As stated before, I am completely fascinated with garden insects. They are out there in significant numbers now, and often I will just spend hours at a time searching for them. Yeah, I know.....pretty weird. Ha! Anyway, while out there inspecting things the other day, I ran across several different varieties and was glad the camera was in hand.
Photo below - A juvenile yellow-striped armyworm on the cucumbers. In my opinion, this fella was completely out of place, because they show up most of the time on tomatoes - not cucumbers. Still, it was dealt a swift blow to rid the cucumbers of this bad pest.
Photo below - This is a leaf-footed bug, which of course is a harmful pest too. It was found on top of the trellis beam for the Cherokee Purple tomato box - where it had an encounter with the "EG-nator", as Debiclegg says...hehe...It's all about carnage!!!! hehe...
Photo below - It pays to stay very observant while tending to the plants, because I ran across this cluster of stinkbug eggs on the leaves of this little tomato bloom. Man, having this many eggs hatch in the garden would cause me to have to kill stinkbugs like crazy later, so finding the eggs and destroying them saves alot of work for me! That's the key to controlling harmful insects - finding the eggs before they hatch, and destroying them.
Photo below - check out this fully mature assassin bug that was found on some foliage of the congo watermelon vines. It was huge, and I bet it can do some serious damage to any other bug that crosses it's path. Sure, they're non-selective in what kind of bug they kill - but I always welcome these things in my garden. They're pretty wicked looking bugs, that's for sure....
On Saturday night, me and Jude did some more bug hunting with a flashlight, and I found about 3 different clusters of eggs on the tomato plants growing in the longest raised bed. Most were stinkbug eggs, and some had even begun to hatch out. They were squished with the thumb of EG, of course....
Also, i've spotted the first cucumber beetle for the year, and it met it's match, too. Hehe..
In other news, the garden is beginning to outgrow it's space, now. All trellises are completely engulfed with foliage, and most things have outgrown them in height already. Some trellis extensions would certainly be good right now, I can tell ya that much!
A couple of melons are large enough that supporting them became necessary, which was accomplished with knee highs, of course. Now's when the real fun begins around here - supporting the melons..
Also, the damage done to the cucumbers the other day while removing the corn stalks was a little more severe than initially thought - as some of the vines are dying. Hmm....since there are 8 plants growing elsewhere on the property, I might just have to make an executive decision and remove the remaining cucumbers in the 34 gallon swc. Besides, the fridge is full of them already, and the trellis WOULD give me something for the newly transplanted watermelons to run on...decisions, decisions......
Take care, and happy gardening!
EG
18 comments:
Last year I emailed some local friends asking whether they had old pantyhose that I could have for my cantaloupe. One particularly funny friend suggested that next I would be wanting push-up bras for my tomatoes. :)
EG - love following you (and Jude) around the garden on bug patrol. I especially enjoy your gleeful (and deadly) dealings with same - it makes for some real good reading! :-D
I not only enjoy you and your bugs. I learn a lot from your buggy postings. I'm not too good in the bug department. Please keep posting them...it's very valuable info and entertaining as well :)
I'm finally loosing the squash bug race. Japanese beetles seem to be my worst persistant problem, However. Love it that you found those eggs.
I've never noticed stinkbug eggs before. I occasionally get a couple in my garden, but haven't had an infestation in a while. At least I know what they look like now.
Ooooh! Well it's too late for me now, but know I know where the tons of stink bugs came from.
Question: my tomato plants seem to have stopped producing. Is this because of the bugs, the heat (in the 90s every day plus humidity), or are they just done?
Is the little army worm also called a "cutworm"? I have them on my pea vines, lettuce, and spinach. I read that the only way to discourage them is to put cardboard "collars" sunk into the soil around the seedlings when they first appear.
These things are really destructive to my smaller veggie plants.
Wow... that's like a ba'zillion stink bug eggs!
EG, you need some grasshoppers! : )
Hey, I moved around two trellises on my 4x4 cuke & pole bean box. Thanks for the inspiration.
Squash 'em!!!!
Yes, the bugs are starting to look like they are in full force.
Thank god for that huge assassin bug :)
Nice egg find on the blossom leaves. I guess that's a big disadvantage of gardening by the woods...All the bugs come out to the garden to play (and reproduce). I love hunting for bugs too. Would this form of hunting be considered acceptable by PETA? har har. My current big # kills are grasshoppers. They're getting into everything this year.
Love the bug posts. I came home last night to a very large green caterpillar of some sort that had eaten all of the leaves on the top of my cherokee purple plant. Needless to say, sevin was coating the plants by the end of the night and we were minus 2 green crawlies :)
Melissa - yeah, a person can sure get some funny looks when needing some type of apparel for their garden!
kris - aw, gee..thanks! I have a really good post about Jude coming up this weekend. Hope you enjoy it!
robin - i'm so glad that the bug posts help you! I'll be sure to do more in the future...
ribbit - you can't give up on the squashbugs!!!! Maybe you can put some of "the poetry" out there for 'em? ha!
daphne - the stinkbug is one of my main enemies, and i've probably already killed at least 20 adults.
LGJ - the eggs will look like this, and also a little differently sometimes.
I'd say your tomatoes are suffering from the heat - as it's hard to get fruitset when temps are consistently in the 90's. They'll pick back up once things cool down a bit.
Paula - the armyworm and cutworm are completely different types of caterpillars. A cutworm will be in the soil around the stem of your plant, and an armyworm will always be on the plant itself.
Toni - no grasshoppers needed here, because there's tons of them getting on my sweet potato leaves.
Gardener - oh, you know I did!
Urbanhydro - between now and October, they're just horrible where I live. The assassin bug is the largest that i've ever seen on the property..
Momma_S - I don't care what PETA thinks - i'm wiping them out!
ayates83 - thanks! That was probably a tobacco hornworm, and you can just hand-pick them.
WOW! I feel famous. I invision a t-shirt for all of us that says "EG-NATOR" across the top and this mad scientist about to squish a bug and below the words "MAKE MY DAY!
(smile)The EG-NATOR lives forever more!! Now... who wants a t-shirt? We can wear it and chase bugs at night!
EG, I'm usually COMPLETELY clueless when it comes to the bug department, so it's so incredibly helpful to read posts like this with clear pictures and detailed information about the pests. Thank you so much. I actually saw the exact same yellow striped armyworms (thanks for the name!)on my green onions last weekend. They were all over my onion leaves. After I got over the initial "ewwww" I squished each and every one of them.
Ribbit, I also have Japanese beetles all over my garden! They are currently targeting my basil.
debbie - a t-shirt? Ha!
thymetogarden - you're welcome! :-)
Wow, the stink bug egg photo is educational! I've determined that the most prolific pest in my garden this year was/is stink bugs. They did in my first round of cucumbers. I decided I need to not be squeemish about smooshing them and nowadays I don one garden glove twice a day to squish bugs. The first time I went after the stink bugs (a month ago), I got at least 30 in one day. They've gotten rarer...
I've even gotten braver - a couple of days ago, I squished a squash bug and mating cucumber beetles with my bare hands as I knew if I ran up to get my glove, it would probably be gone when I returned :) I'm still not brave enough to get the stink bugs bare-handed though - they have that exoskelton that kind of produces a crush noise in your body when you get them.
foodgardenkitchen - it's been the year for stinkbugs around here too..
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