Ok if japanese bettles eat bean plants, what is the best way to stop them from killing all my bean plants?
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The completely safe way to remove Japanese Beetles is to hand pick them off your plants. Another option is to use a floating row cover or netting/mesh to keep the beetles off your beans.
The pheromone bags do kill a lot of beetles, but they also attract a lot of Japanese Beetles to your yard. In fact they attract more beetles than your plants do. If you use the bags, place them as far from your beans as possible. They may reduce the number of adult beetles on your beans, but they will not eliminate them from your garden.
Lady bugs and lacewings are totally ineffective on hardbodied beetles like the Japanese Beetle. They do like softbodied insects like aphids, but there is no guarantee that they stay put in your garden.
Grub control will not remove the adult from your beans today. Long term, grub control will not remove the adult beetle from your beans tomorrow. Adults can fly up to two miles per day. Grub control can only be effective if practiced community wide.
The EPA has removed Diazinon from the market place in the US.
When I don't have a spray handy I flick them into a bowl of soapy or oily water.
Another procedure is to spray a mixture of 1 tablespoon isopropyl alcohol to a pint of pyrethrin mixture. Don't use in full sun or high temperatures because that's when they can burn or stress plants. Try to aim for the beetles.
Long-term prevention for Japanese Beetles is biological controls such as beneficial nematodes or a product called "milky spore," which attack the grubs, and prevent recurrence for years.
This explains how it works:
http://homeharvest.com/milkspore.html...
Diazinon and Sevin sprays will take down the adults but are poisons.
Rotenone and Pyrethrum sprays are also effective .While these are made from plant sources and more environmentally-friendly, they are still poisons and should be used with care. Neem oil has also been suggested, though with varying success reported.
Take advantage of the biological control already taking place in your garden by encouraging natural predators, such as preying mantises, ladybugs, lacewings & birds.
ACK!! if it's a food plant, I guess I'd avoid using chemicals. But the odd thing is that I don't recall my beans ever being attacked by Japanese Beetles. They usually went for the roses. My problem with beans was cutworms. They would eat through the stem so that the entire plant was laying on the ground in the morning, as though a tiny lumberjack had come through and toppled the plant.
If you're sure it's JB's, check out this HGTV site for some natural, gentle methods. I used the soapy water method (each morning I'd go out and find the beetles, and flick them into the soapy water).
Good luck!
The easiest solution and most enviro friendly for Japanese beetles is simply to buy beetle traps. Be sure to hang them from a post away from the plants you want to protect, because they will swarm in the area where the trap is. We've had to change the bag once in the trap we set out 2 weeks ago.
The flip side to this is that I've heard that it actually attracts more Japanese beetles to your area than would naturally occur.
I'm using traps this summer because beetles killed 2 fruit trees of mine last summer. This summer the traps appear to be saving my fruit trees, so I think it's a good solution.
Get some 7 dust, you can get it a Lowes or Wal Mart. It works great!!
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