Bugs and Other Insects

Something is Making Holes in My Squash Flowers and Stems

11 September, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Over the past couple of days, I have noticed that several flower buds on my zucchini squash plants don’t look healthy. The flower buds have stayed small and turned pale and droopy. Today, I finally took the time to REALLY inspect my plants. What I saw is a lot of bad news.

The holes in the flower buds and the holes in the stems could — possibly — be caused by several kinds of insects. However, the piles of pale green, round globs like tapioca, and the yellow globs too, are most likely frass (poo) from caterpillars.

Around here, a major cause of this kind of damage is squash vine borers. The adult moths lay eggs on the plants. Then, the tiny caterpillars that hatch out of the eggs eat their way inside the plant, where they eat and eat until they have killed the plant from the inside.

I pulled up two of my five zucchini plants to try to find the culprits/caterpillars. As I dissected the plants, this is what I found:

What are pickleworms?

Pickleworms, the caterpillars of a night-flying moth, are a common summertime pest in the South. They are pests I have seen before, but I have not seen such extensive damage to plants from their activity before. Who knew that they would gnaw right into a stem? Not me. At least, not until now.

If the damage had been from squash vine borers, I would have pulled up all five of the zucchini plants and called them an interesting late-summer experiment that I never need to repeat. Since the damage is from pickleworms, I am trying another option. That second option is the use of an organic-approved product for caterpillars.

Organic control for pickleworms

I have mixed up some “Bt for caterpillars” – the product at my house is Thuricide, but others are available – and I’ve sprayed it all over the stems and flower buds of the remaining zucchini plants and my little patch of cucumbers. The name “pickleworm”, if you haven’t already guessed, alludes to a fondness for cucumbers. Since I like cucumbers, too, it would be nice to bring any cucumbers that these plants make into my kitchen, without caterpillars inside.

I planted seeds for cucumbers the same day I planted the zucchini. With a time-to-maturity of 65 days, they seemed less likely than the zucchini to make a crop before the first frost, but they are another late-summer garden experiment. Since they have plenty of flowers on them, the odds look good that I might harvest a couple of cucumbers before the end of October.

This hope for cucumbers depends on me and the Bt. It will need to be re-applied every week, and after every rain, for the Bt to work well.

Wish me luck?

Are Ladybugs Eating My Squash Plants?

5 September, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

The little orange, dotted beetles that are eating my squash plants actually are in the ladybug family. Most beetles in the ladybug family do not eat plants; instead, they eat pests like aphids and whiteflies and are great helpers in our gardens. Mexican bean beetles and squash beetles, which look a lot alike, are exceptions. They are garden pests.

Right now, it is squash beetles in my garden, eating my squash plants.

It may look like ladybugs are eating my squash plants, but it is really squash beetles doing the damage.

How to identify squash beetles

The first big clue that they are not Mexican bean beetles is that they are on my zucchini, not on beans. Squash beetles eat plants in the squash family, like zucchini, squashes, and cucumbers. Bean beetles eat plants in the bean family.

Another is that their babies, also called larvae, have dark spines. The spines on Mexican bean beetle larvae are yellow, with dark tips as they get older.

Another clue is the method of eating. Both the babies and adults often gnaw a trench around the patch of leaf they are getting ready to eat. You may notice semicircular lines at the edges of damaged leaves.

One theory about why they do this is that the trenching prevents sap from running into the desired area. The sap may carry nasty chemicals that would interfere with the beetles’ eating.

Organic control of squash beetles

For now, I am hand-picking and smashing the beetles, both adults and larvae. The damage on my plants isn’t severe, and the number of beetles is low. Today, I found and smashed seven adults and one larva.

If the infestation gets bad enough that smashing is insufficient, there are a couple of organic-approved options to try. University of Connecticut agrees that hand-picking can work in small gardens but suggests that products containing spinosad might help if a beetle-damage gets very bad.

Another pest in my garden right now is armyworms

Armyworms have eaten all the leaves in this patch of cleome. — Armyworms have eaten most of the leaves in this patch of cleome.

I found armyworms in the garden today, too.

They were on both patches of cleome (spider flowers), and they haven’t left many leaves. When I realized what the pests were, I removed all the plants, with caterpillars attached, and stuffed them into a large bag.

