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pests

When Things Go Wrong in the Garden

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Our new garden on the Mississippi Gulf Coast already is providing plenty of food and education. So far, besides the early spring radishes, we have harvested ripe cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapeño peppers, about a dozen zucchini, and several small bunches of green beans.

In addition, we have harvested a few gallons of wild dewberries not far from the house, and I have identified several other wild edible plants in our yard and neighborhood.

This all sounds amazing, right? Like we have moved to a land of abundance.

  • Zucchini
  • Early green beans
Swiss chard and Chinese Multicolored Spinach plants growing in the garden. Sticks standing around the plants deter squirrels from digging nearby.

Challenges in our Gulf Coast garden

Let me just list, though, some of the challenges facing the garden (and gardener!) in this yard, starting with zoological forms:

  • Fire ants — many, many colonies — which will take awhile to discourage. I have plans, though, based on my organic fire ant control articles, part 1 and part 2.
  • Moles, which have tunneled through the garden, damaging roots and making it impossible for some plants — the ones with tunnels right underneath — to develop deep root systems.
  • Squirrels, which dig random holes in the garden and uproot smaller plants as they dig.

In addition, other insect pests and the first diseases have already attacked. First, caterpillars destroyed the Swiss chard (Just like in Georgia!). When I finally pulled up the chard to replant that space with another kind of crop, the caterpillars moved to the tomato plants.

It took days and days of spraying the plants with an organic-approved Bt product for caterpillars (Thuricide) and hand-smashing the larger caterpillars to stop the infestation. I think that I finally got them all, but would not be surprised to find a couple more.

  • Powdery mildew on zucchini leaves
  • Evidence of pickleworms, hiding in the cuke

Then, the zucchini leaves got covered up in mildew. The cucumbers have been attacked by pickleworms, and then we had a tropical storm.

Backyard and garden flooded by rains from tropical storm Cristobal.
The vegetable garden completely flooded in Tropical Storm Cristobal

The storm waters have receded, but the ground stayed saturated for several days. Not all plants in the garden will recover from having their roots under water for so long. The okra looks fine, but the tomato plants are still wilted, the green bean plants are turning brown, and the rosemary (not surprisingly) is totally brown.

How does an organic gardener address these many challenges?

It helps if a gardener has a good sense of humor, a lot of patience, and a readiness to observe, experiment, and learn.

To reduce risks of flooding

We had placed the garden in the highest part of the back yard that gets full sun, but that was not high enough. For this particular garden, an obvious place to start addressing our challenges is in building raised beds, to keep the garden from drowning in future storms.

Considering where we live, future heavy-rains are a certainty. Raised beds would allow the garden to drain faster, even if it goes underwater again.

Raised beds might also reduce some of our mole-tunneling issues.

We didn’t start with raised beds, partly because we wanted to get things planted right away, but also because of the fire ants. I had observed in Georgia that fire ants seem to be attracted to raised beds. However, an underwater garden is worse than dealing with ants. Raised beds are definitely in our future.

How to address other garden challenges:

For other critter issues, bugs, and diseases, reaching for “products” is not, usually, my first choice. An exception is when I am caught totally off guard — for example, by unexpected rampaging herds of caterpillars.

Instead, these are strategies that I use:

  • Try different planting dates, to avoid the pest or disease that is causing problems. In Georgia, planting bush beans as early as the weather would allow meant I could harvest more beans before the bean beetles attacked the plants.
  • Try a different variety of the crop. Birds and other wildlife can be confused by varieties of crops that ripen to an unexpected color (when “ripe” is white or green instead of red, for example). Also, some varieties of cucumbers and squashes can stand up to mildew diseases longer than others, before dying. In addition, it is possible to find varieties of most crops that ripen sooner/faster than others, so gardeners can harvest more before an expected disaster strikes.
  • Switch to completely different crops. Some crops might be inappropriate for a particular garden. If the only way to harvest from the crop is to provide constant application of sprays/powders, that could be a clue that it is time to try other crops. Learning to love a different crop that is better suited to your yard is a strategy to try. (Note: I did not used to even LIKE beets, but now they are a favorite.)
  • Expect and be satisfied with a short harvest window for a crop. My zucchini plants produced veggies for about three weeks. Now the plants are done, partly due to mildew and partly to being underwater, and I can use that space for another crop. Even though I would love to have more zucchini from the garden, the ending of the crop is not a disaster. Instead, it is an opportunity to plant another crop. Maybe sunflowers…

Strategies in action for this current garden

We won’t have time to put in raised beds until fall. The house we moved into has had a lot of updates, but it was built in 1948. There are things that need to be done.

