First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for the kind words and thoughts in the previous posts' comment section. They were well received, and greatly appreciated. I had worried that readers would not visit again, but thankfully that's not the case. :)
Anyway, as stated in the last post, the sweet potatoes were harvested a couple of weeks ago, and some very nice tubers came from the planting.
Of course wireworm damage was found on a few, and here's one that was unearthed during the harvest. Boy, they can really do some damage to a perfectly fine potato, and I'll likely sift through the soil of every raised bed on the property in hopes of killing them so they can't overwinter to damage next year's planting
Jude has really been tearing up the yard in search of more moles, and got #4 for the year a few weeks ago. Even though it's quite a bit of damage to the yard, fixing each spot will give me something to keep busy during the winter months.
Take care, and happy gardening
EG
16 comments:
Welcome back, it is good to hear from you. Nice harvest of potatoes.
Are those the worms that curl up into a ball and I find in the spring in the dirt? Sort of a whitish-blueish color? Creepy looking things. I give them all to my chickens, or I squish them and do a happy dance when they "Pop!" under my shoe. Brutal, huh???
~~Lori
Oh, how I hate those wire worms. The infestation seems to get worse each year,and the only thing that I hate more are the leaf miners!
Those are some nice looking sweet potatoes!
I don't think that I have ever encountered wireworms.
Kris - thanks, they'll be good to have for Thanksgiving.
Lori - no, these are orange in color, and evolve into the click beetle in spring.
Granny - yeah, these these things are horrible for potatoes and corn, and pretty difficult to keep away.
Nice sweet potato harvest. Did Jude help? Wire worms certainly can do some damage. I am sure that I'll find some when I dig up my potatoes next week.
Jude the mole catcher! I love it!
Those are some nice looking taters :o) I'd like one baked with butter swimming in it :o)..
You need to teach her to sniff out those dang ol worms!
We had bought sweet potatoes for lunch yesterday. They were so good, told the hubby to pick up some more when he saw them being sold on the side of the road.
Robin - they are some pretty good tubers, and thankfully the bad spots can just be cut off.
Grafixmuse - of course Jude "helped". Lol. She's my buddy. :)
Ginny - I can't wait to see yours!
Japanese Redneck - I'm sure she would if I let her in the garden. :)
Glad you are back EG! I was going to give you until the end of this week and then I was going to send you an e-mail to check on you.
SpiderJohn - it's good to be back, thanks dude....
I had lots of creepy crawlies come out of my first sweet potato batch. Stupid creepy crawlies.
Nice sweet potatoes. You inspired me to plant some but I have yet to harvest them. Who knows with these up here in northern IL.
Is Jude available to train my dog? I have a terrier and his kill instinct is about zero.
Ribbit - I fully understand your frustration. It's heart-breaking to unearth potatoes only to find that they are damaged by insects.
Mark - if I could, I certainly would..lol
One year my sweet potatoes were damaged by roly-polies. I hadn't thought that was even possible before I figured it out. I ended up using an "organic-garden-approved" bait on the little pests, and after a couple of years of using it the problem went away.
At the Plant-a-row-for-the-hungry-garden, we had wireworms in the white potatoes and in the sweets until we applied beneficial nematodes to the soil for a couple of years in a row.
It took more than one year of effort to get rid of most of the pests in both cases.
Hope your wireworms are wimpy little guys that conk out sooner than ours did.
I hope you get all those nasty worms. I have seen slugs in my yard that do damage to the tomatoes. I'll have to do some slug control for next season.
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