February is the time to order and plant your seeds for this coming planting season. I know, it always seems early, but growing your own starts from seed is advantageous for many reasons--it allows you to select regionally appropriate seed genetics, high quality organic seeds lead to high quality organic plants, as well as being a February is the time to order and plant your seeds for this coming planting season. I know, it always seems early, but growing your own starts from seed is advantageous for many reasons--it allows you to select regionally appropriate seed genetics, high quality organic seeds lead to high quality organic plants, as well as being a fraction of the cost of buying your starts from a commercial nursery. 

As a reference point, a packet of Lacinato Kale from Seed Savers Exchange (one of my favorite suppliers) is around $4 for 150 seeds. Let's say you plant one 36-count flat of Kale starts, and save the remaining seeds for future seasons (or to foodscape with), you'll end up with 36 Kale starts ready in May at a cost of around $1, or about three cents each.

So, three cents per plant. After you factor in soil, flats to grow in, a low cost fluorescent light--all in you're at about ten cents per plant. Compare this with $8 - $12 per plant from the nursery in our neighborhood, and you can see that growing from seed can quickly save you hundreds of dollars per year on plant costs, while giving you superior organic plant stock to boot. The beauty is that you can then save seeds from the Kale plants that you plant this summer (let a few go late into the season until seeds form) to plant next year, further taking you to a closed loop growing system!

We order our seeds in early to mid-February, plant them by end of February, and have thousands of plants ready to go by spring. I recommend you take on the learning curve of growing from seed as soon as possible, and we are here to answer any questions. Also, if this isn't your year to start, we sell our organic veggie starts as part of our raised garden beds installs in Denver for a fraction of the cost compared with buying from a nursery. More on growing your own seed starts to come!

Of course you’ve seen evidence of their massive numbers: the leaves of a tree or shrub appears to have been used as target practice for a bird hunter’s shotgun, thousands of tiny holes peppering the canopy. The Japanese Beetle. Maybe your raised beds are hosting these new guests en masse, so it’s time to get busy getting rid of these invaders.
You’ll get the best view of these foliage devouring pests in the evening, an hour or so before susnet. They look like a cross between an enormous black fly and an irridescent green/red-shelled beetle. Pick one up, pinching it between your fingers firmly enough to examine, but not so firmly you crunch it before getting a good look. Ah! Did it get away? It’s easy to lose the first couple you pick up. They fly in drunken leaps, often riding a breeze to another plant or they just fall—with all the grace of an insect wino, to the next easiest branches below.
You’re likely too late to take preventitive measures at this point, but if you’re the type of person who actually pulls weeds out of the ground (yep, that’s how it’s done) rather than stand like a overgrown child with a pitiful pesticide squirt gun and haphazardly spray poison into the complex web of interconnected soil microbes that hosts both bindweed and your trees just feet away—then you’re in luck, because the simplest way to rid Japanese Beetles is a lot like pulling weeds. Get a small bucket, big mason jar—whatever, and fill it with water and a little bit of dish soap, just enough to make suds. Take that container on a tour of your yard, and pick up every beetle you see in your garden, and throw it right into the soapy water. Unless you’re a hardcore Buddhist, this should pose no ethical problem. It’s surpisingly effective, and a few minutes work a day will quickly diminish their numbers (I set my soapy water jar near raised beds and throw the beetle-water out after it’s got hundreds in it—usually a week or so).
While it isn’t always practical to manually pick them off taller trees, or there’s a full-on-invasion requiring more robust action, still keep this in mind as your go-to method, you’ll catch the escapees from bigger methods of beetle-war still hanging around, and this is the easiest way to deal with them.
OMRI-certified beetleGONE is a popular (and quite expensive) option, about $60 for one small bag that lasts about 3 treatements for a standard-size yard. You can get it at Ace, garden centers, etc. It’s primarily a Bacillus species powder that you mix with water and spray. It does work, but I’m not huge on these types of pesticides.
The ubiquitous plastic bag traps are a last resort for a full invasion—the food that attracts the Japanese Beetles to the bags and into the death-itself-smelling bag contains a pheromone that attracts more beetles...as do the many dead beetles in the bag.
Think of manual pulling of Japanese Beetles like weeding; hand weeding is slow, but best, as you get the whole plant, root and all, and a little each day takes care of the issue. Spend a few minutes flicking, dunking, and drowning these demons and your garden will thank you. (I often just hold the jar/bucket of soapy water just under where they’re hanging out, and gently bruch them into the water below. They don’t put up a fight, don’t bite, and fall easily.)