Today, for example, we crawled under the house (18 inch clearance) and pulled out the dead animal that has created an awful smell and attracted about a million flies over the past couple of days — it was a possum.

However, we have considered some different options for raised beds, checked prices of supplies at the local hardware/lumber stores, and figured out how much of each supply we will need, when the time comes.

For changing the timing of planting — this is our first season of planting in this garden. I have recorded planting dates and crop notes in my copy of the Garden Planner and Notebook, so that next year I will know which crops — such as zucchini, cucumbers, Swiss chard, and green beans — I should try planting earlier. Because I have kept notes, I will be able to compare results from the different planting times.

For switching out to different crops — I already have switched out the Swiss chard to something completely different. Peanuts are growing in that space, and the plants withstood the flooding like little champs. The seed packet is leftover from 2013 (!!!). I don’t really know why I kept the packet, because it took up a lot of space in my seed box. Glad I did, though. The seeds all came up.

I am still looking for edible greens that can withstand the heat, humidity, caterpillars, and other hazards of a Southeastern US summer. I have tried Malabar spinach in the past, in Georgia, and it does well, but I have been unable to love it.

My parsley is still too small to provide greens for the kitchen, and so is the purslane. I might try Good King Henry next, even though it is related to Swiss chard. Maybe as a “wilder” type of plant, it will not be as attractive to caterpillars.

Ripe red tomatoes, green tomatoes, smaller cherry tomatoes, a cucumber, and small butternut squashes all harvested from the garden, set on a tray indoors.
The good news — harvested from our garden. Green tomatoes are from wilted plants.

To address the challenge of a short harvest window, the best move might be to just plant LOADS of whichever crop is going to have only a few weeks of productivity. Even if the garden is small. Then when the crop comes in, it will be glorious, for just that short time.

This is the strategy I will likely try for Swiss chard next year. In addition to planting it earlier, I will plant more seeds closer together and harvest them smaller. At the first sign of trouble, I will harvest the whole crop to bring into the kitchen. We can luxuriate in the Swiss chard for awhile, then move on to another crop.

Aphids on the Arugula?

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One of my friends brought some arugula leaves to the office last week, to show me the many hundreds of aphids that were on them. The arugula is growing at a community garden that she had visited, and she had permission from the gardener to pick a few leaves.

Aphids on arugula from local community garden. PHOTO/Amygwh

We slid the leaves under the microscope and could see that, while a whole lot of the aphids are alive and active (the green ones in the picture), some had been “parasitized” by a wasp.

That means that a little wasp had laid an egg inside the aphid, and the egg was developing into a new wasp.

The aphids that have a baby wasp inside are the puffed-up golden ones in the picture.

When each wasp-baby is mature, it will bust out of the aphid body, leaving behind an empty aphid shell.

Are images from “The Alien” movie flashing through your mind yet? Sometimes, real life is just as weird as science-fiction movies. This is part of what keeps gardening so engaging.

In organic gardening, knowing that there are predators and parasitic wasps around, waiting to take care of a pest problem, provides an odd kind of comfort. Unfortunately, though, even if a swarm of ladybugs (surprisingly effective predators on aphids) moves in to help the wasps clear up the aphid problem, this arugula is going to need a lot of washing before it is added to a salad.

My venerable copy of Rodale’s “The Organic Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control” (my copy is from 1996) offers some help for aphid infestations. The first suggestion is to wait for the predators to take care of the problem. Usually, in my garden, “waiting” is enough.

This is an odd year weatherwise, though, so it looks as though more active steps will be needed in some gardens. The next suggestion is to blast the little plants with strong spray from a hose to knock the aphids off. The next after that is to try an insecticidal soap spray. In a dire emergency, try a veg-garden-pest spray that contains neem.

Of course, the very first thing to have done, if anyone could have foreseen the aphid disaster looming from back in the fall, would have been to cover the little crop with a spun rowcover to keep the aphids out completely.

Hoping that other gardens are relatively aphid-free!

Root Knot Nematodes in My Beets

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Root knot nematode damage on a Grex beet. PHOTO/Amy W.

