Cooping With Vegetable Garden Bugs
Friday, June 3rd, 2011Information about garden pests and how to get rid of them.
Garden pests are a big problem for many home gardeners. Many different kinds of insects can certainly damage a crop. For a few garden pests it only takes a couple of hours!
We’re going to look at some of the most common veggie backyard garden insects.
We will take a minute to check out how you can distinguish them, and a way for getting eliminate them all.
1. Garden Pest: Aphids
This garden pest, the Aphid is one of the most common pest in most vegetable gardens. You will usually spot groups of these small soft bodied insects in various colours.
They might be pink or red.
How To Rid Your Vegetable Garden of Aphids
1. For most people, they find the Aphids and destroy them manually by removing and destroying the leaf they are on. If the entire plant is infested you can pick them off and get rid of them.
2. Using Neem Oil is a great method to rid yourself of Aphids in your gardens. Another is to use insecticidal soap.
3. My favourite method for getting rid of Aphids and other pests in your vegetable garden is by using Lady Bugs.
2. Garden Pest: Beetles
To start with there are a lot of beetles that can infest your vegetable gardens. There are specialized beetles for most veggies, such as potato beetles. There is a rather lengthy list of them meaning you’re going to need to focus on each type of beetle for the remedy that will get rid of them.
Beetles may be cute but they can also be quite annoying when you see all the leaves they can munch down in a day. They’re not so cute after that.
Like other vegetable garden pests you could pick them off one at a time. That’s fine when you’re out in the yard working and see one or two but if you have an infestation you can turn to sprays and insecticides which poison them.
3. Garden Pest: Borers
I didn’t know anything about borers until I noticed one of my zucchinni plants not doing so well. Upon closer inspection I noticed a split in the main stalk showing part of a fat little pest.
I first noticed it wasn’t growing as fast as the other squash and then I noticed the leaves wilting even while the ground was moist. I knew something was a foot. You have to cut the borers out of the plants. If the borer is found at the base, you’ll have to destroy the whole plant. You can use insecticide to try to prevent these.
4. Garden Pest: Grubs
I thought the frost had killed off or damaged most of my strawberries last year plus we had a wicked winter so I decided to transplant the remaining plants to the south side of the property. That’s when I discovered there were a lot of big white hungry looking grubs. I sifted through each shovel full of dirt and killed all I could find. It was quick and I am sure they didn’t suffer as my foot stomped on them.
Beetle grubs can be controlled with a few soil treatments using milky spore. As they continue feeding on the roots and vegetable matter in your garden soil they will take in some milky spores which will do them in over time. It works slow and slower as temperatures drop. The spore will germinate and increase in their blood. This process continues until the grub just can’t survive.
5. Garden Pest: Cutworms
The easiest way of knowing you have cutworm problems is when you see they have cut your plants off at ground level. Very annoying. Really about the only way to control these guys is to find them first and stomp on them or you can put a protective layer between the stem and the muncher. Put it about an inch above and below the surface. They will be looking for you tomatoes, peppers and cabbages.
6. Garden Pest: Corn Earworm
Corn earworms will eat the kernels off of the cobs while the corn is still on the stalk.
Use a couple of drops of mineral or corn oil right on the top of the ear where the silk is. This may cause the tip to turn brown but we just cut the tip off and enjoy the rest, which is just fine. Destroy the entire plant at the end of the season, even the root so they won’t come back next year.
7. Garden Pest: Slugs
Slugs and snails leave nasty slime trails on plants and eat plant leaves. They are especially destructive to cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, turnips, and carrots. You can buy bait to kill them, but placing a shallow pan of beer in your garden should attract them and drown them.
8. Garden Pest: Tomato Hornworm
Tomato hornworms are one of the scariest looking garden pests. They eat the leaves and fruits of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. They are large, fat, green and white worms that look like caterpillars.
They have a large horn that looks like a stinger. You can remove them with gloved hands and drown them in soapy water. You can also spray with neem oil, stomach poison insecticide, or Bacillus thuringiensis.