That bag is now sealed up and ready for the municipal compost truck to pick up on Friday.

Armyworms can eat a garden to the ground in just a few days, which is why extreme steps are needed. If you see these in your garden, do not delay even one day in removing them!

Better news in the garden

First leaves on carrot seedlings are strappy and narrow; the next leaves are more feathery. PHOTO/Amygwh

Elsewhere in the garden, the carrot seedlings are sending up the “true” leaves that come after the first leaves. The first leaves that come out of a seed rarely look like the leaves on a mature plant.

For carrots, the first leaves are narrow and strappy. They are the ones that unfolded out of the seed, which is why the first leaves are often called seed leaves.

Do you see the seedling on the far right in the photo? The one leaf that is wider and more feathery gives a clue what the mature leaves will look like.

Also in the garden, there are tiny caterpillars on the pipevine plant. I planted the pipevine with these caterpillars in mind. If all goes well, a few of them will survive to become pipevine swallowtail butterflies, which are beautiful.

Caterpillars on a leaf of pipevine. If all goes well, they will mature to become pipevine swallowtail butterflies. — Caterpillars on a leaf of pipevine. PHOTO/Amygwh

Peppers, Basil, and Bees in the Garden

29 August, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

‘Sweet Banana’ peppers mature, when grown from seed, in about 72 days. ‘California Wonder’ bell peppers mature in about 75 days. I have seeds for both of these in my “seed stash” in the fridge. When I was planning my summer, I knew that we would be gone for 77 days. Can you see where this is heading?

I learned that peppers can survive without much attention in my summer garden

Last spring, in mid-April, I started one each of the two kinds of peppers and planted them in my small garden before we left home. They both had just four leaves. They were too tiny to need any kind of support at the time, but I pushed an assortment of wire things into the ground around them, to hold them up as they grew.

No one watered them while we were gone. No one fertilized, and no one weeded.

When we got back, the two plants were in the middle of a weed patch, but they both had produced peppers. They were easier to weed than the chicory.

The pepper production increased after I poured some dilute fish fertilizer around them. As usual, the ‘Sweet banana’ is making many more peppers than the ‘California wonder’. They both will continue to provide peppers until the first hard frost.

Basil, ‘Red Rubin’, is another survivor

Another crop that went into the garden before we went away was ‘Red Rubin’ basil.

'Red Rubin' basil is beautiful, flavorful, and easy to grow. — ‘Red Rubin’ basil is beautiful, flavorful, and easy to grow. PHOTO/Amygwh

I planted these in two separate patches. One patch already had flowers when we returned, but the other still is flower-free. That is the patch I am harvesting basil leaves from, to use in the kitchen.

‘Red Rubin’ has dark purplish leaves and a good basil flavor. The pesto made from it isn’t green, but that is ok.

This variety is resistant to basil downy mildew, which has been ruining basil harvests around here for a few years now. The disease resistance is why I chose this basil as the one to grow while we were away.

Native bees on native plants

Native bee on native coneflower. PHOTO/Amygwh

At last year’s Pollinator Symposium (described on the events page of Monarchs Across GA), I picked up a native coneflower seedling for my garden. The plant grew, and it seems happy; it was flowering when we got back, almost four weeks ago, and it is still making more flowers.

The flowers are attracting some very cute, tiny native bees. These are not the kinds of bees that live in hives; they are more likely to live alone in burrows underground. The one in the picture has pollen caught in the hairs on its back legs.

Are there “survivor” crops in your garden?

If you’ve planted a garden and then not tended it for several (or 11!) weeks, what crops have survived the neglect and managed to produce food?

Large Black Wasp on Flowers

6 August, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

We finally returned from our summer in Italy, to find the garden full of weeds — no surprise there — and large black wasps on the milkweed flowers. The same flowers also were buzzing with carpenter bees, which looked almost small compared to the wasps. If you are familiar with carpenter bees, then you know that, in the world of bees, they are giants.

To see such large wasps flying among the giant bees was, at first, alarming. When I realized what they were, though, I moved in for a closer look.

The name of the large black wasps is Great Black Wasp.

What do Great Black Wasps eat?

