I cannot believe this thread has been going for so long and I have never seen it or posted my experience. I love lilies and have lots of Asiatics and had been bothered by the beetles until I met a lady several years ago at a flower show put on by the Horticulture students attending a college here. I used to have horrible infestations with eggs under all the leaves and some of the stems eaten bare. She gave me these directions and they work: in the spring, when the shoots of the lilies are just about to burst forth, spray them and the earth around them (that's where the eggs over winter) with a 10% solution of household ammonia. This will not hurt the plant, but it kills off most of the eggs. You may get a few of the beetles but you just catch them and quish them (I love doing this). There are many things that SEEM to kill them but the fact is, they have no predators here in Canada, and pesticides may seem to kill them but that's not the case. They usually die off after laying their eggs. My personal method is to spray the earth around the plants in the fall and in the spring. I also am very vigilant and search around the bases of the plants in spring. This is the first place of attack and I hunt them down and kill them. If they do get to the point of laying lots of eggs (that black gunk) on the under side of the leaves, a gloved hand run up the stalk will remove them and I squish them by rubbing my two gloves together. I have had a few around this year, but I usually see them before they can so any damage, and I also look for the telltale sign: little jagged bites out of the leaves. It is true that they don't attack orientals, but I have seen them on other plants, and again I squish them. I have kept them under control this way. P.S. The ammonia spray is also great for slugs. I go out on slug patrol after 9 p.m. and spray them. Doesn't hurt the foliage, not even of lettuce, but it stops them dead in their tracks.

I have been complaining about these guys but now I am beginning to believe that I was complaining too much. I have not had hundreds at any time. Even though they were eating my roses, there were none on my Rose of Sharon or Crape Myrtle, as reported by some of my friends. Picking them off my roses is not that bad a job. I cut rose buds when I find any without disfiguring bites. I will be using something to get rid of the grubs at the right time. A friend reported that spraying them with soapy water with cayenne pepper added worked great on plants that were too tall to reach otherwise. They MUST be close to the end of their cycle by now.

Jan, Last night I saw one more adult Colorado Potato Beetle on a potato plant, and I left it for Mr. (or Ms.) Turtle. I hope he or she found it and ate it. I rely heavily (almost entirely) on beneficial birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects to control pest insects in my garden. It works. I know it works. Sometimes it is very hard--even exceptionally hard--to be be patient and wait for the process to work, but I really do try. Here's another example of how I didn't wait, and then regretted it. I overwintered some potted angel's trumpets (both brugmansias and angel trumpets) in my barn/garage last winter. It was the first time I'd overwintered them there, having previously kept them either inside (but there's too many for that now, and they are too big) or by overwintering them in the tornado shelter in a dormant state. It stayed warm enough here this past winter that the angel's trumpets remained leafed out, although a couple of them dropped some leaves when we when down to 18 degrees a couple of nights, but then leafed right out again. A lot of them kept blooming into December and January and others started blooming in February. Every morning (unless it was very cold), I'd open the garage door and let the sunshine come in, or I'd drag them out into the sunshine. One day in Feb. or earliest March, I noticed one plant was covered in aphids. Since I assumed lady bugs were still hibernating because it was still pretty chilly, I sprayed the plant with neem oil. (I did look for lady bugs and didn't find any on any of the angel's trumpets before I sprayed.) The neem oil took care of almost all the aphids. Two days later a mama lady bug showed up, and within a couple of days we had lady bug larvae everywhere. So, you see, if I had been patient for a day or two longer, the lady bugs would have shown up and I wouldn't have had to spray the neem oil. I really need to work on being more patient. I'll try to write later today or tonight when I come inside from the garden about how to attract more beneficial insects to your garden, and why you'd want them there. I need to hurry up and get outside now before it is too hot to be productive out there. You also can search this forum by typing "beneficial insects" into the search box and read old threads too. I know I've written about beneficials a gazillion times. Dawn

Yeah, looks like the potato beetle. According to the University of New Hampshire (link below) Three-lined potato beetles are found on plants in the family Solanaceae. I'm guessing that dethcheez meant to type "Brug" (short for Brugmansia) instead of Burg. Brugmansia is in the Solanaceae family. Art Here is a link that might be useful: Potato Beetle