I mixed 3 table spoon of Sevin powder in a gallon of water and sprayed all my cherry, pluot, persimmon,and plum trees. so far the JBs are dying.
Has anyone done this method? Dusting Sevin powder is too wasteful.
Tony
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Buying in Sevin liquid form is much cheaper and easy to apply. It seems to have a long shelf life.
I am seeing encouraging result so far suppressing JB with Surround and hope to only do some spot treatment where they get a foothold.
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Tony I tried that and results were poor. It kept clogging my sprayer and was frustrating. I recently purchased the Sevin concentrate which works much better. It’s very milky and uses 1/3 cup per gallon. I like the dust a lot on small plants but on trees that are 8 feet tall the dust is not easy to use. The spray is nice because it kills the JB that get sprayed but it also leaves a thin white haze on the leaves that seems to repel most of the beetles.
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Tony do you have many JB? I saw only a couple so far. I think it is strange to not have them. I had hoards of them last year. I do not think that the Milky spore that I put two years ago finally started to work.
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Hello, if you do not mind the looks, bug netting is very effective against JB, wasps and birds and has a zero PHI. We went from 50% JB fruit damage to near zero and can be done on fairly large trees.
Eric
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Milky Spore should survive over winter. Infected beetles grubs die and produce more spores for future seasons. The key is you have to apply when the soil temperature is above 65 degrees, otherwise the spores do not germinate. Your application 2 years ago may have been outside the grub kill window for that year but well in advance of the kill time for time for the subsequent generation.
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Last year I used Sevin dust and killed most of them. They finally showed up a week ago and I squished about 20 by hands with medical gloves on. I don’t care for the green stain on my fingers. They were very active yesterday and I did the spray. Milky spores will be on my to do list. Where can I buy it?
Tony
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I am kind of skeptical about Milky spore. Even if it works I have the whole neighborhood of JB to compensate for the relatively small amount that my backyard produces. Two years ago Milky spore was sold in Menards, but I do not think they sell it this year.
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I also applied milky spore two years ago when I was up to my ears in JBs. I had fewer the following year, and this year so far I have yet to find a single one. It may be the spore takes some time to go into effect. I also have been spraying Surround for several years and this drives them into the neighbor’s yards and so I could have gotten fewer eggs in my soil from the last batch. I don’t think the beetles move very far if there is a good food source nearby.
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I haven’t seen the Sevin powder available in the big bags like it used to be, unfortunately.
Yes Tony, mixing the powder with water and spraying it on my trees has produced superior results. I would first completely mix up the powder with water in a bucket and then slowly pour it off into the sprayer leaving the unsuspended solids in the bucket. This results in less clogging. Japanese beetles hate it.
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When I bought it several years ago, it’s from a local either Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Like I said before, I called the company. They told me it does not work as well in colder zone.
However, if you put it in at the recommended time of the year, it should work well.
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it only works on the grubs and only when ground temp is reliability 65 degrees. So what your describing is exactly how it should work.
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There is some Virginia Creeper growing on my backyard fence. It was here when we moved in. The JB cannot seem to resist it. I do not take it out, since the JB go for it first, and it is easy to walk out with a bowl of soapy water and knock 20 or 30 off the leaves into the bowl every time that I head out into the yard. Every year, I find the JB load in my yard gets smaller because I am getting a lot of them before they reproduce!
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I have a lot of Japanese beetles defoliating my fruit trees, and then also eating tender fruits like blackberries. I have used Sevin succesfully, however the Sevin also seems to damage any tender and still growing parts of some of my trees. I saw this happen last year on one of my young apple trees and this year on tender Asian pear leaves.
Is there some other product or apporach that will kill the Japanese Beetles but not damage tender new leaves???
Thank you all for giving this some consideration.
John in Kentucky
The pesticide branded as Sevin in retail stores changed formula in the last few years. Also, the chemical rating increased on the commercial version.
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Skunks dig up the grubs in my yard.
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