Bad, bad bugs. Kill on sight.....graphic graphics warning

[bvar22]

Organic gardens are natural places. A healthy, pesticide free garden is going to have a large population of insects. Some are good, some are bad, and some are very bad. These are a few of the bugs that Starkraven and myself are learning to deal with as we enter our 2nd Season.

Squash Bug.....Bad Bug....Kill on sight.

They really like our pumpkins, or specifically, THIS pumpkin vine.
They haven't touched the other pumpkins or anything else....yet.
(Note: This is the only bed that has NO Catnip, Nasturtiums, or Marigolds, and this is the only bed with Squash Bugs. Hmmmmm.)



They like to hide on the underside of leaves and down on the stems.
If you see one, there are probably 20 more hiding.


They are relatively easy to catch, and have a pretty hard shell so they don't squish in your hand.


Just grab them and pop them into a glass 1/2 filled with watter and a few drops of dish soap.
We keep a couple of jars with soapy water in the garden ready for Insect Control.


If you find one, check for eggs on the underside of leaves.
A handful of these bugs can turn into a thousand.

Last year, we weren't so aggressive, and had a late season infestation that was ugly.
We were also not very careful about clearing away the debris after harvest. Squash Bugs can survive over winter and re-infest in the early Spring.

So far, our efforts appear to be working. We check twice daily. We only found one bug today, and none in the rest of the garden.



Leaf Footed Bug (Stink Bug)....Another bad, BAD Bug....death on sight.

We've spotted a few of these around, thankfully none in the veggie garden....yet.
They will attack ripening tomatoes late in the season. They actually pierce the skin and inject a toxin that causes discoloration and ugly scabbing on the fruit. The larvae look like large ants with orange bodies and black legs. They gather in clusters.

These bugs are harder to catch. They are quicker, and fly better than the Squash Bugs.
A poster on another site swears by the "Dirt Devil Scorpion" cordless vac. He claims he sucks them up, and dumps the canister into a pail of soapy water.
Case Closed!

I see a Dirt Devil Scorpion cordless vac in our future.


Cucumber Beetle (spotted)...Bad,BAD, VERY BAD Bug! Kill on sight, but be careful.

Despite their cute Ladybug-Like appearance, these bugs are evil. Not only will they eat almost anything in your garden, but they also transmit diseases that they inject into your plants. Some Cucumber Beetles have longitudinal black stripes instead of spots.

Cucumber beetles transmit bacterial wilt of cucurbits (caused by Erwinia tracheiphila). Wilting usually starts with a single leaf and spreads to the entire plant, killing it. A stringy, viscous, white bacterial ooze forming a 'string' between cut ends of an affected stem is considered diagnostic for the disease in the field. Bacterial wilt of cucurbits is a serious disease of cucumber and muskmelon, and to a lesser extent, pumpkin and squash. The impact of disease transmission during the growing season is probably the most important aspect of the cucumber beetle's biology.


http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/entomology/factsheets/cucbeet.html

We have found a few of these in our garden. So far, we have been catching them and killing them, but we are taking general precautions not to spread the bacteria.
This is another candidate for the cordless vac.



A Not-So-Bad Bug.....this one can stay.

This Caterpillar, which resembles the hated Tomato Horn Worm, will turn into a beautiful Black Swallowtail Butterfly.
He is welcome to as much parsley as he wants.


Another good bug

We had a pretty awesome collection of large Golden Garden Spiders last year.
Occasionally they would make their webs across a pathway overnight. If we saw the web in time, we would cordon off that path, but sometimes we walked straight into the large webs....not a pleasant experience, but we are still more than happy to share our garden with these beautiful spiders.



Organic Rodent Control

Maggie Pie is good at her job.


Unwanted Visitor

This last is just a word of caution for everybody.
Organic gardens are natural places that will attract nature.
We often wear shorts & sandals in our garden, reach under plants in places where we cannot see, sit in the clover while weeding, and generally are unguarded and unconcerned. This beautiful little Copperhead dropped by to remind us to be more careful.


Veggie Garden Porn...Season 2

[Dover]

1. Very helpful! Thanks so much for documenting your process and being so generous with info.

Fascinating, beautiful, and a great way to learn (along with my own hands-on experience).

I have a mulberry tree that probably had as many stink bugs on it this year as berries. I need to read up on that situation. I usually go out and pick a bowl full of berries in the morning to add to our breakfast, and haven't minded sharing them with the stink bugs and birds, but maybe I should learn a little more about their effect on the mulberry tree.


Your little snake is also great for rodent and critter control.
Hope you know what to do in case of a snake bite and keep a snake bite kit in the garden area.
Looks like you may be kind of far from medical assistance.

[bvar22]

6. No snake bite kit on hand, but that sounds like a good idea.

The nearest clinic with anti-venom is 20 miles away, so we would just tie it off, alert the clinic we are coming, and drive like hell.


We do take precautions.
We keep the area around the house, garden, and coop mowed short, and wear boots and long pants after dark or when we are working in an unmowed area.

Neither Starkraven nor myself are particularly frightened by snakes, but we do have a healthy respect. For our safety and the safety of our pets we don't allow venomous snakes to live around the house or gardens, but non-venomous snakes are welcome.

