One of the things you can do is surround your tree with other plants to deter the beetles. These plants include garlic, chives, white onion, leeks, marigolds, geraniums, white chrysanthemum, or catnip.

If anyone wanted to undertake the project of trying to breed new cherry varieties, black cherry and sour cherry species both have the same chromosome count (2n=32) so should be able to produce fertile offspring.

(sweet cherry and Japanese flowering cherries are both 2n=16, btw beetles love chomping flowering cherries too)

LOL! I would love to do that if i had another 100 years left in me. My hope was there might have been some project undertaken like that since JBs have been around on the east coast for at least 50 or more years.

Parker, do you think low growing plants near the roots would deter JBs 10 or 15 feet up in the canopy?

thanks guys! I keep hoping...

if you've spread the milky spore all around your yard, it is effective up to 10 years, with much more effect the 2nd year and on. I had terrible japanese beetles in my 3 acres the first year we bought it. AFter the milky spore, had a mild problem the following year, then none for 8 years. Just reapplied this year as I started to see a few showing up again.

In my yard in east Tennessee I found that the Japanese beetles feast upon my Montmorency and Lutowka Rose sour cherry (from Poland) trees, but the newer hybrid Carmine Jewel and Romance series sour cherry trees developed by the University of Saskatchewan, including Carmine Jewel, Romeo, and Juliet get pretty much left alone. But maybe that's because the beetles become full from eating the leaves from the straight Prunus cerasus trees. But it could be that the Romance series trees inherited some resistance genes from the Prunus fruiticosa (Mongolian cherry) parent.

Patrick, where did you get your Lutowka Rose cherry? I am Polish, living in Omaha, NE, and I have been looking for this cherry tree, but cannot find a source for this cherry.

I purchased my Lutowka Rose cherry tree from Honeyberry USA four years ago. But they appear not to sell them anymore. However, the variety English Morello produced by Dave Wilson Nursery seems to be very similar if not the same same as Lutowka Rose. You may want to give it a try.