In all my years of gardening, I’ve never had much trouble with pests.  That is until this summer when the beetles arrived.  What I didn’t realize, as I was preparing the garden soil in the spring, was that all the disgusting white grubby things I was finding were Japanese beetle larva.  BLECK!  Now I’ve become like a ninja, moving silently and stealthily through the garden, spotting beetles and trying to strike with precision.  One wrong move and they throw themselves off the plants, only to be lost in the foliage below, escaping death.

I never use pesticides in my garden, but constantly squishing them is getting a little gross and staining my gardening gloves.  So off I went to my local farm store in search of an alternative method to control the critters.

I came back with Bag-A-Bug beetle trap which has a nasty smelling lure to lead them to their death.  I hung it on our hay elevator away from the garden, as directed, and within a few hours, the beetles started to pile up.  I’m still finding some beetles on my sweet peas, but nothing like before I started using the trap.  As for the beetles that refuse to cooperate, my grandfather used to fill a mason jar with soapy water and knock the beetles into it.  Mwahahahahah….