On Our Farms 7/5

Japanese beetles devour an apple in no time.

There are many challenges in growing fruit without toxic agri-chemicals, particularly soft fruits such as raspberries and peaches, which are susceptible to molds in a wet year, and to a host of insects in any year.

One of those insects is the Japanese Beetle, an invasive species with no natural predators this side of the Pacific. This means the Japanese Beetle lives and breeds with wild abandon.  It arrived here in central Illinois nearly 10 years ago, but after the first few horrendous years, the numbers diminished to manageable levels.  But this year they are back. With a vengeance.


Check out the short video of the havoc they are wreaking here, and a demonstration of "beetle patrol" here.  And the fate of the nasty buggers here.

To get an even better sense of how we deal with the trials and tribulations of beetle patrol, read  Teresa’s daughter Gabriela marvelous description below:

The Japanese Beetles love grape leaves, and reduce them to a lacy network of veins.

The greedy little black, green, and copper buggers are eating practically everything this year, reducing the grape leaves to something eerily reminiscent of doilies, stripping the cherries until only the pits are left to hang from the trees, swarming so thick on the apples and peaches that those fruits resemble shiny Christmas ornaments. Writhing, evil Christmas ornaments. 

Armed with buckets of soapy water (the soap breaks the surface tension so they can‘t crawl out), we tramp around trying our best to diminish the ravenous hordes. Sometimes this defense against the relentless invaders seems futile; often when we come back to redo a spot it seems that there are just as many as there were a few hours ago when we first scoured it. If there are less, it’s easy to suspect that the clouds or the rain or the early morning are what’s truly keeping them away. Or maybe their four- to six-week reign of terror is slowly beginning to wind down as they burrow into the ground to spawn a whole new wave of troops for next summer.

Usually Beetle Patrol starts at the peaches and ends with the apples and pears. If there’s just one or two, you can pick them out with your hands to toss into the bucket, but if there’s more—and there’s almost always more—your best bet is to shake the branch over the bucket. Some will manage to fly away, but fewer than if you tried to pick them off one by one. The real hazard of this method, when using it on trees, is that while many will get in your bucket and one or two will get away, a good number will come showering down on you yourself. This is why you should always make sure your mouth is closed before grabbing a branch.

After you’ve enjoyed the downpour, the next step is to look down at your shirt. There will inevitably be several clinging to the fabric with their little claws, which are strong but not strong enough to keep you from picking them off and sending them to sleep with—well, with other Japanese beetles. It may lack the drama of The Godfather, but if we spent time making little concrete overshoes for all these guys we’d never get anything done 

After peaches are several rows of raspberries and blackberries. Up and down and up and down the aisle, shaking branches over buckets, or knocking the beetles into your hand first if the branch is too far away to get the bucket in. The insects are all busy mating before they retreat underground to reproduce, and after awhile you start to feel like some sort of vengeful morality deity breaking up orgy after orgy. If there isn’t already a thick layer of dead beetles in the water, one soon forms, which makes your subsequent victims live slightly longer before drowning. They churn frantically, attempting to climb up the slippery backs of their deceased comrades, or to cling to a bit of leaf or fruit that dropped in there with them, struggling against the inevitable in a way that, after a long patrol, can be almost hypnotic.

We don’t bother with the cherries, since their season is past, and I generally get the grapes only if there’s some extra time, seeing as three quarters of the entire crop has already had all of its leaves annihilated. A few are starting to grow back, and hopefully that will be enough to get all the essential nutrients to the grapes themselves. I’d say “knock on wood,” but that will only lead to more Japanese beetles falling on me.

Frustrating as this method is, so far it’s the best option. We do use a non-toxic kaolin clay spray to keep insects off certain plants, but rain washes it away, and it can’t be used on soft fruit like raspberries. Pheromone traps are worse than doing nothing, because they draw in more than they can kill. (We’ve recently had to ask our neighbors to take them down, as they were actually bringing even more beetles to our field.) And since we’re committed to being organic, poisonous chemicals are out of the question. So for now, I guess I’m stuck on Beetle Patrol, fighting back the invaders.