A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion Plant pests and problems Pests Galore

Yuck, it is only the beginning of June and already the aphids have attacked. My poor boxwoods have been attacked by some little worm that makes the leaves curl into little balls. The gypsy moth caterpillars are everywhere and they bite! I have sprayed the yard to eradicate the gypsy moth as there is no natural predator to eat them. The boxwoods are responding to an insecticidal soap spray as are the rosed(aphids). The most curious of all is the squirrels are also eating things in the garden. They trashed the cone flowers, ate a young delphenium, and I watched them eat my marigold plants. Nothing eats the marigold, but I actually saw them eat them. Before you know it those nasty Japanese beetles will be here!

Hi..I know what you mean. Pests seem to be in hundreds this year! I just planted to new climbing roses from David Austin..just have to keep them alive
for a couple of seasons before they'll bloom. BTW..if you have roses.."Concern" is what I use on the one bush I already have blooming...a wild red rose. I don't recall what website I got it on but this is the first year I haven't had total destruction of the leaves,etc. I found out about it on an agricultural site here in Ky. I have a Koi pond and never spray around the garden. It worked great but no so great on other plants...seemed to kill the lower leaves on other plants.If you have roses you may want to try it and it's not harmful to the environment!
Also...if you will treat your lawn with Grub-X twice during the season it will cut back hundreds of Jap beetles. We have Wisteria and for 2 years I almost lost it to these horrible things. Last year and this year we have had a mole..so we treated with Grub-X. I then learned that the beetle lives in the ground and they FEED on grubs. Last year I didn't even half to spray for the beetles or anything. The mole went next door(course I didn't tell my neighbor where it came from...:))))))! Anyway...you may try that and very soon as so far I haven't seen a beetle yet! Here in Ky they are horrible but our resident naturalist here in town claims that the numbers are slimming...let's hope so!!!
Hang in there....I have never sprayed for bugs and such because of the Koi pond so I have lost plants and such but I still work at it! Hope this helps friend and try out the Grub-X! :)))))

Yeah the bugs out here in Cheese land are going nuts as well! The skeeters are thicker then white on rice!

As far as the Grubex goes, that is great advice! However it is only needed once a season if applied correctly. One application lasts about 9 months in the plants. it is not cheap but well worth it if you have a grub problem!

Mike

gosh that sounds like some serious bug prob's you got there. squirrels eating marigolds?!! ha ha. one year I had squirrels eating on several of my plants. we were in a drought at the time. I started keeping bowls of water around the plants they were eating and it helped alot. have you had much rain?
birds eat grubs. do you have many birds around?
and wow....a biting moth!

The gypsy moths are the result of a non native species accidently escping from a research lab and causing quite a problem. They hatch by the millions and proceed to defoliate the trees. 2 seasons of defoliation and the poor trees die. There is no natural control of them as even the birds don't eat them so to control them you have to spray. We have never had them in town before and I think the outlying areas are not spraying and they have "wormed" their way into the town. I usually hand pick the beetles off the roses twice a day and immerse them in a container of water. These squirrels also try to eat the herbs in my herb pot and they have eaten the leaf buds off several trees. We are not in a drought and have had plenty of rain. Oh yeah, my neighbor called today and told me that I had better not go out for a few minutes as she had just seen a bear run past her house and headed toward mine! DEC and the police finally caught up with it and took it out of town for release.

gosh...it's like something from a stephen king book around your place!
good luck

I feel your pain, gypsy moths were BAD here a few weeks ago....the little caterpillars were EVERYWHERE!!!! I mean you couldn't go outside without coming back in with a few on you somewhere....

This is the first year I've ever known them to be bad here in town. Even mom and dad had never noticed them before.

They ate the leaves pretty good on a few on my smaller trees.

I remember back to when I was a teen and the gypsy moths invaded the north east in earnest, They were horrible!!! There were so many of them that if you went outside on a calm day, you could actually hear them chewing the leaves in the trees above you, and your scalp would end up with tons of gypsy moth caterpillar fras (poop) in it after only a few minutes as it fell like rain. Not quite as disgusting as it sounds, it was only little hard pellets a little bit bigger then a grain of salt. They wound up deforesting 1000's of acres of oaks in our area.
They are just starting to make their presence known here in WI, I hope it does not reach that stage out here.

what about bats? will bats eat them? they've got to have a preditor?
those things sound SO freaky!