Bugs and Other Insects

Organic Garden Pest Control

18 June, 2019 by amygwh Leave a Comment

As the summer progresses, more and more plant-eating pests will find our gardens. Farmers and horticulture specialists call this build-up of unwanted insects and other creepy-crawlies “pest pressure”, and, in the South, it can become spectacular.

However, organic gardeners everywhere have a wide range of non-chemical strategies available to reduce pest-problems.

Simple pest control strategies for organic gardeners

Remove pests by hand

Cluster of shiny orange squash bug eggss on a leaf of summer squash — Squash bug eggs can be lifted off squash leaves using the sticky side of duct tape.

One of the simplest ways to deal with a whole assortment of plant-eating bugs and beetles is simply picking them off the plants and smashing them (possibly while wearing really good garden gloves) or knocking them into a little tub of soapy water, where they will drown. This strategy works for many kinds of beetles and bugs when the population of pests isn’t too large.

Mowing and weeding

Keeping the surrounding vegetation down helps reduce the number of places pests can hang out.

Water spray

Spraying sturdy plants with a hard stream of water can knock smaller, soft-bodied insects like aphids off a plant. Very small insects can’t always manage to climb back up.

Barriers

Bird netting over strawberry plants — Netting set out over young plants can protect strawberries from birds and chipmunks.

Placing fine mesh netting or a specially manufactured row cover over plants can keep them from being attacked by some kinds of insects. Especially if you want to keep an adult form from laying eggs that hatch into a destructive larva/caterpillar, this is a great strategy. I use netting over cabbage family plants to keep from getting cabbage worms and loopers on my crops.

Netting can also protect plants from birds and small mammals, if it is placed over-and-around the plants before the birds and mammals find your crop I get to eat a lot more of my own garden-strawberries when my plants are defended from chipmunks (my nemesis…) with heavy netting.

Baits

Organic-approved baits are available for some pests, like slugs, snails, and roly-polies (aka: sow bugs, pill bugs). These work, but patience may be required.

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)

This bacterial product is toxic to certain insects and is certified for use in organic gardens. The one I’ve used is the brand Thuricide, and it is for managing caterpillars. This includes those Cabbageworms and loopers, tomato fruit worms and hornworms, and cucumber pickleworms. It should also include Squash Vine Borers, but the success I’ve seen with these is patchy. For the vine borers, I have had better success when using several strategies together, rather than relying on just one (see link in “change the crop” section below).

Less simple pest control strategies

This next set of strategies includes practices that require either more thought or time or that require more than one “step” to complete.

Encourage beneficial insects (predators)

Many garden helpers, such as ladybugs, predatory wasps, and lacewings, are attracted to areas that have nectar-providing flowers nearby. Growing flowers like white clover, chives, hyssop, comfrey, or viper’s bugloss in the garden or in nearby areas can attract these helpers to your yard. Dandelions are another favorite.

The predatory insects also need a source of water, such as a very shallow birdbath that includes rocks or sand (to help them climb out, if they fall in).

Change the timing of your planting

beans and small purple bean flowers growing on a bush bean plant — A bush bean patch can make a lot of beans before beetles arrive to destroy the plants.

Mexican Bean Beetles can strip all the green tissue off bean plants pretty quickly. They aren’t a problem every single year, but some years they totally halt production of beans in the garden because they’ve actually killed the plants.

These pests don’t typically become abundant in my garden, even in a “bad” year, until July. That means that early-planted bush beans have ample time to make a great crop and then be removed from the garden completely after the gardener has harvested plenty of beans for fresh use and more to either can or freeze for later use.

If your garden has had a couple of bad Mexican bean beetle years, this strategy can be a great work-around for the problem.

A similar strategy of changing the planting dates, based on when a particular pest seems to appear, can work for other crops, too.

Change the crop

One mature, buff-colored butternut squash and one green, immature butternut squash, growing next to each other on a vine. — Butternut squash resist damage caused by squash vine borers.

