Question
No chemicals?  How do you keep the beetles off?
I hand pick, but no sooner do I move away and more are back!  I also bring the flowers inside, but I think I might be doing so too early - they fail to open.  (Any later though, and the beetles have them!)  Also - the leaves are curling in.  Why and what to do?  Only gardening a few yrs. and have no clue!  The rose is a red climber, and I just bought New Dawn - not planted yet.  Suggestions?  Thanks for the help!

Answer
Plant the roses asap - they suffer out of the ground.

Beetles come in so many colors I cannot keep up with their names. The Japanese Beetles are the worst.  I used to set up the traps under the trees.  This year I have a trap but it is still in the box, I am just too busy to hang it up.  Finally I noticed the big chunks coming out of the leaves, along with slug damage to my early Oriental Lilies, and I was fighting mad...

I ran around the garden with an empty Haagen Dazs container, with an inch of soapy water, and just started shaking the beetles into the water.  They were all over the place.  First day I got around 50.

That night, 2 o'clock in the morning, which is when I get home from work believe it or not, I put toothpicks in my eyes to keep them from shutting and got another Haagen Dazs container and a flashlight.  I got another 25 beetles.  In the morning, before work, I got another 10.

Little by little, the numbers dwindle.  But it's not the only thing I do.

Every year or so I attack the beetles at the LARVA stage.  You know them - "grubs".  Yuk.

One year, it's Milky Spore Disease.  Next year, it's Nematodes.  I always do something to weaken the populations.  Nothing toxic.  Only Integrated Pest Management approved products.  After a few days of picking them, the beetles population is decimated.

I have another problem with other plants being attacked by Slugs.  I hate Slugs.  Slimy, slippery, and so hungry!  They always ruin my favorite flowers and vegetables.  And hand picking them is impossible because there are so many - literally, there are several thousand of them on a given day, because I used to count them as I hand picked and tried a week of getting 500 per night - there were no fewer slugs after a week of doing that than before I started.  Plus I had Hostas up a long driveway so they were crazy about the Hostas.

But I see that sprinkling Starbucks coffee at the base of a Lily, or around a Dahlia, absolutely positively works.  They won't go NEAR a pile of coffee.  I have huge quantities of course of these coffee grounds.  The Starbucks in my area know me so well.  I am so glad they will give me all this coffee.  Slugs HATE coffee.

Leaves curling in can be several problems.  My first guess is that you are not watering properly.  Are you giving these a big delicious drink of water, or are you being cautious so that you don't drown them?

Are the leaves changing any color as they curl?  Have you sprayed them with anything at all?

rsvp - and thanks for writing!