pests

We're getting ready to go out of town for several days, so we've been focusing on getting the garden in tip top shape. We have caretakers lined up, but we don't want to ask too much of them. I've spent hours ruthlessly going after weeds this week, which has given me some time to reflect on this gardening season.

I know I've said it before, but I cannot emphasize enough how much time I have spent working on protecting my plants from bugs. Not bugs in general, but specific pests that are especially damaging and with high populations. These include japanese beetles, squash bugs, squash vine borers, and now cucumber beetles (though I've really only seen a few of the latter). I don't completely mind this work, but I would really like to avoid it in the future.

I have spent far more time working on the squash bug eggs and japanese beetles than I have on weeding. I don't mean this to discourage people from gardening - the opposite, actually. I believe a proactive stance towards certain insects is best. Usually that means spraying harmful chemicals, but when you're not willing to do that, prevention is much better than treatment. Especially as these problems are rampant in the area I live - one family told us that they lose their squash every year and they never knew why. After hearing us talk about vine borers, they realize that is what's going on. They were blaming themselves. Since you are almost guaranteed to have these unwelcome visitors try to take up residence, stopping them before they do damage makes the most sense.

I will say I have given up on the squash bug eggs. It just took too much time and after the vine borers, it seems highly unlikely that we will ever get anything to eat from these plants. I do still go out and capture the squash bugs - they still come out of hiding when the plant is sprayed, and they have started to live under the boards we laid out. They are pretty easy to get rid of once you see them. There have been dozens under one of the board every time I pick it up. I don't think the bugs grow fast enough to be ones that hatched from eggs on the plant, they must be coming from somewhere else. According to my research, it takes about a week for eggs to hatch, and then about a month for bugs to grow to be adults. Unless a bunch hatched before I ever noticed the eggs.

We have made the decision to pull up the last galeux d'eyesines plant. It was continuing to grow new vines and form new blossoms, but the plant overall looked really ill. If we were going to be here it might have been a more difficult decision, but we also have to worry about our watermelon plants. I pulled it and have left it on the squash bed as a trap for a couple of days - I'm hoping it continues to attract all of the bugs so I can kill them.

The zucchini is looking okay, but not great. I don't know if we will get any more zucchinis from it before it dies.

We're going to dust the watermelons with diatamaceous earth and wrap the stems in aluminum foil before we leave. I also gave the squash trellis to the watermelon - hopefully being off the ground will help, somehow.

(8/9)

japanese beetles

Well, it happened. I found dozens of Japanese beetles on the beans, and a few on my potatoes. From what I've observed, they are THE major pest to contend with in central Illinois. I was surprised because all of my friends and neighbors assured me that although they'd heard Japanese beetles were a problem, they'd never actually experienced them. I was not so lucky.

I had already been advised that the best way to get rid of them was to take a bucket of soapy water, set it under the plant, and shake the plant gently. Their instinct is to drop to the ground when the plant shakes, so they land in the bucket and quickly drown. I'll spare you the photo of the floating bugs:)

For me, this was only somewhat effective. Any that fell in the bucket were taken care of - they swim around for a while but they aren't able to get out, so they do die (perhaps cruel, I know). BUT the problem was that many of them would fly away rather than dropping. Perhaps the species is adapting, but I don't even think I was able to get half of them. Plus, it might work for certain types of plants but for the beans, it was logistically difficult to put the bucket in just the right spot.

What I found works best is to wear garden gloves, put one gloved hand underneath a leaf with a beetle on it (in case the beetle does drop off), then pick the beetles one by one and throw them into the bucket on the ground. This way they couldn't fly away, and I could tell if each individual was taken care of by the splash in the bucket. I did this three times a day and sometimes it took a half hour, because even doing this one by one some of them escaped (for example, there are often several on one leaf, and they fly away easily). I would do several loops around the bean bed, staying out there until I couldn't find any more. I found that they were the thickest at the hottest part of the day, which motivated me to get out to the garden at a time I would normally insist on staying inside. Also, I've noticed that the beetles are more likely to just drop off the leaf in the early morning before the sun is out, but later in the day they are more likely to fly away.

I was really panicked about this because they did an incredible amount of damage in a short period of time [see sample of demolished leaf photo below], and I found them soon before we were leaving on a week-long trip. When I returned, I was prepared to mourn the loss of my bean crop...


but to my surprise, the beans were living and continuing to grow. Yes, the beetles were still there and yes, they had continued to do damage in the week I was gone. But they didn't destroy any of the crops. They may have stunted their growth, and we will see what happens in the rest of the summer...but for now, I feel like my bean crop is safe. Hooray!

I would recommend taking care of the beetles the way I did. It can seem daunting to remove the beetles one by one, and perhaps gross - but as long as I had gloves on, it didn't bother me to pick up the beetles. And I could definitely tell each day that there were fewer beetles than there had been the day before at that time. Plus, beetles reproduce, so each beetle you get rid of is saving you exponential headache the following year. I would say about 1/3 of the beetles I find are engaged in reproductive activities when I snatch them and dunk them in the water. After they mate, they deposit eggs in the soil that turn into grubs, that turn into more beetles. Best to nip that in the bud!