As adults, these wasps are vegetarian, eating nectar and pollen. When they move from flower to flower, the wasps carry pollen on their legs and bodies and pollinate the flowers. This means they are yet another of our beneficial garden insects.

As larvae, they are not vegetarian. They eat grasshoppers, cicadas, and katydids. When a female adult Great Black Wasp finds an insect like a katydid, it paralyzes the insect/prey using its stinger. Then, it carries the insect/prey to a burrow it has dug in the ground, where it lays an egg.

When the wasp egg hatches, the larva that comes from the egg will eat the insect. A hatched wasp larvae can eat more than one insect, so the adult will stuff at least one more insect down the burrow, and as many as five more, for each wasp egg.

Where do Great Black Wasps live?

Great Black Wasps live across much of the United States and into Canada, but they are not commonly seen in the upper part of the Western U.S.

Great Black Wasps are in the group of wasps called Digger Wasps. These are mostly solitary wasps, each female digging its own holes in the ground for its eggs. Digger wasps don’t live together in one place, they are not honeybees in a hive, but they sometimes congregate. In a way, they are kind of like the suburbanites of bees, each with its own space, but grouped in a way that feels less lonely.

Are they really as big as I think they are?

If you are like me, when you see your first Great Black Wasp you will think it is at least two inches long. If you have seen a female, the surprise will trick your mind into believing the fish tale — “it was THIS BIG!” In reality, even though females are larger than the males, the biggest Great Black Wasps are closer to an inch and a half long.

Do Great Black Wasps sting people?

If you do something crazy like chase one around with a camera, it might (or it might not!), but these wasps are busy with their own agendas. If you leave them alone, they will keep doing their work of eating nectar and pollen, digging burrows for their babies, and hunting insects.

The time of greatest activity for these large black wasps is now. By the middle or end of September (depending on where you live), the adults will no longer be flying. Their job of laying eggs and providing food for their larvae will be done. The babies, though, will emerge next summer, and then there will be more Great Black Wasps on my flowers.

Other beneficial wasps you may see at the end of summer include the potter wasp and blue winged digger wasp.

Beneficial Garden Insects: Flower Flies

31 July, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

While I’ve been walking outside our little town in Italy, missing my vegetable garden, I have paid attention to the local plants. On good days, I see a lot of flowers and pollinator-insects. At first, I thought the pollinators were all bees. Then, I looked closer. Many of them are actually flower flies, a different group of beneficial garden insects.

Flower flies, which are beneficial garden insects, look like bees but without the sting. — Flower flies are beneficial garden insects.

What are flower flies?

Flower flies really are flies, but a lot of them look like bees. It is possible that looking like a bee prevents some predators from eating them. I don’t know if that mimicry really works, though. We used to have a dog that ate carpenter bees when she could catch them. The stinging inside her mouth didn’t seem to stop her from catching and eating more.

Flower flies do not sting or bite, but they do eat nectar and/or pollen as adults. As they visit flowers to gather food, they pollinate the flowers. Flower fly babies (larvae) eat aphids and other small insects. These are definitely beneficial garden insects!

Organic gardens, in particular, rely on pollinators and predators in the garden to increase harvests and reduce pest problems. We can wait for our helpful predators (like flower flies, wasps and ladybugs) to eat the aphids, no spraying required!

Flower flies are also known as syrphid flies and as hover flies.

How can I tell which is a flower fly and which is a bee?

With only a brief glance, it is not easy to tell bees and flower flies apart. If you have the fortitude (and lack of bee-allergies) that allows you to look a little longer, you might see the difference.

Check the antennae

Flower flies have short, straight, stubby antennae. The antennae may be so short that they are hard to see. Bees have longer antennae, and their antennae are more likely to bend.

Check the wings

All flies have only two wings (one pair), and you can easily see them. One wing is on each side of the body.

Bees have fours wings (two pairs). The larger front pair of wings is easy to see, but the hind-wings can be hidden below the front pair. You might not be able to see that there are four wings.

Check the eyes

Eyes of flower flies are larger, and more on the front of their heads. Bee eyes are shifted a little to the sides of their heads.

Check the back legs

Flies do not collect pollen in clumps on their back legs. Some kinds of bees, especially our native, solitary bees, also do not collect and carry pollen on their back legs.

