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2022 Garden Pests

July 9, 2022 by Shakti

Months	First Sighting	Insect	Crop	Treatment
May	5/14	Leaf minor	Spinach & beets	row cover with blue sticky trap
May-June	5/28	Cabbage worms	Cabbage	Hand removal (multiple passes each week)
June-	6/4- fava 7/2- brussels & nasturtium	Aphids	Brussels, fava, nasturtiums	Insecticidal soap
	7/9?	Squash vine borer	Summer squash, pumpkins	Yellow sticky traps and SVB lure (3)
		Cucumber beetle	Slicing cucumbers	Hand removal & yellow sticky traps
		Potato beetle	Potatoes	Hand removal & yellow sticky traps

[May] Leaf minor

We proactively covered the spinach and beets with agrofabric immediately after transplanting them in the garden. Additionally, we placed a blue sticky trap under the cover to catch any flies that might be in the soil or caught inside the trap. This worked very well — dozens of flies were caught by the sticky trap in the first couple of weeks and the spinach crop was beautiful with no notable leaf minor damage. Definitely recommend repeating this combination going forward (cover the crops at the time of transplant and keep a sticky trap inside).

Leaf minor flies caught in spinach bed with agrofabric cover (5/21)

[June] Cabbage worms

We first noticed the cabbage worms in the brassica bed on 5/28. Over the month of June, we found them in most of the green cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. Some days, we found up to three worms on a single plant. Having several gardeners inspect the plants each Saturday worked out very well. We would often find several worms the first time through and then a second inspection with fresh eyes would find 2 or 3 more. By the time the cabbages headed up, we had successfully kept the worms under control and got several beautiful cabbage heads.

[June] Aphids

As usual, the aphids attacked the fava plants as they set out flowers. We sprayed them with insecticidal soap, taking care to avoid spraying the flowers. The insecticidal soap succeeded in controlling the aphids; however, it seems like the insecticidal soap may also have killed some of the flowers, reducing the potential harvest. Unfortunately the garden photos aren’t detailed enough to support this theory, so we may want to try to document more carefully next year. Also, Elisabeth had recently watched an episode of Gardener’s World (BBC) where Monty Don said that the aphids don’t harm the productivity of the fava beans, so we may want to try leaving the fava untreated next year.

Second Wind

September 25, 2021 by Shakti

The jerusalem artichokes are experiencing a second growth spurt of the summer with the flowers reaching 10 ft or higher! They might be responding to the rainy weather this summer or maybe the unusual height is a result of selectively planting only the biggest tubers when we relocated the bed this spring.

2021 Garden Pests

June 20, 2021 by Shakti

Month	First Sighting	Insect	Plant	Treatment used
May		Leaf miners	Beets, swiss chard	agrofabric (late)
June	5/28	Aphids (black)	Fava, borrage	Insecticidal soap (2x / week)
June	6/3	Colorado potato beetle	Potatoes, tomatillos	Hand removal
June	5/28	Cabbage worms (green)	Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli	Hand removal
June	6/19	Squash vine borer moths	summer and winter squash	Lures/sticky traps
July	?	Tomato horn worm	Red October tomato	Hand removal
Late July/Aug	7/24	Squash vine borer grubs	summer squash, pumpkins, delicata	Hand removal (surgery)
Aug	8/14	Cucumber beetle	cucumber	None
Aug	8/14	Aphids (gray)	Brussels sprouts, tuscan kale	Insecticidal soap (1-2x/wk)

Leaf miners

Leaf minors got into the spinach and beets before we were able to cover them and caused significant leaf damage. We covered the beets with agrofabric after the early signs of damage, but that seemed to make it worse since the leaf miner flies were trapped inside the cover.

Aphids

28 May — first sighting on Favas. Treat 1-2x per week with slightly weaker mix of insecticidal soap to avoid leaf burn. Reduced aphids and successfully keeping them under control with regular application. Similarly, the insecticidal soap was effective on the borrage which was affected by aphids at the same time, but was also successfully cleared of aphids after several treatments.

Cabbage worms

28 May — found on broccoli. We had relatively few cabbage worms this year and the ones that we found seemed to be on the broccoli and cauliflower rather than the cabbage. There have also been a few cross-stripe (black white and yellow) cabbage worms found on the brassicas in addition to the green cabbage worms.

