Come May 1st I need to start watching for Japanese beetles. They mainly work on the roses, grapes and crape myrtles. I've even found one or two in the corn as the season wears on.
Poking around the internet today I found two articles advocating a spray made from pieces of Eastern Red Cedar soaked in hot water (to release the cedar oils), steeped for 36-48 hours, strained and used as a spray. Have any of you ever heard of this or tried it?
The guy in the first reference below said the beetles dropped off and flew away when he used the spray. Well, they'll do that any time you mess with them. He never provided a followup report. The second person said it did keep them away afterwards but the spray, like other stuff, needs to be reapplied after rains.
oldworldgardenfarms.com/2016/06/23/natural-japanese-beetle-spray/
www.finegardening.com/article/make-your-own-natural-spray-for-japanese-beetles
Interestingly the second reference suggests possibly using bottled cedar oil (where to find THAT?) or cedar shavings like you use for bedding in a dog house but they've not tried them.
I'm going to try this and stick with using the real cedar. It grows like a weed everywhere around here. And it ought to smell nice too!