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Japanese beetles are one of the few* natural attackers of a Japanese botanical pest, “mile a minute” vine (some call it “triangle razor vine” or “tearthumb” which has been spreading across southern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland.

Like the beetle and the stink bug it was a stowaway.

*Whitetailed deer are discovering the vine and will devour it. The deer have become overpopulated but the good unitended consequence is that they are controllng this pest as well as multiflora rose.

The beetle we've had since about 1916, rode in on a batch of iris from Japan on the east coast. Took all those years to work there way to the midwest and getting worse.

When they first appeared, they did everything they knew at the time to try to control them, no dice.

These stink bugs sound even worse. I'm not against a natural predator but could have unintended consequences like anything else.

We had those Asian orange ladybugs, would swarm on the south side of my house but not so bad in recent years. Generally ladybugs are good to keep the aphids down. You don't want to kill earthworms. They are a sign of healthy soil and good for the garden.

That was good information. Glad to hear the deer are controlling the mile a minute vine (not familiar with it by that name, kudzu?) and multiflora rose. That was another experiment that went bad. It is the host of a mite that spreads the dreaded rose rosette disease (RRD), causes ugly, unmistakable deformities to roses. If a rose shows signs of it, you need to cover it with a garbage bag and and dig it out before the mites which travel via wind currents get on surrounding roses, one problem I haven't had yet, had about everything else that can go wrong with roses, am only keeping a few, not worth the fuss. Do not burn the dug out plants; put them in the garbage bag and all.

I saw an especially pretty variety of multiflora some years back and tried to propagate it; luckily that failed. My source plant they evidently got rid of with Roundup, but I've seen more of it, not a worry if you don't grow roses.

I learned all this on a garden group and was warned by my friend about the jap beetles, sure enough, they showed up that year right on schedule, first experience with them.