Monday, September 8, 2014

Sunflower Disaster - Japanese Beetles, Squirrels & Rose Chafers

Sunflower Disaster by Angie Ouellette-Tower for godsgrowinggarden.com photo 014_zps1cfadcc3.jpg


Sunflower Disaster

As many of you know, I just love sunflowers and for the past 3 years I have been featuring different sunflower varieties every year (there is a list of these varieties at the end of this post - feel free to click on each link to view the sunflowers).

Well, this year I had a Sunflower Disaster!  Actually the disaster was destructive critters!

Japanese Beetles, Squirrels & Rose Chafers - not to mention late season blight!!

Sunflower Disaster by Angie Ouellette-Tower for godsgrowinggarden.com photo SunflowerDisaster_zps0c9a2364.jpg


Squirrels - in the picture above you will see how the squirrels chomped the sunflower stalk almost in half !  (the red arrow shows the stalk break & the black arrow shows the shriveled sunflower) (they did this to about 40% of my sunflowers)

Sunflower Disaster by Angie Ouellette-Tower for godsgrowinggarden.com photo 012_zps108a5e0f.jpg


Japanese Beetles & Rose Chafers - these bugs are both so destructive.  As you can see by the picture above these insects devoured the leaves only leaving the middle vein of each leaf.  The infestation happened almost overnight!  If I had been able to catch this in time I would have dusted my sunflowers with "Diatomaceous Earth" - but the damage had already been done.  And, now they are also showing signs of Late Season Blight.  It's been a bad year for my Sunflowers but I was able to salvage 2 varieties and I will share those pictures with you in the weeks to come.


Sunflowers from 2013:

Sunflowers from 2012:

Sunflowers from 2011:




by Angie Ouellette-Tower for godsgrowinggarden.com photo Day_zpsb50f87c9.jpg


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2 comments:

  1. The Japanese beetles have done so much destruction to our national parks like at Yellowstone and Yosemite. My mom lives in Montana and so many of their woods and trees in area have been affected. Very Sad!

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  2. Those squirrels can be so pesky can't they. They ate my sunflowers as soon as they came up this year. And between them and the birds in my yard they dug up a lot of the seeds I planted. So no sunflowers for me this year. And I'm so sorry to hear about your sunflower loss.

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