I have the same problem. Only one of the clematis vines is attacked. It is the one that is a fall blooming plant with tiny white blossoms. The kill last summer was so bad it never flowered. I mix a concoction of water, dish soap, olive oil, horseradish, garlic and cayenne pepper. I can look up exact amounts, if anyone wants it, but I just toss them together at this point with less concern about amounts than about straining! I use several layers of an old T-shirt to be sure no lumps get through to clog the sprayer. I use this daily! If it rains, I might use it again. I spray from the bottom up and then use fine mist on the whole plant. Then I sit and wait to see if the bugs come out. Usually they climb up and out to the ends of the branches. I hold a small piece of wood to let them walk onto it. Then mash them with another piece of stick/mulch. I do not come in contact with the bugs or their innards! My first day treating the plant this summer, I killed 12 beetles. The next day, I killed 5. Yesterday I killed 3. Today I got three more. Interestingly, they were under the mulch at the roots of the plant. I stirred up the mulch with a stick. I had been told they lay eggs for next year, at the base of the plant, so their babies have yummy food when they hatch. So now I am looking for a killing agent to mix into the mulch/soil at the bottom. This spray doesn't seem to kill them, but it does annoy them and then I kill them. I also think it tastes bad so more bugs don't want to eat the plant. I tried a systemic product that is food and killer in one, drawn into the leaves of the plant. It did nothing.

Larry, That looks like a superb watermelon harvest, and I am sorry that the disease problems have plagued your cucurbits this summer. Most years I have to grow all my cucurbits under floating row cover from the day they sprout to keep the cucumber beetles off of them. Cucumber beetles were scarce here this summer, so my plants remained pretty healthy. This is the first time in a long time that I've gotten a great melon harvest without using floating row covers. I kept saying I would throw the covers over the plants as soon as I saw cucumber beetles, but then I didn't even see a cucumber beetle until about 10 days ago and it was so late in the season that I didn't bother dragging out the row cover to cover up the existing melon vines. I think they are large enough and healthy enough that the small number of beetles cannot hurt them enough now to ruin the crop. I do top-dress my beds with Espoma Garden-Tone in July because the plants do start seeming like they need a boost at mid-summer. If I was a more diligent gardener, I'd top-dress them with an organic fertilizer at least twice a month, but I am not diligent about doing that. If I have any finished compost at that time, I'll layer it onto the beds too, using a small rake to pull back the mulch and put down the compost and then push the mulch back over the compost. I have to do this cautiously as snakes tend to like to hide in the mulch. Sometimes I feed with liquid seaweed which always seems to give them a good boost. I like to use liquid fish emulsion, but have to be careful with the timing. It has a definite odor to it that attracts raccoons, so for me it is better used earlier in the season than later. Susan, The Jobe's sounds interesting. I may give it a shot next year. I order my Espoma in bulk, about 300 lbs. at a time, and I am down to my last two bags, and expect to use them this fall. Next year I can try something new. I have not liked Espoma as much since they changed the formula about 2 or 3 years ago, and it pains me to say that, but I do believe their new formula is not good enough. George, It has been a hard year for the winter squash and pumpkins. I still have Seminole going, and some of the others produced earlier, but they have struggled with the heat, drought and pests. The Seminole looks great but hasn't ripened any fruit yet, which isn't unexpected. It went into the early corn bed after we harvested the early corn, so it got a bit of a late start. The vines have lots of squash, if they only get a chance to ripen them. The squash bugs were very late to arrive here, but they're here now. Dawn

Hi All! I have several raised beds and one has Canna and Four O'clocks. When the Jap' beetles arrived just over a week ago I began picking them off. At first first there were only 5 or 10. Then last weekend the amounts began to grow slightly. It was the first real beetle infestation I've had since we moved here 4 years ago. I had a metal Jap' beetle catcher from way back, along with a can of scent. I hung it in the middle of the bed on Monday eve. On Tuesday morning before leaving for out of town, I went to check to see if it was catching. I couldn't believe it. Without to much exaggeration there must have been 500 in the small 4 X 8 area. The pungent scent on Tuesdas hot humid morning must have drawn them to the catcher, with a quick stopover to the plants, from all of my neighborhood, and there was only 1 or 2 inside the catcher. Boy what a screw up that was. Well it's taken me almost a week of picking and drowning to get it under control. I began culling off all the hundreds of leaves they destroyed over the weekend. I had 1 beautiful Hollyhock in the bed that I left that came up from seed. All that's left are the Maroon blooms. I'm going to leave it to see how resilient a plant can be. Last year we had a Maple tree that was infested with the small inch caterpillar and I swear I was going to cut the tree down as we couldn't even use the hot-tub because of the droppings. I'm not that heartless so I'm leaving the Hollyhock as is because I swear the tree has come back stronger than ever. Of course the Holly won't have that chance for next year. But isn't Nature amazing? Jim

The threat of blister beetle poisoning to horses is a very real threat, and if a horse ingests enough blister beetles while eating hay, it can be lethal to the horse within a few hours. As far as I know, this is no cure. At lower levels it can make horses sick with symptoms like colic, but at that lower level the horse usually survives. I know horse people who avoid using alfalfa hay (unless they grow it themselves or buy it from the first cutting) for that reason, but in really horrific drought years, sometimes you have to buy whatever kind of hay you can find that is being trucked in because the hay shortage is so severe that you can't be choosy. Here in OK if you grow alfalfa for hay, you usually can get your first cutting cut, baled and stored well before the blister beetles show up. I don't think I ever see any of the blister beetles before July and most first hay cuttings down here are in May. I don't use neem often enough for it to affect the plants, Amy, but I've read the same thing about neem being systemic. Genearlly I never would use a systemic pesticide (not even an organic one) because I don't want to eat a plant that has taken up the pesticide within itself, so I probably don't use neem more than 3 times a year, and I just spray it on whatever specific plant has a problem. I don't like the smell of it either, but if you need to call in the big guns for a big pest, neem's a great choice. If it is any comfort, George, blister beetles seem to arrive in mass, do their thing, and they go away. OSU says they have only one generation here in OK, so I guess that is something for which to be grateful.