Tent Worms

These tent caterpillars are real pests this year.   They've done a number on our fruit trees and then they moved on into the veg garden.   They love the strawberries and I've been picking them off for weeks.  

The chickens hate them.   The ducks hate them.   Which means we have to kill them ourselves.   I've squished thousands of these this year - everywhere - on the road, on the trees, in the gardens, everywhere.  Eew.

Eew.     Seriously eew.

Spotted Cucumber Beetle

They've taken over the world.

Seriously, I can't get rid of these guys.   I haven't figured out what their eggs look like or where they're coming from.   And nothing seems to slow them down.   Every time I go out there are more and more and when I try to sneak up on them they fly away.    They're especially in love with the squash plants.   Geez.  [Click pics to get a good look at this guy.]

This site has some great suggestions for getting them under control.   I'm going on the offensive next season.  

According to them, these beetles retreat and migrate according to the weather.   They'll head south when it gets cold. 

The problem last year is that it didn't get cold enough and they hung around.   Which means they've multiplied through several generations, which is why there are so darn many here now. 

Flea Beetles

You may have heard me mention flea beetles before.   They attack my eggplants and radishes.

They like fleshy leaves and they leave tiny holes all over them.    They don't eat much, but it stresses the plant and a whole lot of them not eating much can really add up.

I finally got a pic of the little beasts.   The ones that like my eggplant are black and those are the ones in the pic.   Click on the pics to biggify and get a good look at the flea beetles.

Please note: The ones on my radishes were shiny and bronze colored.  Those are Bronze Lundy flea beetles.

There are two ways to defeat them:

1.  Pick them off and drop them in warm soapy water.  You gotta be quick, but it doesn't take long before you get good at it.

2.  Sprinkle on some diatomaceous earth.  It'll dry the beetles out and eventually kill them.   Be generous with the dusting and dust all around the plants, too.   Re-apply after rain.

Squash

The squash bed, looking back to the tomatoes.  The sweet potatoes are on the top left of the pic

This is totally a brag post. 

My squash bed is really gorgeous this year and it often isn't, so I pulled a few pics to show it off to you.

This has been a rough year for a lot of us and I've got friends whose squash has really suffered.   In addition to the heat, we regularly battle vine borers, squash bugs and poor soil.

Click on pic and look at it big.  Squash blossoms are cool.

I hate vine borers.   Things get up and going and gorgeous and I sprinkle my Dipel dust with bt in it religiously and then BAM, one afternoon one of the vines is all wilted.   Just one vine.   That's a dead giveaway that a vine borer got it.   At the base of the vine where it goes into the root, look for a little hole with sawdusty looking stuff around or below it.   That's where the little bastard went in.

When I find one, I sprinkle again right on the hole and I give the squash extra water.   I've had a bunch of vines that just grew bigger and fatter around the wound and kept on going.   God bless 'em.   I also make a point to sprinkle every plant generously for a while after that because where there's one borer, there are others just waiting for you to get all 'Oh, my squash is so awesome this year, it must be too hot for the borers', so they can prove you wrong.

Then there are the Squash bugs.

Squash bugs will take over if you let them.  If you see cute little eggs on your squash plants pinch them off.  Do not let them hatch.   Do not think they're all cute and that they'll probably be a gorgeous butterfly.   They are not butterfly eggs.  They are spawn of the devil.  I just pinch the leaf where the eggs are and pull the whole section out.   Yes, my squash leaves are holey.

If you see a squash bug, pick it off and kill it. Kill it now.  Personally, I like to shake them up and put them on a brick and step on them.  Look for cute little spidery things in groups with a whitish-blueish body and black legs.  Those are baby squash bugs.   Kill them.   Kill them now.   They're quick so just smack and push them hard with your hand or fold the leaf on them and squeeze.  Get as many as you can as fast as you can.  The baby ones are soft and easy to squish in your hand.

They wash off.  No eew-ing.   This is war.

Four different squashes in this bed. 

As for the soil problem, I amend with a lot of sand.

A lot, I tell you.

And we tucked in several wheel barrow loads of chicken dirt this year, too.   Ideally, in the fall, you burn off all the old debris, thus eliminating as many of the squash bugs as possible, and then you dig in some new manure and let it sit all winter.   Happy soil in the spring!

We never get tons and tons of actual squash.   We get miles of vines and several fruit from each.  I'm OK with that.   I imagine that if I fertilized right, I could cut down on the vine length and get more fruit.   The bees certainly helped increase our yield this year.   I've got some Queensland Blue, Golden Hubbard, an Italian butternut, and Omaha pumpkin, which is a tall elongated jack-o-lantern type of pumpkin.    Pics of all of those as they ripen.

Zucchini Castata Romanesco

I often do not have luck with zucchini because the vine borers get them.   This year I put Dipel [contains bt - see my gardening page for a description of that]  on the plants as soon as they had secondary leaves.   That seemed to help.     Dipel washes off, so I re-apply regularly - especially since it's so hot and I have to water every day. 

I'm pleased to report that I've had a good crop of zucchini this year.   It slowed down after that week of 100 + weather, then picked up when it dropped down to the 90s.   I'm guessing that it doesn't like to set flowers when it's roasting.   Who can blame it? 

This zucchini is Castata Romanesco.   I got the seed at Baker Creek and I"ll be saving some to see if I can grow it again.    I've planted it between a pattypan and a lemon squash so I'll have to hand pollinate if I want it to come back true.

Garden Pest: Flea Beetle

Our first garden pests have struck. 

I planted out my baby eggplant starts and they were immediately attacked by flea beetles.

They are tiny little black beetles - kinda pretty, actually, with that dark blue/black sheen.    They'll jump away when you disturb them, which is why they're called flea beetles.

They eat little holes in the leaves of everything in the nighshade and brassica family.    That's the tomato family and the cabbage family.

Those are really really big families.   And it is pretty much 90% of what's in the garden. 

Curses.

We're going to treat them with diatomaceous earth, which will hopefully make them leave.   And in the meantime, I'm going to hand pick them off.

Here's a tip for hand picking these little beasts:

Get a small container of water and put some dish soap in it.  Go stand by your plants - remember that your shadow will cause them to jump away so try to be subtle.   I realize that's really hard to do.

Dip your fingers in the water to get them good and wet, then slowly reach to the plant and pinch the beetle against the leaf.   Roll it off the leaf so you can pinch it between your fingers and then drop it in the water.   The soap breaks the surface tension of the water and makes it so they'll sink fast and not be able to stand on the water and jump out.    I hate it when that happens. 

You'll get surprising good at this in a short time. 

When you're done with the plants, go right back and do them again.   It doesn't take the beetles long to get back to the business of chewing up your plants, so it won't take you long to make a dent in their population.

Good luck!

P.S.    Since garden pests are a pretty big issue here, I've added a Garden Pest section on the Gardening page.    Click on the Gardening tab at the top of the page for a list of what we regularly battle and how we do it.