However, bumble bees and honeybees often store clumps of pollen on their back legs, to carry back to their colonies. If you see a bee-like insect that has pads of orange, or red, or yellow on its back legs, that is a good sign that the insect is some kind of bumble bee or a honeybee.

How can I attract flower flies to my garden?

University of California has published an easy-to-use table of plants that attract flower flies (see page 16). The table is deep within a document that is not super-easy to read, and not all the plants will grow well in the Southeastern US, but many will.

Here is a short list of plants that are known to attract and/or support flower flies to your organic garden, that I know will grow in the Southeastern US:

buckwheat, coriander/cilantro, thyme, Italian oregano, sweet alyssum, fennel, tansy, white-flowered yarrow

Small Yards Can Support a Lot of Pollinators

29 May, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Many of us would like to do more to support our pollinator insects like bees and butterflies. They are important to all of us who like to eat delicious and varied meals! One action step often suggested to support our insect friends is that we plant more pollinator gardens. However, we don’t all have a lot of sunny areas to turn into flower beds for the bees, butterflies, and other helper-insects. The good news is that even small yards can support pollinators – a lot of them.

How is this possible? One very easy way is to include flowers in your lawn.

Clover, dandelions, and other lawn flowers support pollinators

An increasing number of studies show that lawns that contain flowering “weeds” are important resources for pollinators. If we think about it just a little, these results make sense.

Flowers of plants like dandelion, clover, wood sorrel, and violets are sources of nectar and pollen, which are food for the pollinators. When a lawn has all one kind of plant, like fescue or Bermudagrass, there is less food to support many of these insects.

Here are two example studies:

Lerman and Milam’s 2016 study includes a table (Table 1) that shows a trend: lawns that include more flowers have more bees.

Larson, Kesheimer, and Potter (2014) , in another study, collected about 50 different kinds of bees from Kentucky lawns that included clover and dandelion flowers.

Some neighborhoods have only small patches of lawn. The studies suggest that even these small yards can support pollinators by allowing flowers like clover and dandelion to bloom.

This works for farms, too

Joe and I used to volunteer at a small garden/farm in our county. We mostly worked in “weed management”, with hoes, but we still had fun. The garden included a couple of large fields that were tilled, planted, and fertilized by tractor. It also had some very large raised beds for growing additional vegetables. The garden produced an astonishing abundance of food.

The only flowers that we planted on purpose were sunflowers. The upper field had a row of sunflowers along one edge every year.

A visiting friend asked me once, “where are the pollinator beds?” This was a serious question, and the answer was only obvious if you knew where to look.

I had been working there for a few years, so I already knew the secret.

Patches of lawn separated and surrounded all the crop-areas, and flowers of weeds like dandelion and clover sparked the green expanses like stars. Plants that supported pollinators were all around us!

Bees and other pollinators could be seen visiting all of those flowers. In addition, beehives on the property produced enough honey that it was obvious the bees were finding plenty of nectar.

Work less and be a trend setter

You can support pollinators with less work by allowing volunteer flowers to grow in your lawn. A separate bed of herbs and flowers that support pollinators is nice, too, but it is not the only way to go.

The main difficulty in allowing dandelions to brighten your lawn may be to your sense of social acceptability. In many suburban neighborhoods, these bee-friendly flowers are not allowed! However, the current ideal of an all-turfgrass lawn is just a fashion — like a beehive hairdo or bell-bottom jeans. We can allow it to pass from its current state of desirability to one of “well, that’s what we did in those days”.

My own flower-filled lawn might not be enough to start a new trend, but I have seen some wonderful landscapes that are underlain by mixed-plant lawns.

Examples of flower-filled lawns

This is my second summer to be in Italy for Joe’s work (an interim position, so next year we will not be here). One of my great joys has been seeing clover-filled lawns around historic buildings. The beautiful church, San Biagio, just outside Montepulciano, sits in a flower-filled lawn.

It is great to walk up to the church and see bees and bee-mimics (flower-flies) zooming through the clover!

More convincing for others, though, may be the formal La Foce estate gardens in the Val d’Orcha, in Southern Tuscany. The lines of cypress trees, clipped boxwood hedges, fountains, and grand staircases are set on a lawn (clipped very short) that includes clover and other flowers.

