Beetle-mania: 2021

This year I’ve enjoyed the mid-July success of: cutting weeds, trimming trees, cutting weeds, the first green bean harvest and… cutting weeds. It’s a never-ending battle of wills against a variety of nutrient sucking noxious weeds.

Another battle that arrives in early to mid-July is the annual invasion of Japanese Beetles. These little green voracious insects emerge from the ground and immediately engage in mating, then eating, and sometimes mating and eating at the same time. With a dozen or more beetles engaged in an orgy on a single apple leaf that they devour, with short pauses to fly to another engagement, I imagine that their overindulgences would impress Caligula of ancient Rome.

Nearly every year these beetles wreak havoc on our corn, apple trees, aronia and blackberries. They strip nearly every leaf of our valued fruit, while completely neglecting the weeds at the farm. I probably wouldn’t mind their presence if they would eat the wild parsnip but they only seem to target what we humans want.

Hungry little buggers

Not using caustic chemicals on our food, I concocted a potion made of lemony fresh dish soap and Thai chili peppers and tested on the aronias that our hungry, sex crazed beetles first attacked. While I found several dead beetles, I cannot attribute it to my formula. It could be they were resting (or dead) from coitus exhaustius. The next day I had even more of an infestation maybe due to this aphrodisiac spray inducing a redhot lemon/chili sex appetite and called all of their friends to join in. At least they were clean for that round of licentious debauchery and gluttony.

He could be resting

After exhaustive research (Google), I tried neem oil and a Spinosad bacterial concentrate that are approved for organic use. I was disappointed in not viewing their immediate death but it proved successful in that I no longer see the thousands of Japanese beetles but now only dozens of still breeding monsters and a second dose was administered.

The Gala apple trees are saved although damaged. The aronia berries, while stunted, should give us our best year of production for our wines.

I’ll raise a glass to their demise.

Cheers!

Posted to Poets and Storytellers United: Writers' Pantry #79: The Latest on the Shortest