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caption, pg. 7:
Cleaned Stems
This salvia ran into the losing end of a hungry Asiatic garden beetle. Linda Lemmon photo.
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
It can't be slugs. Not enough rain and it's completely the wrong season for their appetites. And yet, the salvia and the mums and plenty more plants in the garden are stripped clean.
In the late summer season, one morning, halfway up the stem. The next morning, the rest of the stem is picked clean. Not one leaf. It looks like all bare green legs inhabiting the garden beds.
The culprit? Asiatic garden beetles. Digging under the soil, there they are. Coppery iridescent beetles who hide in the soil during the day and come out to strip the gardens at night. They can damage more than 100 plants.
The beetle, according to the UMass Extension service, is a native of Japan and China and it has been in the northeast since the 1920s.
Eggs turn into larva are white with a brown head capsule and six legs. It's about 3/4-inch long. By late June the larva pupates into a beetle in eight to 15 days. They may be present in the soil until October.
Extension service experts said there are two ways to control the beetle. When it is a larva, it can be controlled as with other white grubs. After it has pupated into a beetle, experts recommend using materials such as "pyrethrin, rotenone, acephate or carbaryl."