Lily beetles - Grrr!

[Bear]

any tips on how to deal with these buggers? I've heard there's nothing you can do but find 'em, pick 'em off and kill 'em. But they've already decimated our Stargazers.

What with them, the voracious snails, the leatherjackets shafting my lawn and the other grubs in the pots, I've pretty much had enough and am seriously thinking of paving the whole lot. I don't believe in nematodes - I think it's a big scam - someone somewhere is laughing away as I mix the yucky powder up with just the right amount of water and apply as per the convoluted instructions and wait for sod all squared to happen.

GRRRRR

lily beetles!!!!....... if I could loan out my grandma-in-law I would, she is a spritely 97 and joyfully examines her lillies twice or three times a day (probably more actually) and takes extreme delight in squashing the little things. My mum puts some hot water and washing up liquid in a bucket and sorts of gently shakes her lillies and they tend to fall off into the bucket to their untimely or timely (depends upon your perspective) demise. My sister is quite nifty at sort of stripping them off the leaves without damaging the plant, she wears her gardening gloves and sort of firmly rubs them off, which she does really quickly.

Our sort of finding is that if you can be super, super vigilent for a 5-6 days in a row then it usually becomes easier to manage, something to do with their life-cycle? Or I could have just made that up....

p.s I'm sure I must win on homing the largest snail and slug population in the world..everyone else around me is not really interested in gardening, so I am the only garden around which has anything other than grass. In our first summer here, even my beautiful honeysuckle was completely stripped and eaten by the little blighters!!!

any other tips please weekdayers? my lilies' leaves are looking like lace right now

double-grrr

nope lily beetles are indestructible with anything less than a mallet or very big hobnail boot. you may also notice that they spend ALL their time s and making lily beetle babies

disgustingly, the little blobs of poo on your lilies are lily beetle babies who disguise themselves with their pooh. get medcial gloves and squish them or pay the kids to do it

very sadly it may be too late for your lilies, the leaves certainly won't recover but the flowers may come, so be nice to them, water and feed them, and they will recover

and mount patrol. i am going to check mine again now

I have had good success with nematodes for vine weevils and slugs but they don't work on snails