… have arrived.
I saw my first Japanese beetle of the year, yesterday June 19. That’s the same date, to the day, as last year. And that’s about three days early, based on cumulative growing degree days for the year, using several different on-line calculators. We won’t hit 1000 growing degree-days until the end of this week.
In hindsight, I hung my traps at just about the right time (Post G23-022). I tend to hop on that early, because my local hardware stores sell out of those traps every year, about a week after the beetles show up.
I don’t necessarily obsess about the Japanese beetles in and of themselves. They cause a bit of leaf damage in my garden, but not a huge amount. They are more of an annoyance than a threat.
But their arrival is a marker for the start of garden pest season. These will soon be followed by the squash vine borer, cucumber beetles, mosquitoes, and other undesirables.
Addendum: Sure enough, I spotted (and squashed) my first cucumber beetle this afternoon. They wiped out my cucumber crop for the past two years, because they carry bacterial wilt. This year I’m growing County Fair (not Country Fair) cucumbers, reported to be the only variety that is immune to bacterial wilt. Guess I’ll know in a week or so whether or not that’s true.
