Guest post by veterinary surgeon and master copy gardener James Roush / Garden Musings
This dawning , on a trip-up out of town , I innocently stopped at a great regional nursery about 60 miles Orient of Manhattan , Kansas . This nursery sells each bounce , among other plants , the large variety of potted roses in a 100 - nautical mile radius . I could not help but stop to look at the few stay potted roses on sales agreement , hoping particularly to happen a ‘ St. Swithun ’ marked down to a terms that even a ill-humored rosarian would take . And there , I saw them . Nipponese beetle ! Fornicating in ‘ The Wedgwood Rose ! ’ As I looked around , I saw they were on all the roses ! And the perennial hibiscus . And the day lily . ( I took the picture shown here with my iPhone . )
To understand the full deepness of my horror and excuse the current of curses I utter , you should be aware that Nipponese beetle are not yet indigenous just 60 mile west , where I live , and I was unaware that they had been seen in anything but temporary eruption west of Kansas City . East coast rosarians should imagine , for a moment , an idyllic garden where they had never seen a Nipponese beetle , but had heard they were massing at the sea-coast . That is the fear that I ’ve been living with for 5 or 6 years now , see the on-line pictures of destruction at other gardens and waiting for the mallet - induced Armageddon that was surely heading my way .
When I questioned a worker at the store , the response was , “ Yes , ” they did know that they had living , breeding Nipponese beetles on the premise . “ They ’ve been here for two or three years . ” And “ Yes ” they had advise the authorities and were being monitored . Why then , I wondered , were their embeetled roses and other plants still for sale ? How was it that they palpate it was all right to enter in spreading these things around ? I interpret a conscientious gardener adhere to their constitutional principles and refusing to spray , but surely a commercial nursery would n’t pause to zap every inch of plant and soil . One matter for sure , I was n’t bribe any roses there .
Friends , this whole topic invest me deep into a moral quandary . I have a vocal libertarian streak , distrusting authority of all kinds , but I bid instantly and fervently on the slur that there was a government way that would step into this void , tell this nursery they have to put up sign warn unknowing customers , and curtail sales to western customers . Or better yet , desolate and burn the nursery to the ground , as they have done in the past times to farm with tuberculosis and brucellosis in their dairy farm herd .
I know that eventually beetles will contact Manhattan , Kansas on their own . But I had a small hope that the Flint Hills would be a 50 mile - wide barrier to westward enlargement ; a no - beetle - domain of poor food informant for their migration and encompassing annual prairie fires to wipe out early scouts . Little did I recognize that a glasshouse on the infested side of the zone would blatantly offer to sell me a potted plant with either mallet larvae in the soil or real beetle couples who would be well-chosen to disperse into my mallet - gratuitous Eden of 200 rosaceous plants . I ’ve bought plant from this glasshouse every twelvemonth , my latest being a paeony last August during a sale , and it ’s far too belated to mooch it out now . Until now I ’ve attempt , myself , to be a no - nebulizer gardener , mostly close to the organic drive , but the sight of this nursery had me think over which insecticide I should use first .
I drive chop-chop home , call friends and local nursery owners on the way like a garden Paul Revere , spreading the password that the beetles were fall . Local nursery owners were unaware and surprised at the revelation . I fall straight home and pass into my rosaceous garden , inspecting every bloom for the insects , last collapsing in relief as I determined that I ’m still free from contagion . And then I took a long hot shower in disinfectant soap and burned my wearing apparel . you could never be too careful .
