MARSHFIELD -- Brian Hopperdietzel has a problem. A big problem. His company-owned cemetery south of Marshfield has been invaded. The enemy? Thousands of Japanese beetles.
“This spring, right after the snow melted, I noticed the brown patches and the loose grass,” said Hopperdietzel, owner and operator of Marshfield Monument and its affiliated Brooklawn Memory Gardens cemetery, which is located about five miles south of Marshfield on Hwy. 80. “I thought it was more like deer pawing at it, but then the more I looked the more I noticed it was all over the front of the cemetery.”
Hopperdietzel told Hub City Times during our May 9 visit that roughly two to two-and-a-half acres of his cemetery have been affected by this Japanese beetle infestation. That’s about half of the five acres which have been developed for burial plots thus far.
“What happens is in August, after the beetles are done chewing on all the leaves, they go back and burrow down in, release their eggs for the larvae and that’s what – all fall – they eat all the roots of the grass, so then in the spring this is what you end up with,” said Hopperdietzel, as he showed us a photo of his missing lawn.
It is the Japanese beetle grub – not the fully-grown adult – that eats the roots of your lawn. As for the adult beetles, they are not picky eaters. Because they can consume and destroy over 300 species of plants—flowers, vegetables, flowering trees—very quickly, it is crucial for you to recognize them and know what to do about them before your yard and gardens are decimated. Japanese beetles have six legs, two antennae, and wings. They have a copper-colored back, a distinctive metallic blue-green head, and small white hairs on the sides of their abdomen.
Fortunately for Hopperdietzel, he caught the invasive species in its grub stage, meaning he could start eradication efforts immediately.
“More than likely, I’ll have this issue again next year for the back half of the cemetery,” Brian told us.
“The chemical applications go on typically once a year,” said Jim Bauer, manager of Allied Cooperative’s Central Wisconsin Country Store, 106 S. Peach Ave., Marshfield. “And just about all of the products that you will find on the market are legitimate if used by direction and given enough time to work. The product that we’re using is called Merit. The active ingredient is Imidacloprid. You would put it on your lawn in mid-May to mid-June because that’s, as the creatures are morphing into their beetle stage, are the smallest in the lawn and it’s before they have chewed the spring grass off next to where they have chewed the fall grass off when they went down into the dirt,” Bauer adds. “The other reason you’re doing it then is you are not affecting the above-ground pollinators.”
Bauer says Milky Spore is also an effective bacterium (Paenibacillus popilliae) specifically for controlling Japanese beetle larvae, grubs, and adult beetles. It is not effective against other damaging grubs. Other organic insecticides target grubs but do not utilize this particular strain of bacterium.
“It’s effective right away, but it has to grow in the soil to be enough to fight the millions of bugs in the soil,” says Bauer. “The pelletized one is three times a summer for two to three summers and the powder is much stronger and you grid your lawn by stepping. So, you would grid the lawn in like three- or four-foot increments. That you only have to do one time and within three years it supposedly has grown enough live bacterium in the soil to where you don’t have to do it again. The expectancy and how good it works then stays active for seven to ten years.”
Milky Spore works best in areas where there are high concentrations (about 10 to 12 per square foot) of Japanese beetles and their offspring.
“I’m probably going to use the Milky Spore,” said Hopperdietzel. “So I have to apply that for two to three years, I think it was twice a year, and then I’ll be good for seven to ten years.”
In the meantime, Hopperdietzel says he will have to totally reseed the parts of his lawn which were destroyed during the winter.
“We’ll have to put new dirt down in between the markers and it’s going to be a long summer,” he said. “When we start reseeding, I’ll put up signs.”
The Hopperdietzel family purchased Marshfield Monument in 1977. In nearly a half decade, Brian says they’ve never seen anything like this at the 10-acre cemetery property before.
“It was sickening looking at it,” he said. “There’s no sod around any stone in the center. We’re meticulous as heck at that cemetery and to see it in this condition, it’s sad.”
While the Japanese beetle infestation is new to Hopperdietzel, it is not new to Wisconsin. Over the past decade, the pests have found their way into Great Lakes and Central Plains states, pushing past the Mississippi River by January 2015.
“We are probably in the fifth year of aggravation as far as the community goes,” Bauer told us. “I think we’re too new into it to know what the cycle is.”
In the meantime, be prepared. Hopperdietzel warns Brooklawn Cemetery – first developed in the early 1960s – won’t look the best this Memorial Day weekend, when it always sees lots of visitors.
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