The Scourge of the Beetle

There is one part of summer that I completely dread - the part that includes removing, by hand, all the vermin that seek to decimate our crops before we have a chance to devour them ourselves.  Potato bugs, squash beetles, cabbage moth caterpillars, horn worms, but the very worst of the worst.....Japanese beetles.

They show up on the scene at about the same time as the blueberries ripen and within days can completely ruin a vineyard of grapes or raspberry bushes.  I have also known them to eat all the silks off my corn thus limiting the corn's ability to germinate well.  Not to mention the destruction that they cause to my flower gardens - roses, Canna Bulbs, and woodbine all get munched into small Japanese beetle pellets.

The farmers, of course, spray for them with whatever nasty, harmful chemical the agricultural industry has come up with to kill them, but many will fly from their fields to mine in front of the sprayer.....thanks neighbor, that's just what I wanted - toxic chemicals AND the nasty beetles.

They didn't seem to be so bad the first few years of having the farm, but my suspicion is that we just didn't recognize or care so much about the food that we were attempting to raise to notice the destruction that was caused by these little beasts.  Now they are significantly worse than they have been in the past years.  Like all obnoxious pests, when they gain a foot hold they seem to make the most of it.  I always joke that if we actually tried to get them to spread and grow they would probably die off.

There are a lot of natural ways to try to decrease the numbers of beetles - traps (which, incidentally, seem to actually draw them from miles around), nematodes to infest them and kill off the grubs in the soil before they hatch into beetles (which takes a bit of work and the right timing to know when the grubs are most susceptible), and my preferred favorite - hand picking.

Every morning my husband goes out with a bowl of water and collects bugs.  Some people suggest soapy water, but we avoid the soap....with good reason that will be revealed later.   Sometimes it takes a quarter hour and sometimes it takes an hour and a half to get most of the bugs off the bushes and grapes.  It never seems to matter how many are picked off, there will be more by nightfall when it is done again.  I try to spend some time in my flower gardens picking them off the flowers there as well, but I can honestly say I am not as diligent as my husband is about picking them off the grapes and raspberries....and my flowers pay the price, but then again we don't have to eat my flowers. 

As time consuming as this is, and as monotonous, it has an up-side.....disposal.  We had started out with the soapy water, but then I had a thought while watching a chicken working like mad to find a cricket that had escaped into a crack in the sidewalk.....maybe the chickens will like them. It was like Mikey on the "Life" commercial, "... He likes it!  Hey Mikey!"  A small handful of the swimming, swarming mass is tossed out onto the floor of the chicken coop and then the feeding frenzy begins. 

I am not really one to deliberately hurt beings if I can help it, but there are some lines that do get drawn when attempting to grow your own food. It is a bit gladiatorial, but very satisfying.... if you are a crop eating bug, you will be summarily sentenced to death by chicken unless you are strong enough or lucky enough to escape from the coop unscathed.  Some do, I know, I have seen them crawling off to hide out of sight of the chickens.  My luck, I am slowly, inadvertently running a Darwinian experiment and evolving a new breed of Japanese beetle that is smarter, faster and luckier than the typical beetle.  Hopefully, my chickens are also evolving right along with them.