Some of my fall-planted beets grew well and were large enough to harvest back in December. These didn’t show any sign of nematode damage, so seeing masses of knotted roots when I pulled the last few beets last week was a surprise.
It hadn’t occurred to me that root knot nematodes would affect my winter beets, even though I know that my garden is occasionally troubled by these pests, but the knots on the beet (from a packet of 3-Root Grex) pictured here show that winter barely slowed them down.

It probably didn’t help that November and December were so warm; the ground didn’t get good and cold until around mid-January.

Really, having had three wet/rainy years in a row didn’t help, either. Nematodes are less likely to proliferate in drier soils. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been bad about keeping the weeds out this winter. According to the University of Arkansas publication “Control root-knot nematodes in your garden”, “Root-knot nematodes also feed and multiply on many garden weeds, although they may not injure these plants to any extent.”

Since this nematode problem is unlikely to just go away on its own, I have developed a plan to bring the population down to a less-horrifying level. I’ve already turned the soil in the affected bed, to remove weeds and expose more nematodes to the cold, drying air. In a week or so, I’ll repeat that activity, and then again a week or two after that. Normally, I would not want to disturb the below-ground community so much, but these, apparently, are desperate times.

After the soil-turning series, I plan to plant collard and mustard greens just as thickly as I can, since their presence suppresses root-knot nematode populations. A week before spring planting, which will rely on as many nematode-resistant varieties as I can find, I’ll turn under those greens.

This plan will not make the nematodes go away, and I may need to work out some additional strategies to keep the momentum going. A big component will be keeping the weeds out. Wish me luck!

The good news is that not all garden crops are troubled by root-knot nematodes, and, according to a publication about nematodes by the University of California IPM Program, not only will resistant varieties of crops produce in spite of showing some galling in the roots, “An additional benefit of growing a resistant variety is the nematode levels in the soil decline rather than increase…”

Sounds good to me!

Field of Greens

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At the little farm where Joe and I volunteer on Saturday mornings, the lower field has so many rows of greens – mustards, collards, radishes, and a little bit of kale – that there is no way for us to fully harvest the crop.

The guys who manage the farm, who pay attention to the farming lore of local old-timers,  plant the field each fall from end-to-end knowing full well that many perfectly good greens will go uneaten, just like in years past. For them, even though they enjoy eating greens, the main point of that crop is not so much Food as it is Pest Control.

They call those greens their “fumigant crop”, and it is planted to keep the root-knot nematodes at bay. In spring, when they are ready to plant the warm-weather crops, they just turn under all the remaining greens to let them finish their good work of pest-control. Not too surprisingly, research supports the practice of the old-timers.

The book Managing Cover Crops Profitably, published by SARE (3rd edition, 2010), which can be downloaded for FREE, cites research that demonstrates the “nematicidal effects” of Brassica-family plants like mustard greens and radishes.

When I was talking with a county resident last week about his garden, he mentioned that he’d been having trouble with root-knot nematodes in his 1.5 acre garden over the past couple of years. I told him about my friends and their field of greens, and he went silent for a minute. Then he said that he hadn’t planted greens as a winter crop for the past few years because his freezer was full, but he had in each of the previous 20 or so years of gardening in that spot.

I am pretty sure that, regardless of the state of his freezer, next September my new gardening friend will be planting a whole lot of greens.

Eye of the Beholder – Bumblebee Love and Garden Update

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Bumblebee on dahlia that also has fed thrips and Japanese beetles.

The bumblebee in the picture to the right doesn’t care that the petals of the dahlia have been ruined by thrips and Japanese beetles. The bee is after the abundant pollen, and the petals are relatively unimportant compared to the sweet spot in the center of that amazing flower.

This past week has been National Pollinator Week, so I have been in full “insect-mode” all week, watching flowers to see who visits and inspecting leaves for other critter activity. Happily, my garden is full of life of all kinds, so there has been plenty to observe!

Caterpillar covered by eggs of a parasite. Wasp? Fly?

One of the caterpillars I found had been immobilized by parasites. I don’t know whether the eggs on the caterpillar are from a wasp or a fly, but I was surprised by the sheer number of eggs that had been laid on that one, green larva. It seems unlikely that the caterpillar will provide enough food for the whole brood.

When planting flowers, with the idea of supporting our native pollinators and making sure that our food gardens will be productive, it is easy to forget that some pollinator babies are caterpillars that eat leaves and soft stems, that some pollinators can damage homes (carpenter bees),  that some can make a lawn look really weird for a few weeks in spring (digger bees), and that some insects that are not pollinators (thrips, Japanese beetles) will also be attracted to the garden.

