[NatureNS] Red Lily beetles!

Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 04:08:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: bev@magickcanoe.com
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> Has anyone tried Neem oil? Or dish soap and water as
> a spray?

* based on the observation that the larvae are very slow moving and not very mobile, a few of us back in Ottawa, tried this strategy in our gardens which had too many lily plants to make hand-picking of larvae effective.  Use the strongest pressure spray attachment on a garden hose and blast the larvae off, aiming so that they are blasted to the ground a few feet away from the host plants.   They don't seem to be able to make it back to the plants, and with any luck, perhaps some creature will find and eat them when they are made vulnerable.  Of course, once the beetles are in your area, about all you can do is try to control the hordes.  For that reason, I would also use every opportunity to capture and squish the adults which can often be found on the lilies - especially at the base where they emerge from the soil. 

By the way, removing infected lilies and disposing of them elsewhere seems like a bad plan as it would just spread the problem to a new area - and as Fred has commented, the beetles can destroy native lily plants too.  Also, it is best to avoid disposing of non-native garden plants in places where they could become naturalized.  A gardener friend once  told me that she got "all kinds of good plants" by going to a particular dead end road where she had discovered that local gardeners were dumping their surplus plants - the kinds of plants that spread and become too numerous in gardens and must be removed from time to time.  Not good for the wild.

bev wigney
Round Hill

 
> 
> I think I might just pull them up and
> replant them on a dog walking trail far from the gardens,
> which is just transplanting the problem I guess, however
> I'm having a hard time ripping out the plants after they
> survived the winter.
> 
> Angela in Windsor
> 

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