Finding the Copperhead in the garden was sobering. I was sitting in the clover pulling Squash Bugs off the Pumpkin vine when he just cruised on by through the clover in the middle of the day. I could have easily leaned back and put my hand on him. That could have ruined my whole afternoon. :(

We are both more alert in the garden now, and around the house in general.

[jillan]

2. Excellent post, and I would like to add another very bad bug that sucks the life out of your garden

The problem with them is that they are so tiny, you don't realize you have them until one day when you wonder why some of the leaves of your lettuce are so shiny.

They are a real problem here in Az.

[bvar22]

7. What do you do about the Whitefllies and Aphids?

Starkraven brews up a foul potion of Garlic, Hot Pepper, and dish soap that works pretty well.
She dances around the cauldron naked under the light of the Full Moon when she brews this up.
I stay out of the way, so I don't know the exact recipe and incantation, but I'll get it from her if you want it. :7

We don't want to discourage pollinators, so we don't use it prophylacticly, but target it only after we observe a problem. We've used it once this year, and it worked OK.

We have a Black Krim tomato plant that attracts aphids. The other tomato plants in the same bed were free of the little suckers, but the Black Krim was getting to be a problem, so we used the potion.
We also sprayed the tomato companions in the same box to avoid just chasing them to a neighbor plant.
24 hours later, the Black Krim was mostly clear.

So far, so good.

As an absolute last resort, I heard Neem Oil works well.

[Dover]

3. I'm not sure I would have been able to stand still long enough to get the snake photo...eek!

If I had been composed enough to shoot at all, I think it would have been a blur.

Bravo!

[NEOhiodemocrat]

4. Great Pictures!

We were overrun with the squash bugs a couple of years ago. I agree..they are VERY VERY bad bugs. We put in a lower garden and grow all our viney things there now just to stay out of the area they were in. They can do in your whole crop of butternut squash, a definite no no with my husband. I love your "organtic rodent control", we have six barn cats who do that job for us. While I was weeding a couple of days ago one was bringing me the bodies while I worked. So proud of herself! Do you ever get toads in your garden? I seem to get a few every year, do they do any damage or just eat the bugs? I always leave them alone. I get gigantic spiders on our yellow raspberries. Wonder if they are the one you pictured? They have yellow on them, sometimes go to pick a 'raspberry' and it is a spider! I am more careful now to watch what I am picking.

[bvar22]

8. Haven't seen any toads in the garden, but....

...one lives in the garden shed. We did have several small green tree frogs last year, but I haven't seen them yet this year.

I have never seen yellow raspberries, but we both LOVE the red kind (yum). Raspberries don't grow wild here, but we planted several bushes this Spring, and they are doing fine.

Maggie Pie is our favorite critter, and generally participates in everything we do around here.
We recently lost our other mouser, Mr Bug, and are still mourning. It was surprising how much of our everyday life he had become. Mr Bug WAS a big part of the garden experience, and we miss him.

Mr Bug


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=243x6017

[hippywife]

13. Awwww...

:hug: Mr. Bug. Condolences to you both. :hug:

[hippywife]

12. We had many toads in our garden

the first year but not so many now. Guess they got the idea there was going to be a lot of activity in that area and didn't want anything to do with it. LOL

[hippywife]

5. Bravo!!

:applause: :applause: :applause: I love it!

Got some more small mater and strawberry plants into the garden this morning. The cukes and watermelon have been trellised. Gotta find some more old, used hog panels for the rest. I'm fresh out.

:hi:

[bvar22]

9. Great!

I am glad to hear that your garden recovered from the storm.
We used chicken wire last year for our cuke trellis....not so hot. Some of the cukes grew through the wire mesh and had to be broken in half to harvest. It was also impossible to reach through the wire to work on the other side.
This year, we used a wide mesh nylon net, and it looks like that is going to work well if the cukes can hold on to the nylon.

We haven't trellised the watermelons yet, and are looking for ideas.
The hog panels sound perfect. Are they 4' wide?
Those melons are HEAVY.

:hi:

[hippywife]

10. I've been saving all of my

mesh produce bags to use for slings for the melons and punkins. Sure I still won't have enough. Or at least I hope so. LOL

The hog panels are what the chicken tractor are built out of. They are about 4' tall and new sections come in 16' sections. The openings at the top are larger than the ones along the bottom, jsut like with rabbit fencing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=268&topic_id=1549&mesg_id=1589

I just take cut sections that have tines on one end and stick em sideways in the soil. Bill goes behind me and attaches wooden supports on the sides and screws them into the boxes so they won't blow over and uproot everything.

[asdjrocky]

11. Unreal. This is great.

Have some good spiders going and I'll try to get a picture of one the next time I do photos. I do have some aphids, or white flies on one tomato plant and I do seem to have an abundance of ants. Will ants be a problem?

Again, thanks for the great photos and information. There's a Master Gardener program here in my home town ran by the CSUS that starts in February, and they are sending me the information to enroll, do you have a program like that in your area?

[Vinca]

14. Yesterday I caught a raccoon red handed. Actually, he wasn't

after the garden, he was after the fruit peels in the compost pile. He scurried up a tree and watched me weed for an hour. Very cute, but brown in color. I always thought they were gray.