We knew that there was going to be a learning curve during our first year gardening. Learning where to put plants, how much to water them, when to harvest, what temperatures they like, what diseases they can get… There’s a lot. One thing I didn’t anticipate being so much of a theme was garden bugs.
I hear about the terrible Squash Vine Borer, aphid infestations, Squash Bugs, slugs, mites, and various beetles, caterpillars, and flies. It’s overwhelming. I got a book from the library, “Garden Insects of North America,” by Whitney Cranshaw and David Shetlar. It’s great, but HUGE. 704 pages, and several inches thick. What I’m learning is that most of the bugs you see in your garden will do more harm to it than good, so my current goal is learning which of those bugs to leave alone, versus which to squish.
Leave alone: Ladybugs, or Lady Beetles. We know they’re cute, but they’re also predators. I’ve been letting these little guys live in my yard forever, but what I didn’t know was how different their different life stages look! Those little yellow eggs in the above left picture are what they lay. The little orange and dark blueish spiky kind of guy in the above right is the second stage of a ladybug! Below on the left is what that little spiky guy curls up and turns into, before it becomes the red ladybug that we all know and love.
Squish: Spotted Lanternfly. The black bug with white spots below is just the nymph stage. Older ones get bigger, the body gets red, and then they develop big brown wings with black spots. In any case, they’re super invasive, and don’t belong in our gardens because they don’t have any natural predators here.
Burn with fire. Just kidding, but squish it.
Squish: Cucumber Beetle. I saw this little striped guy on my potato plants and said, “oh, I wonder what that is. Better go try to find out.” By the time I found out the next morning, that little S.O.B. had chewed a jillion holes in the potato leaves. They lay their eggs in or near the soil, so as they hatch and develop, the babies eat the roots while the adults eat the foliage. Ick. Hard to see him in the water bottle I trapped him in, but he’s the stripy guy in the below left picture.
Of course, I’m just scratching the surface of garden bugs. But these are some of the ones that I’ve personally encountered so far. I’ll let you know which ones are bugging me as the summer goes on 🙂
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 