Potato beetles

3 Jun — beetles and eggs found on potatoes

10 Jun — eggs found on tomatillos

17 Jun –larva on potato leaves

Relatively minor damage by potato beetles this year.

Squash vine borer (SVB) moths

May 29th — 3 traps set using lures from IPM (3 for $6+S&H) and general pest glue traps from Agway. No moths were caught using the general pest glue traps over the next three weeks.

Jun 19th — switched out the general glue traps for these yellow delta insect monitoring cards from Arbico (10 for $11+S&H) and got immediate results with the first moth caught within a couple of hours on the same day the traps were set. By Wed 6/23 we had caught about 15 SVB moths and replaced two of the insect monitoring cards with fresh ones. We continues to switch out the traps about once per 7-10 days over the next 2 months. By Aug 7th, the frequency of moths in any of the traps was very low, so we put away the traps for the season.

6/19: initial placement near summer squash

Final tally of borer moths caught with the lures and sticky traps

June 19-30th ~37 moths

July 1-31st ~59 moths

Aug 1-7th ~ 2 moths [removed traps on 7th]

The first clear sign of borers damaging the squash vines was mid-to-late July. Frass was found on the summer squash plants first. On 7/24, Lisa extracted 4 borers from the summer squash including some relatively large borers, so they had probably already begun to do damage in the prior week or two. By the following Saturday, 7/31, the pumpkins were clearly suffering from stem damage and more borers were extracted from the pumpkins and summer squash. On 8/7 at least 3 pumpkins and 3 delicata plants had surgery which involved taking a steak knife, cutting a vertical slit along the stem where there is fresh frass, and removing the SVB grub with tweezers. The cut to the stem can damage the plant, but it has at least a chance of surviving. We pack dirt over the location where the stem was cut to encourage the stem to send out new roots to support the plant. If we leave the borers without extracting them, they will certainly kill the plant within a week or two, so surgery is usually the better path.

8/7: Multiple borers were found in several plants (e.g. extracted 2 or more borers from a single plant). All of the pumpkins were in very bad shape from borer damage and surgery. Similarly 2-3 of the delicata plants have severe borer damage and had significant damage from the surgeries as well. The second planting of summer squash does not seem to be affected (so far).

8/14: All pumpkin plants have died and several delicata plants have also died from borer damage. The second planting of summer squash has some signs of borer damage.

8/21: All but one delicata plant has died from borer damage. The honeynut and butternut squash appear to be resistant. The mystery squash (possibly spaghetti squash) has borer damage, but is still reasonably healthy.

large areas of frass on the stem of a delicata plant

Cucumber Wilt

Cucumber wilt is caused by a bacteria spread to the plant by cucumber beetles feeding on the leaves. Once the wilt begins, the entire plant will be infected and will die within a few weeks. The first sign of cucumber wilt was Sat 8/14 and only appears to affect one of the cucumber plants so far. On Sat 8/21, still only one plant shows signs of wilt, but it has spread over more of the plant.

November 21, 2020

November 21, 2020 by Nathan

November 14, 2020

November 14, 2020 by Nathan

2020 Garden Pests

November 9, 2020 by Shakti

Each season brings a new set of insects to the garden. These are some of the insects we found and the pest management we tried in the 2020 season.

Month	Insect	Plant	Treatment used
May/ June	Aphids (black)	Artichokes and fava	Insecticidal soap
July/ August	Beetles (Japanese and Asiatic)	Basil, sunflowers, rhubarb, peppers, marigolds	Neem oil (peppers)
July	Striped cucumber beetle	Cucumbers	None
July-Aug	Squash vine borer (SVB)	Winter and summer squash	Sticky traps with SVB lures
July	Horn worm	Tomatoes	Hand removal
July	Flea beetles?	Tomatoes, eggplants	None
July	Flying aphids?	Jerusalem artichokes	None
July-Sep	Cabbage worms (green and striped)	Cabbage, kale	Hand removal
Oct	Aphids (grey)	Rutabaga, kale, brussels sprouts, cabbage	Insecticidal soap weekly

[May/June] Spring aphids on the artichokes

The artichoke seedlings were beautiful when they were transplanted, but within a few weeks, the undersides of the leaves were covered with black aphids.