Around mid-summer, gardens across the area are filled with wilted squash plants. Most of these plants are dying (or dead, with a gardener nearby holding a watering can and a hopeful expression on his or her face) from damage caused by the squash vine borer.

It turns out that we grow four main species of squash for food: Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita mixta, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata. Of these, the C. pepo group contains most of the squashes we like to grow and eat: zucchini, summer squash, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, and most pumpkins. Sadly, this group is highly susceptible to squash vine borers.

The C. moschata group has the best resistance to the borers. The most familiar representative of this group may be the butternut squash, but this group also contains the cheese squashes, ‘Seminole Pumpkin’ squash, and a variety of squash sometimes called ‘Trombocino Rampicante’ (sometimes also called ‘Zucchetta’) that, when immature, is somewhat similar to zucchini.

Most of the C. moschata plants can grow to sprawl across 20-30 feet of garden. Gardeners working in smaller spaces can look for a dwarf version, like a dwarf butternut.

Not all insects are pests

For new gardeners, becoming comfortable with the universe of insects that inhabit the garden can take some time. It might help to remember that some of these creepy-crawlies are working with you, not against you.

Pollinators

Some insects are the pollinators that help your crops make delicious food for you to bring into the kitchen. Pollinators include many kinds of bees, butterflies, wasps, beetles, and flies.

The babies of butterflies are caterpillars, which do eat plants. This means that gardeners should determine some level of acceptable damage, not killing every caterpillar on sight, so we will have plenty of butterflies. Planting some crops specifically for caterpillars may help.

The ones that are wimpy eaters

Some insects that eat plants never become abundant enough to keep your plants from making good food. The caterpillar called the bean leaf roller is usually one of these. These may not be “garden helpers” like some of the other creepy-crawlies, but they aren’t exactly the bad guys, either. I usually leave these alone.

Predators

Saddleback caterpillar almost covered up in the white eggs of a parasitic wasp. — Some wasps lay eggs on caterpillars; baby wasps that hatch will eat the caterpillar.

Becoming familiar with the predators (wasps, ladybugs, lacewings, and their babies) can help you avoid killing them by mistake. Of course, the predators are not all super-choosy about their prey, so some of them may eat others of your beneficial insects. Try not to worry about that too much.

The caterpillar covered with wasp eggs in the picture nearby is a saddleback caterpillar. This type of caterpillar has stinging hairs that are very unpleasant for people to encounter.

Build Bee Hotels for Native Bees

3 March, 2019 by amygwh

Planting more bee-friendly flowers is a major way we can support native pollinators like our solitary bees — the ones that don’t live in hives — but planning safe nesting sites can also help.

Some of the solitary bees we can provide nesting sites for most easily are different kinds of tunnel-nesting bees, like Mason bees and Leaf-cutter bees. You may have seen various versions of these hotels for sale at garden centers and online. Most include blocks of wood with holes drilled through or bundles of tubes such as straws or bamboo.

Bee hotels for our native, solitary bees can increase the number of pollinators in our small gardens, without taking a lot of space.

My husband made this bee hotel for tunnel nesting bees. — Bee hotel for tunnel-nesting bees.

What you need to know to build a bee hotel

I am not going to give specific “how to” instructions for putting together a good bee hotel, because University of Nebraska has done an excellent job in their publication, linked here: Creating a solitary bee hotel. It includes photos showing a diversity of bee hotels.

However, these are University of Nebraska’s basics:

Build a frame for your blocks or tubes. The wood should be untreated. The frame should be about 6-inches deep.
Fill the frame with blocks of untreated wood in which holes are drilled to create the tunnels.
More simply, skip the frame and just drill holes in big-enough pieces of untreated wood.
Different diameters of holes attract different kinds of bees.
In general, tunnel diameters should range from 3/32″ to 1/2″. The Nebraska publication includes a chart that shows which bees use which sizes of tunnel diameters.