It is possible that I am the only person to visit this amazing landscape who turned her camera to photograph the ground. However, I loved seeing the clover and admired the practicality of not-messing-with the lawn. The role of the lawn seemed to be as a backdrop to show off the geometric shapes of the boxwoods, the tall cypress, and what we call “the hardscape.” It worked, too, even with clover.

Associating flowering lawns with beautiful landscapes might help turn the tide in favor of clover, dandelions, and other lawn flowers. Then, owners of even small yards will be proud to support pollinators from edge-to-edge.

Clover is an important source of food for bees. Plant some!

Striped Caterpillars in the Garden, Eating the Dill

12 May, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Several weeks ago, while I was working in the garden, a battered, tattered black swallowtail butterfly flitted into my dill patch. While she was there she laid some eggs. Eventually, some of those eggs hatched, and then there were caterpillars in the garden, eating the dill.

They ate and ate. After awhile, some of the caterpillars disappeared. I assume other wildlife, such as birds, ate them. The last time I saw them, a few days ago, there were three left, fat and striped and still eating the dill.

Caterpillars in the garden are not always a problem. This one will be a black swallowtail butterfly. — PHOTO/Amygwh

They have all gone now, which means I can finally harvest the dill. The plan is to dehydrate most of it, for use this winter. I am thinking of using it on fish, in particular. It is also good in spanakopita, but I don’t eat cheese like I used to, even feta, so that recipe is no longer “in the rotation”.

What to do about caterpillars in the garden?

Even if these striped caterpillars were more voracious eaters, gnawing my dill plants down to little nubs, I probably would just make a note to plant a lot more next year. Accepting some insect-damage is part of the organic gardening way.

In addition, the world has been losing pollinators over at least the past couple of decades, probably longer. Even though butterflies are not our most effective pollinators, removing these with either an organic pesticide or a mechanical method like smashing would not be good for the future of food in the world.

Luckily, the caterpillars have left plenty of dill for us humans.

When other caterpillars in the garden eat so much that a plant is nearly bare of leaves, then control measures may be desired. As usual, the first would be to keep the adults, the butterflies, away from the plants completely. Draping small-meshed netting or a spun row cover on a support structure over the plants can keep adult fliers away (see post about cabbage butterflies and moths).

What else do these caterpillars eat?

These caterpillars are sometimes called parsley worms, because they eat many plants that are in the parsley family. If you guessed that one of those plants is parsley, you are right! Fennel and carrots are other garden plants in the same family, as is dill.

University of Florida has published a fact sheet about the Eastern black swallowtail butterfly, its lifecycle and ecology. The fact sheet includes a list of other plants these caterpillars will eat. Some are native plants, like mock bishop weed and water hemlock. Some are not native across the entire U.S., but have been introduced. One that many people will recognize is Queen Ann’s lace.

Where did the caterpillars go?

Surprisingly, Joe and I found a chrysalis way across the yard, in a flower bed, on Thursday. I almost never find these, so this one made my day.

Chrysalis of black swallowtail butterfly from 10May2018, in Georgia. PHOTO/Amygwh

The chrysalis is on a leaf of a hardy amaryllis, given to me by my mother-in-law many years ago.

Which beautiful pollinators are in your garden?

Ladybugs in the Garden – Which Ones Are They?

6 May, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

My garden has been full of insect activity recently. There are lovely, tiny, metallic flies, some shiny black wasps, also tiny, and a few bees. I have also seen several ladybugs in the garden, plus some ladybug babies (larvae) and pupae (where larvae transform into adults).

Ladybugs are voracious eaters of aphids in the garden. Adult, larva, and pupa forms are very different in appearance. — Ladybug adults and larvae are voracious eaters of aphids. PHOTO/Amygwh

Which Species of Ladybug is in My Garden?

I am always happy to see ladybugs in the garden. They eat a lot of aphids. The adult ladybugs eat aphids, and the larval ladybugs eat aphids. For an organic gardener, this is a win-win combination!

Many of us would much rather rely on predators like ladybugs than use even organic-approved sprays.

When I decided to find out which ladybug is most common in my garden, I took a lot of pictures and then searched online.

