How to Get Rid of Japanese Beetles

Garden fork Japanese Beetles www.gardenfork.tv Eric: What is this? What is this? So today at garden fork we are going to talk about Japanese Beetles. On Japanese Beetles, they are kind of the scourge, is that the right word? They are a real problem around here. They are a non-native species that was brought to the United States in the 1920s that was first spotted in New Jersey of all places according to Wikipedia. But in our yard, they tear apart all the raspberries, they eat them all up. They eat the basil, they eat all the grape leaves, and they do not eat the veins of the leaves. They just eat all the leafy part around it so it looks like this, spider webby thing. Female: Skeleton, this skeleton. Eric: It looks like a skeletonized leaves and that is sure of sign. You can also just see them. I mean they are these green shiny bugs. So today, I thought I would show you a couple of ways that I get rid of them. Female: Are they friendly about it? Eric: Gardening is a brutal hobby. I better tell you. You have to kill things basically. Japanese Beetles start as eggs are laid on the grass and they start out as a white grub. You might be digging through your yard one day and you come across these like curled white grub looking things. They are more than likely Japanese Beetles or some other kind of grub. Around here, they are the Japanese Beetles. Female: Could they be good grubs? Eric: No! Because what grubs do is they eat the roots of your grass. So, it is not a huge problem here. It is a bigger problem that they eat our plants. To combat the grubs in your loan, and it is a good long term way to try and get rid of Japanese Beetles in your area, there is a product called milky spore that you can dust around your yard and it is an organism that parasitizes the white grub, the Japanese Beetle Grub. And it slowly spreads through your yard. The trick is, if you live in a suburban area, you are going to have to get your neighbors to do it too because Japanese Beetles from his yard, are just going to fly over here and eat your stuff even though you got them all out of your yard. Another way is you can use Japanese Beetle traps which I am sure you have seen in gardening stores. It consists of a paper bag or a plastic bag with a pheromone trap, a lure, an attractant with a little yellow plastic thing in a cone. Female: Is that not what you always tell me you have? Eric: Yes, we have one. I kind of made Eric’s version of it because otherwise, you have to keep on. Female: That is not what I meant. Now you can go on. Eric: Oh, my own kind of lure, my own pheromone. Yes I have a certain attractive scent to women, and bugs. Female: And bugs. Eric: A lot of what I do is I just go around to my plants and I capture the Japanese Beetles. Let me show you. I am going to get my tools here. Hey! Female: This is the filmmaker’s leg. Eric: Okay! So can we come back to the show? So you have got a plastic container, and then you put some water in it and you put some dish shelf in there, and you just water around it. It does not have to be super foamy. But now we are going to take this and we are going to just go around and knock Japanese Beetles into our soapy water, and they will drown. They flip. All right! So now I am going to show you this in action, very exciting. And we are going to drown bugs. So I just take this and I just put it underneath the leaf they are in and I whack them in like that. And then they go in. Some of them just fly off; you are not going to get them all the time. If this is the leaf, you are going to get your bucket underneath the leaf and then you just whack it or you can sweep them right in and some of them fly off. Female: Do they bite? Eric: No, they do not. Japanese Beetles, they fly really badly and when they hit a wall, they drop. Female: It is like they plunge down. Eric: Yes, they just go plunk! So if you tap and that is their other defense, if they are on a leaf, if the leaf is disturbed, they usually curl up and drop and they fall. So they fall right into your little foamy bucket of water here.