My garbage can still smells bad from last year when I filled it every day with grocery sacks of JBs. I always emptied the traps early in the morning so I could get cleaned up afterwards before going to work. A couple of times I used Clorox spray bleach on my hands to get rid of the smell. Ah. Good times. I do believe the plague is about done here. I see a few here and there, but no swarms. I'll be spreading more milky spore when the weather cools and we get some rain...if the weather cools and we get some rain. It is supposed to be washed into the soil fairly soon after spreading for best effect. There's no way I can water it in everywhere I need to spread it, so I have to wait for rain. Chuck

MichaelG's question relates to a procedure for getting the growth stimulent, triacontanol, off of alfalfa leaves and into a rose. Triacontanol is present as an ester on alfalfa leaves and one way to set free the triacontanol would be to simply heat with water. I would think a temperature near boiling, for 5 minutes or so, would be adequate. I wouldn't actually boil the stuff to avoid the smell. It turns out triacontanol is soluble in plant oils, such as canola (see the linked patent description) and if I were going to try an experiment, this is what I might do. Mix one cup of alfalfa pellets, two tbs of canola cooking oil (canola oil is the easiest of all cooking oils to emulsify in water), 2 tsps of any dish detergent, one gallon of water and heat to near boiling, with constant stirring, for 5 minutes. Figure out how to filter this mess and spray it on your roses, or maybe just pour a cup around the base of each rose and water it in. The object of this experiment probably wouldn't be to save on alfalfa pellets - they're cheap enough - but to maximize the effect of triacontanol. By the way, Michael, rose leaves have a waxy coating consisting of esters of fatty alcohols. Can you guess what one of the most abundant alcohols in these rose leaf waxes is? Yep, triacontanol. Here is a link that might be useful: Triacontanol and Oils

They don't seem terribly bad here in Decatur; I'm still finding them on most open blooms, and I have some lacy foliage, but it's certainly not as bad as years past. Then again we had drought conditions that sprang up around August last year and we've been in a mild to moderate drought ever since. I'm more exasperated trying to keep up with watering than I am killing JBs; that's a first. They did emerge early this year, along with everything else that's out of whack on our normal seasonal timeline. I have found a new favorite tool for bug hunting, though; vise-grip pliers. Dishwashing gloves were too slippery & when I'd squish the JBs they'd shoot out of my fingertips like a marble. The heavy, leather gardening gloves were better for squishing, but too cumbersome to pick JBs out of blooms without shattering the bloom. The pliers are perfect.

Thanks for the link. I haven't seen any grubs while turning the soil since I went with milky spore. I bet that they would do a great job too.