Beetle Mausoleum

   It's bad enough that I'm still finding Japanese beetles in my garden in September. The voracious foreign invaders feast on more than 300 varieties of plants, skeletonizing the leaves. This weekend, not only did I see the munching beetles were the reason my cosmos flowers have looked raggedy all season, but I noticed several of the copper-colored beetles had tried to  hitch a ride from my city-leased garden.  In lifelike poses, the beetle corpses taunted me from my car's rear window in their morbid mausoleum.  

   Usually by now, adult Japanese beetles have done their damage. Female beetles lay their eggs in the ground, where the resulting white grubs spend most of their life cycle. With the first beetles emerging in late June and individual adult beetles living only 30 to 45 days, it seems that their season is lengthening.

   Extension entomologists at the University of Kentucky note that midsummer rain and adequate soil moisture are needed to keep the eggs and newly hatched grubs from drying out. With an abundance of summer rain in Iowa, we likely will have plenty of Japanese beetles to contend with next year.