Have you ever ordered ladybugs? It’s very tempting…

I’m in Massachusetts, so my garden is a little ahead of yours. We have a terrible problem with that miserable Lily Beetle in this area; they’ll eat my Asiatic lilies to the ground if I let them.

I haven’t found any good way of getting rid of the Lily Beetles other than inspecting my lilies and picking them off by hand. They lay their eggs on the underside of foliage – they’re red-orange and in clumps – and easy to crush and wipe off.

The most destructive stage seems to be the larvae, which I’ve watched eat a leaf entirely off the plant in about 5 minutes. Unlike the eggs and the mature beetles (with their telltale red bodies), they’re harder to spot. They’re absolutely disgusting, they heap their excrement on their backs as a defense, so they can look like nasty brown gobs a little smaller than your pinky nail. You have to crush them. I keep a couple of small flat rocks with me when I’m checking my lilies to crush the beetles and the larvae between. I’m not sure if they drown if you put them in soapy water, but they might.

BE SURE to check the bottoms of your lilies, just above ground level and especially on the smaller, young shoots. The larvae tend to hide down there under the leaves. I’ve gotten lazy in the past, checking only the top two-thirds of the foliage for eggs and mature beetles, and later discovered tons of the larvae at ground level, happily destroying the growing foliage.

Thanks for the slug info! And good luck with the beetles. It’s interesting to hear they’ve spread that far.

Other than that roses look spectacular this year. My Carefree Beauty is covered with blooms, so is Austin’s Golden Celebration. Sooo many buds on all – just can’ wait.