This 2007 photo shows a Japanese beetle in a garden in New Market, Va. (AP Photo)

Hello Mid-Ohio Valley farmers and gardeners! Another lovely week here in the valley. Many good-looking gardens around the area are ready to start yielding homegrown vegetables and fruits.

Many backyard gardeners who love flowers may ask themselves this question: To deadhead or not to deadhead? There are many benefits to pruning spent flowers.

The primary reason flowers exist is to produce more flowers. In general, once a flower blooms and dies it forms seeds for the next generation.

However, if you want to have beautiful flowers in your annual garden or containers right through to the first frost, WVU Extension recommends deadheading. Deadheading is simply removing the spent flower before it sets seed. This encourages the plant into believing it needs to keep blooming to produce seed for the next generation. Deadheading will keep your plants blooming and looking their best for the entire season. Different types of flowers require different deadheading methods, but the simplest practice is to cut spent blooms.

We must also consider the benefits of deadheading versus letting the perennials set seed heads. When perennials set seeds, the seed heads can be very attractive in the garden and they may also provide food for birds and wildlife. Seed heads on many flowers and herbs will serve as food for pollinators. You may also want to save some of the seeds to plant in the spring.

This week, I want to discuss a destructive pest which rears its head in late June and July, the Japanese beetle. The Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) is a chewing-type insect that is now peaking in numbers to wreak havoc on local foliage in the valley. This period of peak activity will last about six to eight weeks. Adult beetles are half an inch long with a shiny metallic green body and coppery brown wings, with a small tuft of white hairs surrounding its body sides and back.

This insect is not picky, feeding and causing damage on more than 300 varieties of plants including ornamental trees and shrubs, garden plants and field crops. The beetles exhibit a definite preference for some plants including roses, grapes, peaches, Norway and Japanese maple, birch, crabapple and purple-leaf plum. Damage to preferred crops can be more severe.

Adult beetles can severely defoliate a plant by chewing out the tissue between the leaf veins, leaving a lace-like skeleton. Severely injured leaves turn brown and drop off the plant. Beetles like to aggregate on favored host plants and feed on the upper and outer foliage, working down. The average life span of the adult beetle is 30 days.

Many people ask, where do they come from? Japanese beetles have a one-year life cycle. They overwinter as full-sized grubs, waiting for the warmth of spring to come. When it does start to warm up, they start to feed on the roots of turfgrass (causing dead patches in the yard). Right before the adults emerge, they pupate.

Adult beetles begin to emerge from the soil as early as the third week of May and throughout June. The adult beetles feed and lay eggs for the next two months. Japanese beetles like to lay their eggs on irrigated turf in July and continue into August. Growing grubs begin feeding in August until October.

So we know about the Japanese beetle, but how do we control it? For gardeners interested in more natural remedies, the beetles are less active in the morning and late evening. Hand removal can be an effective method for small-scale control. Beetles can easily be removed by shaking plants or plant parts over a collecting container filled with water and a few drops of dish soap.

The dish soap breaks the water’s surface tension so the beetles sink into the water and drown rather than escape. Insecticidal soap or neem oil can also be used to spray on the leaves of plants.

Any product containing the ingredient spinosad (Captain Jack’s Deadbug Brew, Colorado Potato Beetle Beater) may also be used. It is a more natural control that is a byproduct of the rum distilling industry (contains compounds from bacteria from crushed sugar cane).

A number of insecticides are labeled for control of Japanese beetle adults. Homeowners have a limited number and selection of products compared to what is available to commercial or licensed applicators.

The product Sevin (carbaryl) is highly effective as a stomach poison. Acepahte (Orthene), cyfluthrin (Tempo) and permethrins are also available. For licensed applicators, the pyrethroids Danitol, Asana, Brigade, Baythroid, Mustang Max, Warrior and Capture give instant knockdown and mortality of adult beetles, with 7 to 10 days of activity.

Trapping is not recommended for Japanese beetle control by WVU Extension. Although large numbers of beetles can be captured in these traps, they often attract more beetles than can be contained, and subsequently increase plant damage in their general vicinity.

These traps usually employ two types of baits to attract beetles: a floral-based compound and a synthetic sex pheromone that mimics the odor the female beetle uses to attract mates. These smells travel through the air, and the beetles pick up on the scent using their antenna, inviting the beetle to come on over. Beetles end up both inside and outside the trap. This large number of beetles congregate and release more pheromones that attract more beetles. You get the picture.

Studies have shown that traps lead to more plant damage in the areas they are placed. Researchers have investigated the impact of where traps were placed in terms of their number (one trap or multiple traps), location (near vulnerable plants or not) and wind direction (upwind or downwind from susceptible vegetation). Regardless of number or placement, the areas around the traps had more beetle feeding damage than if there had been no trap at all.

Looking for more information? Contact me at the Wood County WVU Extension Office 304-424-1960 or my e-mail jj.barrett@mail.wvu.edu with questions. Good luck and happy gardening!

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