The Nebraska publication focuses on drilled blocks of wood. Xerxes Society’s publication Tunnel nests for native bees tells more about using bundles of hollow stems or straws to create nests for tunneling bees. In general, though:

gather your hollow stems, all about 6-inches long
bundle them together in a protective container
inside the container, the stems/straws should be horizontal

If you do not have a ready source of bamboo or other hollow stems, consider these Milliard Mason Bee Nest Tubes, made of cardboard.

Cleanliness saves (bee) lives

Parasites, moulds, and diseases can build up inside a bee hotel if it is not well-maintained.

Blocks should be replaced after one or two seasons of use. Old blocks that may still have bees developing inside should be kept aside someplace cool and dry until the following spring, when they can be set out for the bees to emerge.

Hollow stems and straws should be replaced, also, after they have been used and vacated.

After a couple of years, if the bee hotel is still holding together well, in winter, remove the blocks and bundles of tubes, then sanitize the frame by soaking it for about five minutes in a strong bleach solution. After the frame has dried completely, refill it with fresh blocks or tubes.

Smaller bee hotels may be better than larger ones

The Xerxes Society publication includes this information about the benefit of creating several smaller nests and hanging them at intervals through your landscape:

This prevents the unnaturally high populations found at nest blocks with many holes, and mimics natural conditions of limited, spatially separated nest sites. These smaller nests also decompose more rapidly, and can be allowed to simply deteriorate naturally, while new small nests are added to the landscape periodically.
Xerxes Society. Tunnel nests for native bees.

Keep the hotel simple

Insect hotel seen in Florence, Italy, in 2017. — Too much going on?

Entomologist Jo-Lynn Teh-Weisenburger, in a blog post on the site The Entomologist Lounge, cites information that indicates the “increasing number of badly-designed artificial nesting sites contributed to higher loss of (solitary) bees by parasitism.”

The problem seems to one of trying to do too much with one hotel. She says, ” The warning sign of such designs is the unnecessary use of pine cones, glued snail shells, wood shavings and clear plastic tubes.”

Teh-Weisenburger suggests that better success may come when we focus on the kind of insect we want to attract and support. After creating a successful nest habitat for that insect, then we might consider adding structures — elsewhere in the yard — for other species.

Placement of the new nest

Bee hotels need to be set in place in early spring, before the first solitary bees emerge to start looking for flowers and for nesting sites. In my yard, that means placing the bee hotel in the yard by mid-March.

Publications agree that the bee hotel for tunnel-nesting bees should face south or southeast, to catch the morning sun, and it should be mostly in the sun all day. The hotel should be 3-5 feet above the ground, and any vegetation in front should be pruned away. It needs to be secure, so the hotel doesn’t sway in the wind.

Tunnels will stay drier if the hotel has a bit of a roof built onto it, that overhangs the front.

If the information in this post is interesting or helpful, please “like” or “share” it. Thank you!

Snails in the Garden

7 December, 2018 by amygwh

We are in December, with below freezing temperatures at night, but there are still a few snails in the garden. Their continued presence among the greens (chicory, kale, lettuce, rocket) tells about the long season of rain leading up to winter here in north Georgia.

Snail on a chicory leaf, early December in Georgia.

I haven’t seen any serious damage to my plants, so I am not concerned about the snails. To be honest, I am amazed by their persistence in the cold.

If there were very many snails, and a lot of damage to crops, I would set out some organic-approved iron-phosphate bait. The one I have used most recently is called Sluggo, but there are many similar baits, with the same active ingredient, that work.

When I have used the iron-phosphate bait, it was actually for roly-polies, many years ago. For some reason their population had boomed, and roly-polies roiled every square inch of ground in the garden. These critters usually eat decaying organic matter, but there were so many of them that they started eating seedlings in the garden. That was a problem, but the Sluggo iron-phosphate bait for slugs and snails works on roly-polies, too.

It took a couple of years of persistent use of the bait to beat back the roly-polies, but my garden hasn’t been invaded like that again.

The Royal Horticulture Society (RHS), in the UK, where slugs and snails commonly invade gardens and farms and cause a lot of damage, has been studying methods of slug and snail control. Earlier this fall, the BBC reported on an RHS study of home-methods, using things like crushed egg shells, sharp sand, and copper strips to keep the pests away from garden crops.

