It’s been a weird year for garden season weather, and in turn, garden pests. Across the nation, beetles of all sorts are being a pain—and Japanese beetles, in particular, have hit the U.S. hard, and are able to destroy vegetables, flowers, and fruits without much bother. For years, gardeners have tried to develop better solutions to deal with them, and while there are, of course, insecticides and traps, neither of them eradicate the beetle. This leaves farmers and gardeners to pick them off by hand, which is incredibly tedious and, for lack of a better word, unpleasant.
I recently stumbled across a solution on TikTok that delighted me, though: farmers going down a row of vegetable plants with a tennis racket in one hand, and a bucket in the other, and they were simply swatting the plants with the racket towards the bucket, which had the effect of evicting the beetles in a lofty manner, where they sailed into the bucket, coming to rest in the beer or soapy water waiting for them at the bottom—both of which will drown them.
It turns out, this method can be used for a bunch of different pests in the garden, and it’s worth trying. I got some aphids off my artichokes by gleefully swatting at them. The slugs on my cabbage and cauliflower were no match for my backhand. My potatoes hardly batted an eye as I swatted at them.
How to use a tennis racket to rid your garden of beetles
I used a five-gallon bucket, which are about $5 from any hardware store. I chose this size because it was tall, and meant I could hold it low enough to swat the bugs into it without leaning over. You can use soapy water in your bucket (you only need a few inches), or you can empty one can of beer into it—and cheap beer is fine. The goal is to drown them, and water alone won’t do that.
You don’t need a fancy racquet, either. Any one will do, even a toy version. The point is that the surface area of the racquet is large enough that when you swat the plant, you’re not doing damage to it or severing the stem, you’re just using enough force to knock the bugs loose. Ensure the bugs are dead by leaving the lid on overnight, and then toss them out.
