Discouraging, Demoralizing, and Depressing

The challenges of summer gardening in rural Missouri.

First, there's the intense heat, and then the critters:  moles beneath the ground uprooting plants, raccoons above ground ripping plants out of the soil and digging holes to China, and the infernal Japanese beetles eating foliage and blossoms alike - and usually from your favorite plants.

Let's start with the last - perhaps worst - of  the pests: Japanese beetle.

The literature on organic or least-toxic pest control sites will tell you to just be patient and the Japanese beetles will be gone in a few weeks.  This is most unsatisfactory, I can tell you.  These people are obviously not gardening.  In a few DAYS you'll have nothing left of your prized roses, your berries and your okra.  Also, "a few weeks" for Japanese beetle infestation here in mid-Missouri is from June through August.  Your garden will be completely devastated if you just wait them out.

Otherwise, the Minnesota Rose Gardener has some good information.  I will note, however, that, unlike the experience of both the web author and a rose gardener in South Carolina who's quoted there, planting perennials amongst my roses has done absolutely nothing to detract the beetles.  They much prefer roses to anything else in the vicinity.

Also, as an alternative to sloshing around a bucket - or a jar - of soapy water to toss the beetles into, a kill jar made simply by dribbling acetone (nail polish remover) on a kleenex in a jar or can is easier.  You do have to keep the top covered between catches, however, because they can escape before they succumb to the fumes.  The easiest, quickest thing I've found is capturing them in a slightly tapered rain guage:

  

Surprisingly, they don't seem to be able to get out of this, and I don't have to keep a lid or my hand over the top.  It's easy to hold and "scoop" them off leaves.

If, however, you've failed to notice them gathering, and they get to this stage...

...there's nothing for it but to get out the spray.

That's my one "Red Latham" raspberry plant, which a couple of days ago was gorgeous.

So disheartening.  I'm going to have to cut it off and burn it.  It's covered with Japanese beetle pheremone that attracts more of them.  Also, as I recall, there are studies that show there's something that happens in a plant that has feeding damage that makes it more "visible" to insects that want to feed.

The beetles are easy to spot, but other early warning signs include damage such as this on rhubarb:

Japanese beetles - and other insects - are easiest to capture early in the morning before the sun warms them up, while they're still sluggish.  They don't fly off then, but they will pull up their legs and drop to the ground where they're hard to see and recover, so hold your collection container - whatever you use - below the bugs before you knock them off.  They're quick.

Everybody knows what moles do, and there's really nothing that works well to rid yourself of them other than to have really healthy lawns.  The existence of Japanese beetles in the garden also provides the moles with underground grubs to mine for, so preventing beetle populations would be a big help in preventing mole damage.  

But let's turn to that beetle rival for triggering rage and bloodlust - the raccoon.  Just look at the pictures.  You'll understand.

The last three nights have been awful.  I've replanted the same plants and refilled the same holes.  Raccoons seem to be destructive just for the sake of being destructive much of the time.  So, I've brought out my traps again and am back to the dreary task of trapping and releasing them on the other side of the river several miles away.  What a pain.  

And I don't know how many times my new little gaura plants that I grew from seed can be dug up and replanted before they quit trying.  Nor do I know how many raccoons I have to trap before they're gone.  One year I trapped and released 13!  I only have two traps.  I need to have one large one the size of my pickup bed, fill it with catfood and wait in hiding all night until the lot of them has gone in to feed and then slam the door on them.  I know they can get into the bed of the truck because I used to put the bird feeders in there overnight.  Now I have to put them in an outdoor closet.

Enough grumbling for now.  There are still some wonderful things happening in the garden.

The peppers are fruiting.

The tomatoes are getting big.  (I'll have to get rid of the raccoons before the tomatoes - and the melons - start ripening, or I'll really blow a gasket when they take large bites out of them, which they WILL do.)

Here's hoping your own summer travails are as insignifcant as they are temporary.