The sun is shining, I’ve got some time to spend in the garden, and my lilies are just pushing through the gravel mulch topping their pots – a promise of glory to come. In short, it’s a lovely day. So of course today was the day to find my first lily beetle of the year.
What’s the fuss about?
There are very few pests in the garden that I bother to kill; Most are left to their own devices secure in the knowledge that they are bound to be food for something else. If I leave the blackfly on the roses then a couple of weeks later I have a beastery of ladybird and hoverfly larvae, which munch their way through flies of every colour. But nothing seems to eat these red devils and left undisturbed they munch their way through the leaves and flower buds of every lily in the garden leaving bare stems. So, although I squash vine weevil when I find them, the lily beetle has the dubious honour of being the only pest that I actively hunt out.
How to spot them
Holes in the leaves of lilies and fritillaries are tell-tale signs of an infestation. My inch-high shoots are already scarred. To stay ahead you need to attack all stages of the lifecycle. If, like me, you avoid chemicals then this means looking for the eggs and larvae as well as the adults. The eggs are laid on the underside of the leaf and can be anything from bright orange to dark brown. The larvae are also orange but cover themselves in excrement to deter predators, so they often look like brown/black bird-droppings! The adults are bright red.
Of course, at this point I should have some good photos to show you, but funnily enough I don’t have any – my first thought on finding lily beetle is to squash them not reach for the camera! However, this site has good illustrations of all stages of the lifecycle.
What to do with them
When you find them, wipe off the eggs and squash the larvae and adults.
It sounds simple and you’d think that something the colour of Marilyn Monroe’s lipstick would be easy to find, but when disturbed the adults drop off the leaf to land upside down in the leaf litter displaying their black undersides, making them nowhere near so easy to spot. The best way to deal with them is to lift the leaf and trap them between the leaf and stem or lay something pale on the ground before you start.
Vigilance is key
I try to look over my plants every day. It’s a little bother but this vigilance worked last year, and squashing them was really quite satisfying! Now, if only it was so easy to deal with those pesky cats that insist on doing their business in my borders…
