Green Thumb Gazette, August 2023

Japanese Beetles… the menace of roses and your lawn!

I have had COUNTLESS calls this summer about Japanese beetles wreaking havoc on roses. The best thing for Japanese beetles is the active ingredient called Carbaryl (Sevin). There are other products out there that work as well, but Sevin is relatively available for homeowner use pretty much anywhere. I recommend the liquid version of this product because the powder version can easily get caught in the furry legs and bodies of many of our good pollinators (which we don’t want).

The problem with applying carbaryl (Sevin) is that it is only going to work on the beetles, or adults. Another way to help control your future Japanese beetle population is to apply a granular product in the fall and spring to help control the grub stage of the beetle. There are a few granular products that will work on Japanese beetle grubs, but the ones that are more readily available include B.t. (which is a natural bacteria) and Imidacloprid (Merit). The key to granular applications is that you should make a few applications in the fall (August - October) and a few applications again in the spring (April-May). The reason for this is that Japanese beetles don’t all mark their calendars for the same date to lay their eggs in the soil. They will lay them at different times during that period. So to get more of the population, you need to make multiple applications.

With all that in mind, know that you may never get rid of all the Japanese beetles, because think, those beetles have wings and can fly a good distance. If your neighbor doesn’t work to help keep their population down, their beetles are going to fly over to your landscape. Also, no matter what you do, Japanese beetles will ALWAYS be attracted to roses, it’s just their nature and preference. So one alternative to help get rid of those beetles is to pull up all your roses!

I hope this information helps those of you who are knee deep in Japanese beetles! If you have any other questions about controlling them or grubs, please give me a call!

We will be having our Native Plant & Bulb Sale sale again this fall, so be sure to submit your order ASAP!

All plants will be coming from our friends at Carolina Native Nursery in Burnsville, NC and are all native plants to NC!

You may ask, “Why should I plant natives?” or “I have enough to manage with my lawn alone, why add something else to my plate?” Native plants are amazing for you and for the natural world around you. Because these plants are native to our area and have evolved to be adaptive to our soils and climate, they are actually a lot easier to care for in the landscape. Most native plants require “no babying”, using less water and fertilizers than many ornamentals, not to mention they are BEAUTIFUL!

Because our way of life is urbanized now more than ever, we have a lot of fragmented land. This means that in some places, land has been broken up where it was once continuous and full of native plants to support wildlife.

The remaining isolated areas are sometimes not enough to support the wildlife left in them. In our own landscapes, we have transformed the land we have into a monoculture of turf, concrete, and exotic plants, repelling pollinators, beneficial insects, and wildlife. Adding a few natives back into your landscape instead of overusing ornamentals or exotics helps to preserve the complex web of biological diversity, which we call “nature”. They improve the health and help to restore ecosystems by providing food and shelter for pollinators, beneficial insects, birds, & mammals. Native plants also offer great nesting sites for birds, and act as larval hosts for many of our butterflies and moths!

It has been shown that this type of action also creates a “snowball effect”. This means that when you install natives in your flower beds and you get excited about seeing all the beneficial insects, birds, or butterflies, you begin to tell your friends & family. Then they add some native plants to their landscapes and so on. What you do for your ecosystem has an impact!

Tips for adding native plants in your landscape:
Diversify your landscape with: evergreens for winter cover & berries, plants with seeds, fruits, and nectar for food, grasses for shelter and seeds, and host plants for insects with larval stages.
Plan to have some visual interest in every season – this can be tough in the winter sometimes, but dried seed heads from coneflowers, plants with winter berries, or even grasses are beautiful in the winter!
Don’t plant too close to windows (because birds will accidentally hit them).
Mimic nature by planting in gentle sweeping curves, irregular shapes, clusters, and layers.
Plant so that your plants have room to grow! (Read that again!)
Expect & be OKAY with some foliage missing! – you can’t have beautiful butterflies without the caterpillars!

How do I order? Go to the following link to place your order: Fall Plant Sale Order Form

Come out and support your local extension office and your ecosystem this September by purchasing some native plants! If you have any questions about ordering, please contact Cari Mitchell, Horticulture Agent, at 828-632-4451.

“Because life is fueled by the energy captured from the sun by plants, it will be the plants that we use in our gardens that determine what nature will be like 10, 20, and 50 years from now.” – Doug Tallamy, American entomologist, ecologist, and conservationist