Update: Attack of the Garden Pests

Last week I brought you my epic battle against Japanese beetles and webworms... to update in short:  Me: 0, Japanese beetles: 1.  

So as you probably remember, I've been waging a war against some of the most annoying (in my opinion) garden pests around.  For today's update I have some good news and bad news... Good news:  there are no more signs of webworm and no further damage to our lilac bush!  Hooray!! 

Bad news:  the Japanese beetles are back and hungrier than before.  First I tried brushing and picking them off my plants and dropping them in a bucket of soapy water.  The results were instantaneous and I would have been hard pressed to find any beetles left on my plants by the time I was done; I also set up a Japanese beetle trap away from the garden and caught many bugs right away.  I thought I was in the clear but decided to wait several days to see how things went.  

Nearly a week later I'm back to report on my progress - I haven't touched the bean plants at all because I wanted to see if my efforts had any lasting effect.  And folks, I'm here now to tell you.. it didn't.  The trap has in fact caught more beetles, but it's not an outrageous amount (there's maybe 1-2 inches of beetles in the bottom of the trap, we caught about 1 inch of beetles within the first day) and my bean plants are suffering more damage by the day!  There are less beetles on them than there were a week ago, but they certainly found their way back and seem to be doing even more damage than before.  

In conclusion, next time I'll save my money and skip buying the Japanese beetle trap.  I'll stick to taking the beetles off the plants dropping them in a bucket of soapy water, though this process will have to become a daily one at our home until those pesky beetles are gone for good.