Japanese Beetles are a gardener's nightmare. Just when you have things growing well and fruit starting to be put on ... along about June here comes hundreds of these iridescent metallic (green to bronze to copper) colored garden pests the size of your finger nail (3/8 to 1/2 inch long) and eat the leaves of your plants leaving only the lacy skeleton of the leaf veins! (Enlarged photo by Clemson University.)

Each beetle only lives about 30 to 45 days. But they appear from May through August with peak populations being present usually in mid-July. (Some regional differences may make these dates slightly off in various parts of the country.)

These unwelcome bugs eat a variety of plants.The University of Kentucky Japanese Beetle page lists about two dozen of their favorite food plants. In total there are over 400 different plants they are known to eat with about 50 favorites. These include:

1. the leaves of green beans in the vegetable garden,
2. the leaves of peach trees in the orchard (and sometime chunks out of the fruit itself),
3. the leaves and fruit of blackberry vines,
4. both the leaves and blossoms of roses and hollyhocks,
5. the leaves of grape vines in the fruit garden, and
6. pussy willow leaves in the decorative borders of your yard.