Good Bug, Bad Bug

Normally I enjoy gardening in the spring. But after reading seemingly endless headlines about spewing lava, flash floods and gaping sink holes while enduring our freak May blizzard followed by our freak May heat wave, I can’t enjoy myself because I keep wonder whether I’m acting like one of those stalwart band members on the deck of the sinking Titanic. ‘La, la, la … I’m pretty sure the world is coming to an end, but I think I’ll just plant these zinnias and cut back all my pretty shade plants that burned to a crisp in the boiling hot May sun … la, la, la.’

Dragonflies hold their wings flat and parallel to the ground.

It helped that while I worked I was often able to watch dragonflies. It’s been a few years since we’ve had a lot of dragonflies in the yard, so I’m glad to see them back. I read up on dragonflies during their last visit and learned, among many other things, that I have been calling some insects dragonflies when they are actually damselflies. Both aquatic insects belong to the same order, Odonata, but if you look closely you’ll see that damselflies have slimmer bodies and their eyes are separated and somewhat protruding rather than flat and centered on their heads.

Damselflies hold their wings like butterflies do.

To easily tell the two apart, look at their wings when they are at rest. Dragonflies rest with their wings flat and parallel to the ground while damselflies hold their wings pressed together over their backs, like butterflies do. To learn more about these magical insects, go to the Minnesota Dragonfly Society’s site where you’ll find information on some of the 140 species that can be found in Minnesota. Nerd out more by getting yourself a nice dragonfly identification guide like Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Dragonflies by Blair Nikula, Jackie Sones and Donald and Lillian Stokes.

Bad Bugs—Japanese Beetles

Yes, in just over a month Japanese beetles will arrive and dive head first into having sex on our plants while also eating them and crapping all over the place during their god-forsaken 60-day life cycle. What can be done? I’ve said it before, but I want to say it again because people always ask about how to treat Japanese beetles: I don’t like to use chemicals to kill them or anything else. I just pluck (wear gloves) the gross beetles off of plants and toss them into a bucket of soapy water to DIE. If, however, you are thinking of  trying to kill Japanese beetles with insecticides, University of Minnesota Extension Entomologist Jeff Hahn recently sent out an update letting people know that it is too late to do that this season because those suckers are already way too big to be affected by our puny chemical concoctions. You can get a jump on murdering next year’s beetle crop, though, if you apply insecticides to turfgrass from July through mid-September because that’s when females are laying fresh eggs.

Japanese beetles are hell bent on world domination.

But, before reaching for an insecticide, Hahn suggests that we ask ourselves why that seems like the answer. The reason: If grubs are destroying your lawn (usually large patches of yellow/brown grass but that can also be other things), and a good-looking lawn is important to you, then perhaps chemicals can help. If your aim, though, is to reduce the number of beetles having wild sex on your plants and just generally defiling your garden in innumerable ways, think again, because those monsters can fly a long way so treating your small patch of land will do zip.

And one more thing, if you do choose to use chemicals to kill Japanese beetles, please do some Googling to see what the preventative insecticides Hahn suggests (chlorantraniliprole, halofenizide, imidacloprid and chlothianidin) may also harm. I don’t know anything about most of these, but I can tell you that imidacloprid is a neonic and neonics harm bees, dragonflies and other insects.

Japanese beetles are no match for soapy water.

I’m explaining all of this, not because I want to shame people who feel they need to treat a problem. Rather, I think it is far too common for experts to tell people what they can use to treat this or that problem, but they don’t also explain how those treatments might affect other living creatures and/or the planet. In my experience, when I give people ALL of that information, they often decide using chemicals isn’t worth it. But even when they don’t, at least they had all of the tools they needed to make an informed choice. And who wouldn’t want that?