The study found that none of those things really work, which is sad news for those of us who like to “DIY” as much of our gardening as possible. They had not yet tested beer-traps (beer in shallow saucers, set around the garden, to lure and then drown slugs and snails), so there may be one method left for us to use, other than placing boards in the garden for the pests to hide under, then turning the boards over to pick off the critters by hand to drown or otherwise dispatch.

In another RHS study, effectiveness of iron-phosphate baits and another organic control, nematodes that target slugs and snails, was compared to conventional (chemical) control options. The organic methods did almost as well as the chemicals. Based on my roly-poly experience, I would have guessed this outcome, but it is nice to have that guess confirmed.

Trap Crops for the Home Garden

28 September, 2018 by amygwh

Since trap crops take up some space, it never occurred to me that using these was a suitable organic pest control strategy for small home gardens. However, I have unexpectedly gained experience with a trap crop, since that is what my zucchini have turned out to be.

What is a trap crop?

A trap crop is one that is planted as a lure to pest insects, to keep them away from the main crop. Most trap crops are not expected to yield a harvest; instead, they are offered up to pests as an alternative to the main crop of a farm. According to SARE, trap crops are often planted around the edge of the main crop, forming a protective barrier that pests are likely to stay within. Trap crops can also be planted as a block or patch near the main crop.

According to University of Georgia, trap crops to work best when they make flowers before the main crop that they are protecting. When the plants are making flowers and fruits, that is when they are most attractive to most pests.

My zucchini plants function as a trap crop

You may have read the two recent blog posts about pests on my zucchini plants — one about squash beetles and the other about cucumber pickleworms. The squash beetles are really less of a problem, since there are only four or five each day for me to smash and the damage is limited to holes in the leaves. The pickleworms, though, are another story.

They have caused serious damage to the zucchini plants, ruining flowers and boring into main-stems and leaf-stems. The plants are still standing, but all hope of harvesting zucchini from this late-summer crop is gone.

This is the good news: my cucumber patch, planted in early August like the zucchini, has supplied several cucumbers for our meals already. Checking the cucumber plants nearly every day, I have found only a few squash beetles, grand-total, on the plants. It has been easy to find and smash the one-every-few-days beetles as I check on the garden.

In an instance of amazing good luck, my zucchini variety was so fast to mature that the plants made flowers more than a week before the cucumbers did. When the pests first showed up in my garden, the squash beetles and cucumber pickleworm moths flew past the cucumber patch, which didn’t have flowers, and attacked the zucchini plants in the half-barrel planter, where flowers and little squashes were abundant.

Cucumber patch protected by trap crop of zucchini, example of organic pest control. Zucchini are in a half-barrel at left end of garden (not in this image). — My cucumber patch in late September. No leaf mildew diseases, no pickleworm damage. PHOTO/Amygwh

Even better, the cucumbers still do not show any pickleworm damage.

To combat any pickleworms that could be present, I have been treating both sets of plants with Bt for caterpillars (the one I am using is Thuricide), which is an organic pest control product. We have had a lot of rain, though, which washes the Bt away. I am not re-spraying my plants after every rain, so some days the cucumber crop is unprotected other than by the stronger allure of the zucchini plants.

At this point, the three remaining zucchini plants look hopelessly ragged, but they are still alive. I am leaving them in the garden for as long as they continue to work as pest-magnets.

The cucumbers remain pickleworm-free, but they are not perfect specimens. I had forgotten about the uneven pollination in hot weather that results in lumpy cucumbers. These are not headed for a pickle jar, which means the imperfect shapes are not really a problem.

Weird shapes from incomplete pollination, but no cucumber pickleworm damage. PHOTO/Amygwh

Because of pest-concerns, I am harvesting the cucumbers while they are fairly small. This is a bit like harvesting tomatoes before they are fully red. I know that if I leave tomatoes in the garden to fully ripen, some pest (stink bug, chipmunk, mockingbird, etc) will notice the beautiful, ripe fruit and take a bite before I get a chance to enjoy the harvest, myself.