Damaged stem is evidence that a squash vine borer larva is already inside.

Even a small garden will be filled with insects; some will be more welcome that others.

The moth that is the mother of the squash vine borer has been flying in my yard, and I finally have seen damage on the stems of my zucchini plants that indicates her eggs have hatched and her babies are inside my plants.

Earlier this week, after seeing the damage, I slit open each stem and sprayed Bt for caterpillars inside, soaking the interior of the stems and spraying the outsides of the stems up to where the the newest flowers are opening. If all goes as well as in the last couple of years, this will halt the damage and I will get squash until something else (mildew) kills the plants.

Meanwhile, we are bringing in plenty of great vegetables, and I am enjoying the life of the garden.

This looks like Abundance to me.

Insect Activity This Week

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Insect activity in the garden can be good, and it can be unwelcome, depending on the insect. This weekend, I made the first sighting of the season of a most unwelcome moth, the squash vine borer. She is pretty, but her babies devour the insides of squash vines, eventually leading to the demise of the plants.

Squash vine borer adult. The red can be viewed as a warning to gardeners!


Flies aren’t usually considered to be the most welcome of insects, but plenty of flies are pollinators. I have been seeing flies on my parsnip flowers, and they seem to be helping the plants set seed. Look close to find the flies.

Not all flies indicate that something has died.

These squash bug eggs (below) were on a plant at a local community garden. It is time to scout for these bad boys, if the scouting (and removal) hasn’t already begun. Squash bugs can become so numerous that they weaken the plants, and they can spread disease among the squash plants. These eggs are hard to smash, but tearing out the bit of leaf they are on, to be bagged for the landfill, works to keep these from hatching in the garden.

Squash bug eggs are usually on the undersides of leaves, but these were right on top and easy to spot.

The bee inside the blossom below was so frenetically busy that its legs look all crazy in this picture, but that bee-frenzy helps pollinate the plants, so we can have more good squash.

Wild bee-party for one inside a big squash blossom.

Out in gardens recently, I’ve also seen squash beetles, Mexican bean beetles, numerous pollinators, slugs (we’ve had enough rain to bring them out), and more. What have other gardeners been seeing?

Squash Beetles and Bean Harvests

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Squash beetles look a lot like pale ladybugs.

It looks like a “good year” for squash beetles, because I have smashed a lot of them already. They are on both the zucchini and cucumber plants.

My camera hasn’t wanted to focus on the little beetles, so the picture at the right is a bit fuzzy, but if you imagine a “washed out” looking ladybug, with seven spots on each side of its body, and it is eating a plant in the the squash/cucumber family, then you pretty much have a good picture in your mind.

The pattern of damage on the leaves is distinctive. According to Purdue U.:

Squash beetles snip an arched line around their feeding spots.

 “The squash beetle larvae and adults usually feed on the underside of leaves and snip a circular trench that arcs from one leaf edge to another. After it has completed the trench, the insect feeds on the tissue isolated by the trench for 1-2 hours before searching for another leaf.

A study at University of Delaware showed that this feeding characteristic reduces the influx of chemical defenses from the injured plant to the entrenched tissues, thereby preserving the leaf tissue’s suitability for feeding.

Moreover, the larvae only feed on the tissue between veins on the underside of the leaves, leaving the upper surface more or less intact. As a result, their feeding gives the injured leaf a characteristic lace-like skeletonized appearance on the upper surface.”

Saturday’s harvest.

The good news is that this isn’t the cucumber beetle that carries bacterial wilt or the squash bugs that transmit the cucurbit yellow-vine virus.

Hunting squash beetles to smash is easiest and most productive in the middle of a sunny day, when they are most active, but I have been scouting for beetles (and then smashing them) after I get home from work, after walking the dog and tending the bunnies, while I am in the garden to harvest beans.

Sunday’s harvest.

The bean harvests are going well. After the great harvests of the weekend, I was able to blanch some of these for the freezer, for future meals.

There will be more zucchini coming to the kitchen over the next couple of days, and Joe and I are both snitching black raspberries off the canes while we are out in the yard.  When the Heritage red raspberries start to ripen, we will begin to have enough berries to bring inside before eating them (there aren’t many black raspberry plants in the yard).

Blackberries are all still green, but they also are looking good.

I hope all the other gardens out there are producing well and are untroubled by pests!

