June.

The package directions assume that the Grub Control will be effective in the soil for several months, so that insecticide applied in late June is still working in September, after the last egg has hatched.

This year I only applied Grub Control to the back yard, around the rose garden, when I started seeing the adult beetles. I'll find out if it worked next year.

Here is a link that might be useful: Control of Japanese Beetle Adults and Grubs in Home Lawns

I put that JB-killing milky spore all over the property years ago, even sneaked onto neighbor's lawn with the extra, years ago, and no JB troubles (knock wood) since. I saw one dead one on my back porch this summer--prob. killed by a cat. Plenty of troubles with vine weevils & aphids but not JBs. Don't know whether it's our location or what.

I think netting the raspberries during beetle season is very sensible.

I don't know about that netting idea. My raspberry canes are very unruly and I think the net would get caught. Also the bees would be mad at me. They love to hang around on the raspberry flowers. Although it would be nice to eat some that are completely intact for once.

I think I'll try the grubex and/or milky spore this weekend. I have to do something. So far I've been dealing with it by buying more roses. I figure if I can get enough roses the beetles won't be able to get them all.

Here it is relatively normal to net both raspberries and blueberries. It just generally cuts down on Pilfering. The nets don't go directly on the plants, but on cheap wooden frames.

I'll try to remember to ask what the vineyards do. I think the orchard down the street nets their table grapes. The winemaker in the other direction just buys his grapes from California. He got burned badly a few years ago trying some 'really hardy' German varieties. It wasn't even that cold the year he lost most of them.

In this climate, repeat bloom is really badly overrated. So logically, the roses only rose garden just doesn't work. Once you get over that idea, then you are free to enjoy the ornamental grasses, the various sunflowers, the early asters, the Japanese anemones.... you get the idea.