I lost my whole grape crop last year due to Beatles skeletonizing the leaves. If they follow the same schedule, they’ll arrive next month and my crop will be destroyed in a week or two. I used dish soap mixed with water on aphids successfully. I know people drop them in soapy water, but it’s going to be too difficult to do that in this case. I’m wondering if I could make a really strong soap mix and Spot spray them on the leaves. Might damage the leaves a bit, but it can’t be worse than zero leaves.
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I sprinkled SEVIN on the leaves and killed all the Japanese beetles and Triazicide once and done will also killed them.
Tony
I have used soap spay but I don’t think it gave total control. The neem/water seemed to do a better job. Soon I will try out surround which might be a better control alternative.
I don’t know what killed the Beatles 
Tony knows what kills the beetles.
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I’ve used Safer insecticidal soap. Careful with that stuff - remember that Round-Up is a soap, too
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It was Yoko! Oh no!
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In the early concert days, people used to throw jelly babies (jelly beans) at them, to little effect.
Sevin is the only thing I’ve used that works on Japanese beetles. It unfortunately gets washed off easily by rain so multiple applications are necessary.
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Japanese beetles? I have 10 vines over 2 x 50 foot rows so I just went 2x per day (morning before work then afternoon) with an ice cream bucket with soapy water in it and would tap the leaves and the Beatles would fall into the water and drown. This kept the population down and avoided having a mass of breeding pheromones attracting more bugs. I was able to control them in this matter. Not manageable if you have acres and acres of vines.
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I have a few beetles getting into my muscadines but they are in full bloom and I don’t want to spray anything that will cause the fruit to abort. Has anyone used surround and was it effective?
Yes Surround works very well on JBs. Its my standard treatment.
This spring I had hundreds of cicadas coming up on my trees. I covered the whole orchard with Surround and they all cleared out. I didn’t find a single one laying eggs in my orchard.
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Great news. Thanks
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What’s the active ingredient in Surround? I couldn’t find it last year I was looking for something similar.
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There is currently nothing similar I don’t think. It is kaolin clay but micronized to a very fine and consistent powder by a special process. Regular kaolin clay will just clog your sprayer.
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OK thanks Scott, I’ll get some help and try to see what’s available locally.
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Sprayed surround/neem on beetles this morning. They seem to really dislike this combination. This combo also temporarily zaps the aphids.
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In case I can’t find the real deal, would using talcum or baby powder have any effect?
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