Unlike for tomatoes, there is not a flavor-reason to wait for more mature cucumbers. They taste pretty much the same at smaller sizes, and leaving them out in the pest-filled world seems a little like tempting fate.

So, as I ponder my next year’s garden, it is good to know that zucchini plants can use some unseen come-hither chemistry to draw pests away from the cucumbers.

This is the kind of garden-discovery that any of us can make. I have been growing food in this yard for more than 25 years, and I learn more about gardening every year. And even though there are pests, the garden is producing good food. This is part of the joy of gardening!

At the Pollinator Symposium

24 September, 2018 by amygwh

At the Pollinator Symposium at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit this past weekend, attendees learned about urban bees, pollinator plantings along roadsides and around retention ponds, and about plant-pollinator interactions. The event was amazing!

Of course, I am on the committee for Monarchs Across Georgia, the group that organized the symposium, so I might be biased.

Dr. Jaret Daniels, the first presenter, is working in Florida with the Florida Dept. of Transportation to find the best mowing schedule for roadside wildflower plantings in that state. Dr. Daniels reported that the state DOT mostly keeps an every-3-weeks schedule for much of the mowing. For the 12-or-so feet nearest the road, the vegetation needs to be kept short for safety reasons.

He has found, though, that for parts of the verge further back from the road, 6-weeks between mowing allows more plants, and more kinds of plants, to flower (all good for pollinators!). In talking with state officials, he found that “protecting monarch butterflies” was a better motivator for trying a longer mowing cycle than “saving money.” Everyone wants to be seen as a friend of the monarch!

Dr. Leavey, telling us about her students’ work with urban bees.

Dr. Jennifer Leavey, working at Georgia Tech to understand how urban environments affect bees, suggested that flowering trees are a great supplement to our small pollinator gardens. Each flowering tree provides many more flowers than a small garden, even though a tree may flower for only a few weeks. The key is to make sure that enough flowers are available to pollinators through the entire growing season to support bees over many months.

She showed us a graph of information, developed by her students with information from Trees Atlanta, that showed most of Atlanta’s flowering trees are blooming in April. Apparently, we need more trees that flower in other months.

This pink Salvia is the kind of flower that is pollinated by critters that have long tongues, like butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. As pollinators fly under the extended flower parts (anthers with pollen, stigma where the pollen needs to go for pollination) to get to the nectar inside the flower, pollen brushes onto their heads and backs.

Dr. Tim Spira is a (recently retired) plant ecologist whose work has focused on plant-pollinator interactions. His information was less practical, in some ways, since much of what he told us isn’t “things to do”. It was more, “how this works, and why.” However, his talk contained the most fun-facts.

Example: Usually, pollination is a happy accident that occurs when an insect or animal pokes its head inside a flower to plunder the nectar or pollen. Some of the pollen ends up on the insect/animal, and when that individual visits another flower in search of more good food, the pollen from the first flower brushes onto the female parts of the second flower. If the two flowers are for the same kind of plant, voila! Pollination can occur. He told us, though, about one pollinator that moves pollen onto the female parts of a flower on purpose, with pollination as her primary goal. This pollinator is the yucca moth (link to US Forestry Service information).

She gathers pollen from one yucca flower, then flies to another flower where she lays eggs inside the ovary of the new flower. Then, she uses her wad of gathered-up pollen to pollinate the flower where she has laid her eggs. When her eggs hatch, the babies will eat seeds of the yucca fruit that develops from the pollinated flower.

More than just butterflies and bees were visiting the wildflower meadows at the Monastery. Some flower-visitors, like this grasshopper, are not pollinators.

All in all, it was a great day. My little presentation about systemic pesticides seemed to go well, and I had fun visiting with other gardeners and people who love pollinators. Of course, very few people place the flower flies quite so high on their list of favorite insects as I do, but someday that may change.

Something is Making Holes in My Squash Flowers and Stems

11 September, 2018 by amygwh

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

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

‘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

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

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