I’ve read that Japanese beetles can actually be "trained"locally. That is, if you spray for a couple years they lose interest in that plant. They certainly are willing to try anything, and seem haphazard in their choices. Surround is great for any beetle. Thanks for the reminder since May beetles are attacking my young hazels right now.
The best defense against Japanese beetles is to apply larvicide to the soil in Fall and Spring. No larvae, no beetles. If you want to be organic about it use Gnatrol.
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Equipment failure, my loader for wood chips, and waiting on drip set up, has left me with an adamant refusal to load and unload trailer of wood chips by hand. Is this normal? After using a bucket? So…irrigation and weed control, my main issues arise again. For irrigation, I devised this set up, paired with a gas powered pump. right from my lake. 3 mins to fill, about 45 minutes on low volume to drain. No more dispensing by hand, and deeper soaking. I run this on full dump and can water my 1100’ pollinator row in 5-6 minutes.
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Looks good to me.
I sprayed the hazel with neem extract at first beetle sightings. It has been on there for about 10. The hazels still attract a lot of beetles, about the same as typical, but i think they are doing less damage. The ones on the leaves seem more sluggish. They are easier to hand collect and dump into a tray of soapy water. Typically I would catch ~ half of them this way, the rest making their escape when I inadvertently alert them, perhaps by rustling a nearby branch. Now I seem to get ~90% of them although I certainly have not become any more skilled at the art of manually hunting them.
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But the problem is always where to apply the larvicide. Unless you can cover the whole neighborhood the beetles will migrate back.
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Right now, the chipmunks and small red squirrels are eating the immature nuts right up in the tree. Its their safest source of water.
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Just make sure it is milky spore. I applied it once ten years ago and no beetles to speak of since.
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That is much more successful than I’ve heard. I tried Milky Spore about 15 years ago, but with a couple acres of grass I couldn’t afford to go everywhere. I can’t say it helped me, but I’m glad to know it works.
Are you on sandy soil? When I lived in that area my place was right on a dividing line. One side pure clay, one side pure sand. Gave me some options planting trees, but I would often get the tractor stuck on one or the other side depending how much rain we got.
Sloping clayey loam in12 acres
and sandy loam in high spot on 8 acres. No standing water.
Your sandy areas have that high water table from the clay? If so,.sounds like natural Blueberry soil. what’s your ph?
Scott, I’m in the yellow area on that map. What does that indicate?
Yep, high water table and blueberries loved it.
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Yellow on map = species present and rare
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@Bellatrix I have plenty of japanese beetles on my hazels. Besides allowing the wheel bugs to go to town is there anything that you do to give your hazels some relief?
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my 4 hybrid hazels are setting big nut clusters again this year. i was afraid the extreme -40 cold had killed catkins and flowers but it appears they made it. that makes these hybrids z3a hardy at least. I had 0 dieback on them this spring.
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Super sweet! Thats really great news. Your euros get pollinated too?
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unfortunately, euros aren’t cold hardy enough. mine are hybrids of different Americans as far as i know. maybe some asian genes? i also have one eco hazel from oikios and 2 seedlings from Jesse S grown from nuts from Z nutty.
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@NJpete Because of my over ambitious plant ordering last fall when I moved, many of my hazelnuts are still in pots, near the house. I’ve been hand picking into the soapy bottle of death for the Japanese beetles. For the ones planted outside, further from the house, my bird population is really taking care of them. The plums have been lightly hit, but not badly. When I first saw how many were coming up out of the ground and swarming the gum tree, I was in a panic. I went back 2 hours later and they were all gone. The mocking birds, starlings, fly catchers, blue birds, and swallows have been demolishing them.
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Perhaps my local birds are too busy sulking over the blueberry bush nets and out of bitterness refuse to eat the beetles. 
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