June Week 1

Organic Gardening Calendar
21 Weeks to first frost date in zone 6

It’s June. Let’s talk about Japanese Beetles. These pests arrived in the United States around 1916 as visitors from Japan. They enjoyed New Jersey so much they decided to stay and raise families. These Japanese bugs were successful in spreading their kind to all parts of the eastern United States. It is now our solemn duty to kill them. If you are not doing your part to eradicate these pests, then you are failing your fellow countrymen.


By: Kathi

Things you will need:
Bug bags
Milky Spore

What to do?

There are basically three methods of dealing with Japanese Beetles; Milky Spore, traps, and spraying.

There are lots of opinions out there, and well, here is one more. I disagree with a few things which have been written about these pests, including the directions on placement of the traps. I advocate using both the milky spore and traps. Forget using chemical sprays.

I found the following text online that is a widely accepted notion about placement of beetle traps.

"Don't use them close to plants which the beetles
are attracted to. Place traps as far away from your
plant life as you can. In fact, if a neighbor wants to
use traps, try to locate your traps as close to theirs
as you can. The big problem with traps is they lure
many beetles to your property which may have never
come there in the first place. Japanese beetles are
not the best flyers and tests show they will actually
miss a trap by several yards about half the time they
are following the scent from the trap. If your trap
is placed away from plants you want to protect, the
beetles that miss the trap will probably go to some
wild plant or a neighbors yard and miss yours all
together. If your trap is close to beneficial plants
you want to protect, the beetles are likely to miss
the trap and find their way to what you are trying to
protect!"

It was written by people who make chemical sprays for Japanese Beetles.

It doesn’t make sense. I started out using these guidelines and had no success at all. I know of no other trap that is placed away from the plant it is trying to protect. When placed away from the plant that needs protection, the random bug that flies near the bag gets caught. And the protected plant gets eaten.

Place the bags next to the plant you want to protect. Don’t worry too much about upwind or downwind, wind directions change. Bags should be placed in the sun, anywhere from 3-5 feet up. Plant hangars work nicely as bag supports.

As the article says “Japanese beetles are not the best flyers and tests show they will actually miss a trap by several yards”….Yes, and they will miss a plant by several yards to hit the trap.

Actually I’d keep it as close to the plant needing the protection as possible. Once I moved my traps, I collected the first year, enough bugs to require changing the traps twice a day. My plants did not get eaten. Each year I have repeated this process. And every year the number of beetles caught have been fewer and fewer. Last year, I set out traps and barely caught a handful of the beetles in each trap. No Japanese Beetle pest problem any more.

There are some options for traps. I found this description of how to make your own…never tried it, but putting water in a jug with mashed fruit sounds stinky and nasty to me. Not just because of what it is, but because of what it will become.

Japanese Beetles are nasty. They ooze dark fluid that will collect in the bags. It stinks. It stinks a lot. You must change the bags if they get nasty or the bad odor will overwhelm the pheromone scent that is the lure. The beetles will then go to your nice smelling roses.



As a second option there are the hard bottled type that are washable and reusable. Very green to use…but for me…see paragraph above. These bugs are nasty. I don’t want to be handling that weird fluid if I can avoid it. Then there is the problem of when you go to empty the trap that the beetles on top are still alive and they fly away as soon as you take the lure off.

This brings me to the third option; the replaceable and disposable plastic bag type. These are my preference. Get the ones at the big box stores. Traps are traps. Make sure they have a good supply of replacement bags or buy several replacements so you have them handy.


As soon as the bag fills to the narrow point, or gets nasty, whichever comes first…replace the bag. I like these because I can usually avoid the drippings and the top of the bag acts as a quickly closeable lid keeping all those not dead yet beetles trapped inside. I fold the top over and lay the bag in a hot sunny location. This quickly kills the remaining live beetles.

Timing: Place traps as beetles emerge in mid-May to early June in Georgia and South Carolina; early June to mid-June in North Carolina and Tennessee; mid-June to early July in Kentucky, Delaware, Washington, DC, Virginia and West Virginia; early July to mid-July in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey; mid-July in New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine.

The other way to deal with Japanese beetles, (and for best and quickest results use with the traps) is milky spore. Milky Spore is a naturally occurring microscopic bacteria (Bacillus popilliae) that kills Japanese beetle in their grub phase; while in the ground, before they can grow wings and fly out of tiny holes in the ground that are about 3/16th inch in diameter. It is a strange thing to witness. Beetles emerge from a single hole at about one every 2 seconds or so. They all fly off in the same direction, in a nice undulating formation. Off to eat your goodies.


The product is easy to use, just sprinkle on the ground. Milky spore is a long-term solution because it survives winter temperatures. The Milky Spore population increases each year, reaching peak effectiveness about three years after application, and lasts ten years or more. Nice for lazy gardeners, but use the traps too.