My ladybugs mostly have about 16 spots on their backs, so it was easy to eliminate “two-spotted ladybug” from the list of possibilities.

Even better, university-based websites agreed that the black “M” shaped marking behind its head was a defining feature. It means my ladybugs are Asian multicolored ladybugs. At least, the adults are.

Apparently, this is a ladybug that tries to overwinter inside buildings; in winter it is considered a pest. In summertime, though, in gardens and farms, it is a big help in removing aphids from crops.

This University of Kentucky page includes pictures of several kinds of ladybugs. Maybe the ladybugs in your garden will be native, and not imports like mine!

Why Are Ladybugs in the Garden, in Georgia, from Asia?

Apparently, various people brought these ladybugs to the U.S. on purpose, to help control pests like aphids and soft scale insects. According the University of Florida and the USDA, these ladybugs were released here many times in the past. The first time may have been a hundred years ago! The multicolored ladybug finally established permanent populations in the U.S. in the late 1980s to early 1990s.

Plenty of Work for Ladybugs in the Garden

My kale, especially, has been hit hard by aphids. Luckily, we have already eaten quite a lot of the kale ourselves. The current plan is to harvest the rest of the kale, wash it very well, and eat it soon. Any we don’t use on tonight’s pizza will get stashed in the fridge to use tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I have seen aphids on the milkweed — planted for the butterflies — and a few on leaves of the iris. Aphids also can be pesky in the fall; they are not just pests for the spring. My garden will probably feed a lot of ladybugs for many weeks to come.

Organic Pest Control: Mexican Bean Beetles

29 April, 2018 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Mexican Bean Beetles can strip all the green tissue off bean plants surprisingly quickly. If your organic garden is attacked by these pests pretty much every year, odds are high that you will see them again this summer.

Mexican bean beetles have stripped green tissue from most of leaves in this bean patch. PHOTO/Amygwh

How can you recognize these pests? The adults look a lot like ladybugs, only more orange or yellow. Their babies (aka “larvae”) are bright yellow, and look a bit like stubby, spiky caterpillars. (See the picture collage lower in this post.) The damage to the leaves, which become very brown as the beetles and their babies eat the green plant tissue, is the clue most gardeners notice first.

Having some strategies in place, before the bean beetles arrive, can help organic gardeners to harvest plenty of beans in spite of the coming pests.

Strategies for controlling (or minimizing) an attack by Mexican bean beetles have some overlap with those for some other pests, such as aphids or the caterpillars of cabbage moths and cabbage butterflies.

Using Barriers to Keep Mexican Bean Beetles Off the Plants

For caterpillars like cabbage worms and loopers (babies of the cabbage moths and butterflies), we can use netting over our plants to keep the adult flyers away. If the adults can’t reach the plants to lay eggs on them, then we won’t have caterpillars on the plants.

For Mexican bean beetles, we can adapt this strategy by using a floating row cover instead of netting over the bean plants. The non-woven construction of the fabric means there are no holes for insects to sneak though. The row cover is lightweight and can be draped right over the plants, but it seems kinder to the beans to secure it over a support structure. The bean patch needs to be weed-free before the area is covered. Beans, in general, are self-pollinating; most varieties will make beans even when bees and other pollinators can’t visit the flowers.

Waiting for Parasites and Predators

There is a parasitic wasp that lays eggs inside the larvae of the bean beetles, just like there is a parasitic wasp that lays its eggs inside aphids. Sadly, the bean-wasp doesn’t seem to hang out in my yard, even though my garden gets attacked by Mexican bean beetles nearly every summer. Arbico Organics sells “mummies” (Mexican bean beetle larvae that contain wasp eggs/babies) as a bean-beetle-control for use on farms, but this is a very expensive option. It also is not really practical for home gardeners. Many of us are not growing even the minimum 70 square feet of beans per mummy recommended to make this work. It is nice, though, to know that there are insects working on behalf of farmers and gardeners to control these pests.

Spined soldier bugs and assassin bugs eat Mexican bean beetles, too. Some of these could already be present in your organic garden, but probably not enough. Certainly, there are not enough of these helpful predators in my own garden.

Stages of Mexican bean beetle infestation on bush beans, with a suggestion to alter timing of planting to harvest plenty of beans in spite of the beetles.

