using my new pest knowlege

I took a class last weekend on pest management in the garden through Seattle Tilth.  Walked away with a better appreciation of Integrated Pest Management -- and a curiousity about my weeds and flowers.

In IPM, prevention is the first strategy.  And a gardener must realize that there is no such thing as perfect.  A few holes or bad bugs doesn't mean failure -- it means you are part of something alive.  A gardener using IPM must be patient.  Live with the 'bad things' and make sure they are bad before acting.  This keeps you from applying a solution that is worse than the problem. 

I found these leaves in my raised bed -- but I don't know what is causing the problem, so my strategy is to OBSERVE until I do.  See, I am not too late.  I need time to understand (or to learn so I can understand.)  If the damage spreads quickly to other leaves, then I will act fast.  If not, I am free to dawdle. 

In the meantime, I can pick on the things I do understand.  Practicing IPM means spending more time looking at your garden closely.  The big things are obvious when they arrive.  

But the little things are there too.  This catapillar I found on on a piece of bark that made it into the raised bed.  Its color was so unusual (to me) that I took a picture of it before I squashed it (too close to my cabbage.) 

By looking closely I also found this guy.  Turns out it is a stink- or a shield-bug (it took a lot of internet research to figure that out.)  How did I make it out of childhood and not know that?!   I wasn't sure what to do about it since I kept seeing online that it likes to eat hawthorn leaves until I found this page that said it was happy eating any broadleaf plant.  Since I found it on the trellising above my struggling (hole-y) bean plants, I got rid of him.

The first 'aggressive' IPM strategy is physical control -- which includes making barriers and handpicking offenders.  I found the four slugs below under the wrapper leaves of my cabbage.  Clearly garden pests, they did not survive the shoe test.

 

I was really worried that all the holes in my cabbage leaves would mean the heads would be teaming with worms -- but they were beautiful once I opened them up.  I am wondering if all the damage was done by slugs and not the offspring of the white moth I saw in the yard.  But the slugs don't explain all the tiny poop I saw.  The next step in IPM strategy is to introduce natural predators to your garden -- maybe I got lucky and some good bugs took care of the (possible) cabbage maggots for me.

The last strategy for eliminating pests using IPM is employing a chemical control.  The tip is to always start with the mildest remedy -- such as soap spray.  And then make sure your soap spray is made out of a mild soap like Doc Bronners if you want to keep you veggies as healthy as can be.

Finally, I figured out that I am going to have to learn a lot more about bugs and plants before I really understand what is going on in my yard.  There is a lot to know about bugs (good and bad) and their lifecycles.  There is a lot to know about plants -- what I want to eat, what good bugs need to thrive, and what a weed's location might say about soil.

Are flies pollinators?

My euphorbia was abuzz today with flying bugs. There are no less than 4 winged creatures in the picture.

But only two of them look like a bee to me -- this furry faced guy here.

And this striped-back one here.

 

The rest looked like common flies or flies with blue bottoms (when the light was right.) And the flies way outnumbered the bees.

 

 

See how in the last picture, the creature that looked like a fuzzy fly revealed itself to be blue bottomed?

I looked around the web and found that flies can be pollinators at sites such as this one by the U.S. Forest Service. Apparently flies like pale, putrid, funnel-like flowers -- which would explain their attraction to my euphorbia (which doesn't really smell that bad....) And true bees have 2 sets of wings (four wings total) -- so I am thinking that at least one of my 'bees' way above is actually a bee-mimic.

And all of this and I am not sure it is going to matter for my fruits or veggies. Flies are pollinators -- but they won't likely be attracted to the bright, sweet flowers of my fruit starts, bushes, and trees. And my veggies aren't going to need pollination to deliver tasty goodness.

More importantly, I am going to have to figure out what to do to encourage my well-protected veggies to grow....

Bug Identification: friend or foe?

So I found a couple bugs in my yard over the weekend -- and since all my bug knowlege is limited to the generic: bee, worm, beetle, ant, butterfly, slug, I took pictures and sent them off to Seattle Tilth for identification.  My first mystery companion?  (Click picture for a closer look.)

A millipede.  A gardner's friend.  These little guys are a slow-moving decomposers of organic matter such as leaves. They tend to roll up into a spiral when scared -- perhaps that should have tipped me off to its essentially good nature.

My second mystery companion? (Click picture for a closer look.)

A wireworm.  A gardner's foe.  This little guy tends to live in soils that recently held sod -- which makes sense since I first spotted these quick creatures when I was removing grass for my epimediums.  If I only knew what I was seeing then, I would have dispatched of them.  Instead I left them to their own devices.  As adults they are harmless click beetles.  However as young wireworms, they like to eat seeds, stems, and roots -- not good news for a veggie gardner.  And the worse news is that they stay in their larval wireworm stage for two to six years before becoming adults.  For more information you should check out this University of Maine Cooperative Extension fact sheet that Seattle Tilth shared with me. 

Perhaps is was wireworms that did this to my tyfon (turnip.) 

Since my epimediums have been slower to emerge than expected, I am going to try a technique that Seattle Tilth said might be helpful -- leave some decoy carrots in the bed to lure the wireworms from the new starts.  If I have nibbles in a week I will know that I have a problem.