T H E Y ’ R E B A C K .
Yesterday morning . . . one. Then in afternoon . . . two. three. four. MORE!
Japanese Beetles.
Our fruit is so meager this year that we are just thinking of letting them have their way with us.
Next year . . . the battle continues.
Yes found some JBs since a week ago. Why was the fruit setting so meager?
I think you’re right.
…and they have all the earmarks of the dreaded BMSB, as ID-ed by sockworth.
My thumb was enough to liquefy them all…
just went through my newly planted orchard and picked off about 30 forest tent caterpillars! some folks in town are using shovels to pick them off driveways. worst infestation in 40 + years they’re saying. im hoping they stay that way but im only over the hill from town. older trees can take a few deleafings but not seedlings or young grafted trees. cant spray because its 90% rain or better the next 6 days again. gonna have to live up there the rest of the week plucking them off. hope they drown in the rain!
Remarkable that they are having such a big year in both the PNW and your end of the continent, too. I assume it’s not the same across Canada in between?
Not as many as you and some others have described but it’s still been probably the worst year in a decade in my part of Tennessee. I’ve picked a lot of them off and since then have smashed many egg masses wrapped around limbs.
read a article about them being bad in the upper Midwest last year. they were bad hear too but much worse this year. i only found a few so far on my main property. sprayed yesterday to make sure they dont get bad here.
oh no I moved 3000 miles to get away from those things
Perhaps a thing of nightmares.
After suffering through 2 months of tent caterpillars (both the yellow stripe Fall Webworm and blue stripe Western Tent Caterpillar), I found that the most effective treatment on free-standing trees and even seedlings was to wrap the trunk with duct tape, sticky side out, and smear that with Tanglefoot. While rain seemed to slow the progression, as soon as the sun came out the caterpillars would take off in a trot.
For espaliered trees (offered all kinds of verticals for caterpillar travel), I had to resort to spraying with BT mixed with Neem. But those trees needed spraying every few days - an expensive treatment.
Even though white cocoons can be found in every odd corner and small brown moths are starting to fly at night, the leaf-eating stage is still at work on my blueberries. The invasion still has weeks to go here!
I thought you had to separate them so they don’t kill one another?
These hatched this morning so would be okay for a day or two. But I just released them all into the orchard. Protect the fruit!!!
wish i had a army of them here. where you order them from?
Rawnutphobic: Those are millipedes, not centipedes. Millipedes have two pair of legs per body segment, and that clearly shows in your photo. Centipedes have one pair.
