Battling Japanese Beetles: Tips for Banning Them from the Garden

It just isn’t summer in the northeast without Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) tearing through raspberries, roses, and other plants gardeners tend to hold near and dear.

Their voracious appetite is matched in intensity with an innate difficulty to exterminate, or even to repel. They’re a problem for gardeners of every level, and their constant westward expansion means the Japanese beetle won’t be a predominantly East Coast problem for long.

When it comes to pest problems, a little knowledge goes a long way. After all, let us not forget the immortal wisdom of G.I. Joe who said, “Knowing is half the battle.”

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This applies quite well to Japanese beetles. There are no guaranteed ways to eliminate these insects from your garden, but we can take steps to minimize their presence and strive to eliminate it when the beetles show their coppery butts on your rose buds.

We’ll take a brief look at where Japanese beetles originated in the United States, gain an understanding of their life cycle, and go over how to prevent and eliminate these pests from your garden.

Strap yourself in because we’re goin’ to beetle town. First stop: Riverton, New Jersey.

Japanese beetles made their first known appearance in the United States in 1916, in Riverton, New Jersey. However, unlike the bowl-cut Beatles who gave us songs like “Mother Nature’s Son” and “Yesterday,” these beetles were an unwelcome addition to the area.

The best guess for their actual origin in the United States was that they were hiding inside of a shipment of Japanese iris.