An Animal Surprise in the Garden

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In my front-yard garden, I have seen many different kinds of animals, or evidence of their having stopped by, over the years. Some of the animals are pests, and but not all.

Of course, there has been a vast assortment of the neighborhood pets, both dogs and cats. We’ve had rabbits (the native kind), chipmunks, voles, possums, rats, box turtles, lizards, frogs, salamanders, and snakes. (How could I forget even ONE of the snakes? They are always such a surprise.) I’ve seen deer walking up the road, thankfully not stopping to check out my garden. And there have been birds of all kinds: those pesky crows, the whole list of species that eat my blueberries, goldfinches, hummingbirds, crested flycatchers, loud wrens, and many more. There are coyotes and racoons in the woods out back, but I haven’t seen them or their footprints in front.

If anyone had asked, I would have said that I had seen pretty much all of the kinds of animal-visitors-to-the-garden that I would see.

So this visitor to the garden was unexpected:

Snapping turtle visits the garden.                PHOTO/Amy W.

I had been about to walk down that path to pick a cucumber when the sight of this snapper stopped me in my tracks. I think she was looking for a place to lay her eggs, but the clay in the paths is pretty tough stuff to dig in.

After a few minutes, she got herself turned around,  picked herself up — on surprisingly long legs — and made her slow way back toward the creek.

Finally, a Summer Harvest!

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I have been bringing in green beans for a few days now, and this is not the first pepper, and the zucchini isn’t quite full-sized, but today is the first day I could bring in more than one or two kinds of veggies from the garden in the same day.

In honor of the occasion, I have arranged it all in Grammy J’s cut glass bowl (Grammy J was my mother’s mother’s mother — my great grandmother). That is just how happy I am with the little harvest.

First real harvest of summer crops, 2013.            PHOTO/Amy W.

I brought in the regular bulbing onions today, too, but they need to dry a few days on the front porch before I trim and weigh them.

The 2013 harvest of bulb-type onions from my yard.        PHOTO/Amy W.

We’ve had crows in the yard over the past couple of weeks, which means that seedlings have been pulled up and tossed about. I’ve replanted some of the cucumbers (and melons, and butternut squash) more than once.

To protect the most recent batch, I cut the bottoms from small plastic cups then pushed the cups down around the seedlings as they emerged. This seems to have been enough protection; the smallest cucumber plants finally all have a couple of true leaves. This may be enough that they are no longer so attractive to crows.

At home and at the garden/farm where I volunteer, I have been pruning the tomato plants. If I can’t stand up tomorrow, it’s because I have been hunched over pruning leaves and suckers from about 150 tomato plants in the past couple of days. Here in the South, diseases are an ever-present threat to tomatoes. It can help if the plants are pruned up a bit.

I like to get them to the point that there are no leaves within about 18 inches of the ground, and I prune away leaves that are growing in toward the center of the plant, to create a cone of air-space in the center. This takes several weeks of work as the plants grow, but the improved airflow can help keep the remaining foliage drier and less susceptible to the most common airborne fungal diseases.

Hope all the other gardens out there are growing well!

Rain, Rain, Rain and Still More Rain

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Eventually, I will finish getting the summer crops planted, but at this rate it might be June before they’re all in. We had yet more rain over the weekend, which made the soil too wet for digging and planting. I put in a couple more tomato plants anyway, turned the compost pile and did some weeding, but there are still two whole beds and two partial beds that are not set for the summer.

Last May was a big harvest month, with potatoes, zucchini, onions, and quite a lot of green beans coming into the kitchen, but this year those crops will be pushed into June. However, things could be worse. I have heard from plenty of gardeners who already are contending with disease issues — from the cool, wet weather — in their gardens. Other gardeners also have said that some seeds that were planted rotted before they could germinate.

Currently, it’s a mix of cool and warm season crops.

The slugs have begun to make an appearance, but  they aren’t in the lettuces at this point. If the rain doesn’t let up, I expect a population explosion.

In the meantime, I will just enjoy what I have. The tomato plants are growing slowly in the cool spring weather, but they look healthy, and they are flowering. The lettuces are in Great Shape, which means there is salad with supper, salad with lunch, and more the next day, and the next. 

Last beet of the season.     PHOTO/Amy W.

There are a few carrots left in the ground, but not many, and the radishes are almost all harvested, too. The peas are starting to make, and I’m looking forward to including those in our meals, but everything is running behind — and not just compared to last year, when everything was freakishly early.

One of the great things about gardening is that there is so much to think about. I am never bored!