Insect-eating birds also can help reduce the population of bean beetles in the organic garden. In my bean patch, wrens move through the patch, hidden from my view below the canopy of leaves. All I can see is movement of the tops of the plants, until the wrens spring into flight after eating. It is great to know that these garden helpers are in action.

However, the birds seem to leave a lot of beetles uneaten. Maybe Mexican bean beetles are not very tasty.

Using Pest Control Products

In general, organic spray-type options for insect pests are not very effective, and options for beetles are worse. Spraying the undersides of the bean leaves with insecticidal soap (not an easy feat!) may kill the youngest larvae.

If you are desperate, try a product that includes Neem. Neither version of insecticidal soaps will have much effect on the adults, though.

You may have better luck than me at applying a spray to the undersides of leaves. If so, then insecticidal soap could slow down an infestation in your garden. Personally, I do not use a spray option.

For me, hand-smashing the larvae and eggs seems to slow down an escalating infestation about as effectively as using insecticidal soaps. So does knocking adults into a tub of soapy water, where they will drown. In other words, none of these options is super-effective.

Adjusting Your Planting Dates

This is the strategy that has given me the most abundant harvests. This strategy requires that gardeners plant their bush beans early — right around the estimated last-frost-date for their yard. This strategy allows gardeners to begin harvesting beans as soon as possible.

Mexican bean beetles don’t typically become abundant until sometime in the first half of July in my garden, and my estimated last frost is around mid-April. Planting near this date, when it can still be very cool, lets me bring beans to the kitchen beginning at the end of May, through all of June, and into early July, before bean beetles destroy the crop.

When the Mexican bean beetles have shifted from just feeding on leaves to also feeding on the beans, it is time (or past time!) to remove the crop completely from the garden. Be sure to clear it all away. Plant something else in this spot.

In 2-3 weeks, in another part of the garden, you can then plant a second crop of bush beans. In my garden, this second crop is untroubled by Mexican bean beetles. It does, eventually, get bean leaf rollers, but those do a lot less damage to the bean plants and they never eat the beans.

Gifts for Gardeners

27 November, 2017 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Winter can be hard on gardeners. There is less work to keep them occupied outside, and, if there are few houseplants, no good way to expend their gardening energies indoors, either.

If your gardener is looking forward to that pruning time of year (coming soon!), a comfortable yet sturdy pair of garden-work gloves (I have a pair from GardenWorks that fit well), would be a great gift, along with — if your gardener doesn’t already have one — a small folding, pruning saw, like this one from Corona, that fits in nearly any tool bag/box/bucket and is easy to use.

For veggie-gardeners suffering from the wintertime blahs, a gift option that can keep them growing through the winter is everything-needed-to-grow-sprouts. This is easier to get together than you might think.

A set that you can assemble yourself could include inexpensive Econo-Sprout Toppers (special “sprouting” lids that fit on Mason jars — I use a set of these at home), a collection of Assorted Organic Sprouting Seeds Mixes, and a book that includes instructions and recipes, like The Complete Guide to Growing and Using Sprouts.

For gardeners looking for more ways to support our native pollinators, a mason bee house, like this one from Welliver, for which replacement tubes are available as refills for next year, is a good choice. If your gardener might prefer something that could provide refuge for a wider range of insects, the Insect Palace Bee and Bug Home , which looks similar to an insect house I saw in Austin, TX, is another way to go.

For organic gardeners who love to read seed catalogs, a copy of Baker Creek’s 2018 Whole Seed Catalog would also be an excellent, and very affordable, choice. Last year’s Whole Seed Catalog not only listed and described hundreds of garden seeds/plants, it also included great articles about seeds and gardening.

If your gardener is interested in mushroom foraging or growing, check the Gifts for Gardeners (and Budding Foragers) post at Atlanta Veggies. If none of these ideas seems right for your gardener, check out the gift lists on the sites of some of my gardening friends (all of whom have more elegant-looking sites than mine):

Marianne, at The Small Town Gardener

Kathy’s Gifts for Garden Cats at Cats in Gardens

The Washington Gardener’s Holiday Gifts for Gardeners

Top 10 Books for Gardeners, also from the Washington Gardener