We sprayed the artichoke leaves with insecticidal soap to reduce the aphids, but the leaves were seriously damaged after spraying (leaf burn?) and the aphids continued to be a problem through the summer.

Lisa grew one of the extra artichoke seedlings in a similar-sized pot at her home and did not have any aphids on the plant. We aren’t sure what caused the aphid infestation on the garden artichokes or how to manage it.

[July] Beetle damage on the basil, peppers, rhubarb and sun flowers

The basil and rhubarb leaves were decimated quickly. We never found any insects on the plants, but the skeletonized leaves were consistent with beetle damage. In addition to the leaf damage, some peppers also had bug damage in the fruit. We didn’t use any spray or treatment early summer, but later in the summer, around August, the peppers were sprayed with neem oil once a week. Results are inconclusive, but there seemed to be some improvement with the neem spray.

[July] Cucumber wilt from striped cucumber beetle

In late July, the cucumber plants began to wilt and Lisa noticed these yellow and black striped beetles on the cucumber vines and took the photo below. The beetle has a black head as opposed to the similarly striped potato beetle which has a yellow head. Adult cucumber beetles can carry and transmit a bacteria to cucumber vines that causes wilt and damages the fruit. The articles below have some information about the beetle and treatment options.

[July] Squash vine borers

Squash vine borers typically attack the summer squash, delicata and pumpkins in the garden. We monitor the vines closely for frass and have to hand remove the larvae from the stems. The butternut squash is usually resistant to the borers.

This summer, 2020, was the first time we tried using traps to catch the squash vine borer moths. We purchased 2-packs of the trap from VivaGrow! and placed two in the garden in late June. We hung them about 2 feet above the ground in a bed a few feet away from the squash plants. Within a week, there were several squash vine borer moths (and other bugs) in the traps.

We added two fresh traps after about 2 weeks and caught a few more moths. The majority of the moths were caught in June, though.

First two squash vine borer traps were placed in the garden 6/28 and caught several of the borer moths within the first week. We added 3 more traps to the garden over the next few weeks.

In July or August, we did find some borers in the summer and winter squash, but it seemed like fewer than normal and the plants survived and continued to produce squashed much longer than normal. The traps felt like a successful experiment and we will probably repeat it next year.

[July] Flea beetles?

Several varieties of the tomatoes had small but densely packed holes in the leaves and some small insects were observed on the leaves as well. The leaf damage appeared consistent with flea beetles, but this has not been confirmed. We did not apply any treatment to the tomatoes to try to mitigate the leaf damage, but the productivity of the plants was great and the fruit did not appear damaged with the small holes. Since the impact to productivity and quality was not noticeable, we probably do not need to worry about treatment for flea beetles on the tomatoes.

The eggplants also had small, densely packed holes in the leaves that might be due to flea beetles or something similar. With the eggplants, the holes were not limited to just the leaves — some of the fruit also had small holes and bugs inside. The bugs inside the eggplants appeared to be small larvae a few millimeters long, so this may be an unrelated pest.

Italian eggplants 7/25 with small holes appearing in the leaves

[July] Flying aphids?

For a short period (a week or two), the jerusalem artichokes were covered with small insects plus a few larger flying ones. The initial thought was that they might be flying aphids. They did a fair amount of damage to the leafs of the jerusalem artichokes, but we didn’t see them spread anywhere else in the garden so we did not spray or treat them.

[Jun-Aug] Cabbage worms

Green cabbage worms are usually found on the green cabbage starting around June, but the worms are also occasionally found on the collards, kale, cauliflower and broccoli. They are difficult to spot since their color blends in so well with the leaf, but usually the tell-tale sign is the frass near the new growth in the center of the cabbage. When we see fresh frass, we keep searching until we find the worms and hand remove them to stop the damage. Sometimes, large amounts of frass are from one large worm like the one in the picture, but it can also be from multiple worms in the same plant.

[Late Oct] Fall aphids on… well, just about everything!

The second round of aphids in the garden hit around October and they are light gray rather than the black aphids found in the spring and summer. These gray aphids appear quickly and cover the plants. We spray with insecticidal soap regularly, but it seems like once the gray aphids infest a plant, it is next to impossible to get rid of them.

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