Integrated Pest Management
J claims to not have a lot of interest in gardening, but he's right there to defend the plants against intruders, like Japanese Beetles. They came first to nom on the neighbor's elm and grape plants and then zoomed over to eat the roses here. But J trundled out the heavy artillery and got a lot of them this way:
And then J went on to get a jar of soapy water and picked off about 50 more over the course of a week, and there are almost no beetles left.
The only thing we have ever sprayed for is wasps, but I have found a couple of new, non-toxic, ways of dealing with them. (And it's been so wet there haven't been many). One is a improved version of the milk jug trap; it's a manufactured opening that you insert in the plastic jug of your choice, and it's called The Fatal Funnel. (I have this vague feeling I have done a cover for that one.) The other method of getting rid of wasps is to buy a fake hive and hang it up, which apparently works really well, it scares the wasps. Who knew? I forget the trade name for it, but if you go to Amazon to check out The Fatal Funnel it's often shown as a "If you like this, you might like The Faux Hive" or whatever it is called.
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Thanks to the magic of cookies, the ad for the Faux Hive popped up while I was browsing--it's called the "Waspinator". Boo for the name after the splendor of "The Fatal Funnel".
Gah, those beetles. D: I would have panicked, but then again, I'm not even a novice gardener. I have a little raised bed in front with a few struggling plants in it, and have been fighting a losing battle with whiteflies on my dahlia. Still, it's gamely putting out new buds, so... o_o?
ReplyDeleteYou should pluck the beetle wings off and make them into jewelry.
Also, The Fatal Funnel is a brilliant title for a novel, and I would love to see what sort of cover it'd have. :D
DeleteAnd with these captcha whatsits, do you get the feeling Google is using us to decipher house numbers? o_O;
Ewww whiteflies! Those are a lot harder to deal with. I admit the beetles are pretty, but they smell after a couple of days :o
DeleteI think the Fatal Funnel would look sort of like a Sharknado. :D And the captcha stuff is way hard..it takes me a couple of tries to get them to work.