Hi,
After eight years of growing lilies, the dreaded Red Lilly Beetle has
finally caught up with me, I discovered about twenty of them happily
sitting(and in some cases mating) on my pot grown lilies. The blighters were
only evident in one out of the eight containers of lilies and there is no
sign of damage, which is strange as they were adults so at least one life
cycle must have been completed. After checking out dozens of sites it seems
there is no biological control for these nasty little pests. The best advice
I can find is to hand pick them off and squish them at 7 - 14 day intervals,
including the larvae which have a charming habit of covering themselves with
their own slimy black excreta(no chance of a helping hand there then from my
other half).

As they are my better halves favourite flower, I have a problem because she
doesn't want me to put my solution into action, which would be to burn all
eight containers full and consign them to the dustbin. Although I could see
what results hand picking and squishing achieves, as they're not going to
effect anything else in the garden but then I run the risk of having the
pests spread to other gardens. My garden is small to medium sized and
includes a small veg plot, for growing salad crops, onions, garlic and some
soft fruits. I never use chemical sprays or pesticides, the nearest I come
to that is a quick spray of water and washing up liquid to see off the odd
attack of greenfly etc.

Finally I get to the questions part, which a
a) has anyone found the hand picking solution to work in the short to
medium term, as I don't fancy squishing
every 7 days, every growing season for the rest of my life.

b) What's the mildest chemical treatment that you good people have found to
work?

c) Has anyone from the group found another solution to Red Lily Beetle.

BTW after reading up, I'm out at first light(ok mid-morning) to look for
eggs under the leaves and to remove the top 2" of soil to see what emerges.

Thanks in advance
Trev