My experience is that if you have Japanese Beetles you're going to have some lacy leaves at least for this summer. I know some people say not to use traps because they attract more beetles than they kill, but I have found that killing a few thousand (and they do come in thousands the first year!) will lessen the number laying eggs and therefore will reduce the number of adults chewing on the foliage the next year. If enough people in an area each put out a couple of traps early enough every year the overall population is bound to be reduced.

I haven't tried treating the lawn to kill the grubs because I'm concerned that other things (eg earthworms) may be affected. Does anyone have an opinion on that?

My opinion: Spraying poisons to kill things you believe to be pests actually ends up harming more beneficial organisms in your garden than so called "pests". When you do this, you disrupt the balance and sterilize the little ecosystem you have in your garden. Beneficial organisms are no longer able to keep "pests" in check, allowing opportunistic pest populations to skyrocket, causing you to spray even more poison.

I cringe when I look at those packages of poisons in the stores.

Last time I walked past that aisle I wondered if people would still buy the stuff it the package advertised that it also killed ladybugs, butterflies, honeybees, fireflies.

I can just see the label: "New and Improved! Kills 10 times more butterflies than the leading brand!"

I guess I decided to stop using herbicides and pesticides in my yard when I was out spraying some roundup and saw that I had soaked a firefly that was resting for the day on a leaf. In my mind, I heard the voices of all the little wonderful critters call to me, pleading for me to stop. They said "When you kill those weeds, you are killing us too!"

I may have some chewed leaves here and there, but I have more fireflies in my yard than I have ever seen anywhere else and I can walk barefoot without fear of anything more dangerous than dog poo. I have discovered that weeding by hand is pleasant and doesnt take much longer than spraying poison and the results look better. After spraying roundup, you still have weeds, you just have dead ones. . .

Don't think I am some hippie nutcase bug kisser. . my recent use of chemical weapons against fleas inside my home would have made Saddam himself very proud! ha ha ha

Thanks folks. We live on 9 acres, so treating the lawn is like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic. YuccaP, I know what you mean. I'm no tree hugger, and I love watching the lizards, frogs, bees, butterflies, etc doing their thing, so I try to be most careful about where and what I spray. I guess I just get frustrated with the amount of damage done in a short period of time.
About the traps, I have mixed feelings about those too. This year, I've tried putting a couple pretty far from the house and gardens in an open area near the woods. The bags were nearly full after a couple of days. I look at it as a couple of bags of JBs that won't be in my garden. But I have had less this year than a couple of years ago. My main concern is a couple of Japanese Maples which they love. This year, I applied something under the trees & also around a bed of cannas that is supposed to kill the grubs. In the tree area, which is heavily mulched, I did not notice an absence of earthworms when I set out some annuals. Both areas have so far had much less evidence of the JBs than the past couple of years.
I suppose I should have posted this in Pests & Diseases, but felt like my fellow Alabamian's have the most similar issues to deal with. Ya'll haven't let me down!

I am new to gardening but have been reading online what to do for these awful critters that want to eat up my roses! I read about beneficial nematodes and am considering giving them a try. Has anyone ever tried them out?

i am hand-picking them but i don't have 9 acres to deal with. i have not used pesticides in several years and seem to be no worse off now than when i used orthene on a regular basis. i suspect i am achieving a balance between the predator and prey insects as well as a healthier population of birds and toads.
i do resort to using herbicides for things such as poison ivy, privet and honeysuckle but this is down to spot treatment of outbreaks in the wooded areas.
i am convinced that, if you plant one or two roses, the japanese beetles will defer to those and leave most of your other plants alone! at least, it is this way in my yard.
if you go around the garden before sunset with a cup of water containing a few drops of dishwashing liquid, they can be easily knocked off into that and will drown. i am collecting about 30-40 per day using this method. one other observation; i do not find them on plants in the woods and assume it is because they are not the best flyers in congested areas.

Jeff, Thanks for the post. I've read much of your advice in this forum before, and I value your input. I haven't had time lately to go out and try the hand-picking but will do so this weekend. I appreciate what you're saying about the balance and hope I have the patience to deal with it this way. I have been spraying for some fungus (crepe myrtles for example), and do use herbicides for the PI, honeysuckle, etc when clearing some of the wooded areas, and for new beds. The past couple of weekends have been hectic, and I was hoping for a "miracle" I guess. I'm still curious about the Neem oil however since I've read a lot of threads where it is recommended. Directions say it's harmful to bees and not to spray when they are active. That's reason enough for me to not even use it. But I'm beginning to wonder if it is really effective or worth it, especially after a rain shower. If I don't have a lot around the maples, I'll hand-pick those too.

I don't have time to hand pick JBs, so will continue to use the traps since they don't harm anything else. I, too, use no other insecticides and find that I don't have a pest problem. I do use Roundup for privet, PI, Enlish ivy, and other vines that invade from the neighbor's woods and would consume much more of my garden than the bugs could!

I too have noticed a lot of grubs this year but don't want to harm the earthworms or anything else beneficial. So I kill many of the grubs I find and hope that there is a balance in nature that I don't need to fool with.

My earthworms have been busy reproducing! And the resident green anole population so enjoys the bugs, I wouldn't want to deprive them of their food source. They love my yard with all the hiding places for them.

A neighbor down the street has a JB trap in her yard so there must be some JBs around, but I have not noticed them yet in my yard. There were A LOT of them on my roses last year, they were awful. This year so far the slugs have been what I have noticed the most--they have eaten holes in so many leaves. I've picked off so many slugs by hand.

OMG! I did put out some rice for the ants, because they are so awful in some spots and I think there are so many they are interfering with plant growth. I hope that the anoles aren't eating the rice. Do you think they would?????