Question
I have been hand picking into a child's sand bucket w/soapy water . . . my numbers are very high compared to yours!  Avg. 100-200 during day-
light hrs.  I've heard the traps just attract more, so I quit using them.  This yr. I do plan on attacking the grubs.  Aug?  /  The rose - it could be lack of water.  Happened late spring and it was a dry spring (PA).  / Slugs - just a barrier of used grounds around each plant?  So much to learn!  Thanks for the help!  Corrine

Answer
Corrine, you are a question machine! I mean that in the nicest way!

Child's bucket ... yeesh.... 100-200.... And that's days?  I don't even want to KNOW what you have at night.  Bet you don't want to know, either!

On that note, I have heard the traps attract more, but I used them anyway.  I don't know how much truth there is to that.  There were some years that beetles were totally out of control.  But I was focusing on the slugs I told you about earlier.  No time left for Japanese Beetles.  

Now I have several different kinds of beetles, brown, red, the Japanese greenviolets, lurking everywhere.  If you use Grub Killer in your soil, you make the soil hostile to beneficial microbes.

With that many Beetles, I think you need to do something to avoid this next year.  

Suburban Habitat (http://www.suburbanhabitat.com/pd_beneficial-nematodes.php), a California company, and Gardens Alive! (http://www.gardensalive.com/product.asp?pn=2344), which has product targeting "Northern Insects", are two of many places you can buy good bugs to fight bad bugs.  

Nematodes are microscopic parasites that prey on beetle larvae -- the little C-shaped worms the size of a thumb nail that are almost always present in a healthy lawn.  Totally harmless to humans and other mammals, fish and birds.

When the balance of nature tilts, bad bugs grow out of control - and you have waves of attacking beetles descending on your most fragrant flowers.  

At my house, beetles zero in on Roses, Hollyhocks and Strawberry leaves.  But they start in the soil.

Milky Spore Disease may sound like another kind of Anthrax, but it is a simple dried bacteria that is just waiting to come out of hibernation and incorporate itself into the bodies of certain hostile insect larvae.  Bacteria go from host to host in the soil under your lawn, finding insects that dine on your grass and flowers, leaving not a trace of toxin.  

It works so smoothly, Corrine, it is scary.  

Milky Spore is sold at Home Depot.  But... it takes 2 or 3 years before you see results with MSD.  

So while you're waiting for the MSD, order a crop of nematodes for your grass.  The beetles will never see it coming.  In the meantime, you have to keep up the search and destroy with the pail.

Regarding your poor Rose, you have to take good care of Roses.  They make their owners pay for neglect.  Is the curl the ONLY problem you have had with these?  Almost sounds too good to be true.

The coffee grounds trick with the slugs is relatively new.  

Sure, we have been mixing coffee grounds into Gardenia soil and mulching around blueberry bushes for a hundred years.  But these grounds are in such plentiful supply at Starbucks that it's almost criminal not to do something good with them all.  

To really do a good job, you have to have a thick band around a plant.  And when it rains, much of this is diluted or even washed away.  But I just put on more.  

I have a friend at Starbucks so I have more than most people.  You have to put them in the trunk so you don't stain the seat.  And it is quite a lot to haul back to the yard.  

But if you do that over and over your garden starts to look so beautiful.  

The dark coffee grounds are a wonderful rich deep shade of brownblack, and they are all natural.  The slugs do not want to cross them.  

Probably the same reason they don't like my Nicotiana (flowering tobacco, very fragrant) plants, the caffeine may be toxic to them - imagine that, a slug on caffeine.

I depend on Starbucks because of the enormous amount of coffee they make on a daily basis.  Home made coffee works too, but on the scale you need for quick results, it's Starbucks time.

I really can't get over your luck with the Rose, just having that single problem.  Please let me know what's the deal with that.  You must have a terrific cultivar, perfect for your climate and community.  By the way, Roses love coffee too.  Earthworms will enrich any soil laced with coffee grounds.

Good to hear from you again.  Next question?