Insects… What they are & how to make them go away
It can be incredibly frustrating when you have worked like a dog (where did that saying come from anyway?) to come out to the garden one day to find your plants being devoured in what seems like an overnight invasion. As an organic gardener I can tell you I’ve had my fair shake with these nasty little jack’n’abes! Below you’ll find insects I’ve found in my garden, and what I did to mitigate these issues. Keep in mind I grow organically, I do not want to use pesticides. Also, I’m not an entomologist, so if you want to learn even more than what I’ve written here, please feel free to do more research – and if you are one and would like to correct me, I’m all ears.
Aphids, we’ll start with these little sap suckers. That’s essentially what they are, the attach themselves to plants and literally suck the ‘sap’ out of plants via these little tubes on the sides of their stomachs called “cornicles”. They’re a soft bodied, pear shaped insect, and come in a few colours like green, brown, black. The winged ones are adults that are migrating, kinda like you’ll see with flying ants. When they suck the sap, they produce a sweet sticky substance akin to “honeydew”. Ha, it’s what I call aphid poop, and ants LOVE this stuff! They’ll actually work with the aphids by providing protection services in exchange for this sticky substance. The ants then essentially farm these aphids. If they produce enough of this honeydew, and the ants don’t eat enough, then it will dribble down the plant and in the right circumstances will start developing a dark mold. They can quite literally suck the life out of the plants. If you haven’t noticed the crazy line of them along the stems then you’ll see yellow spots on the leaves, leaves drying out, wilt or curl. Sometimes you’ll even see bubbles which are called galls, and yes they’re filled with more of these sap suckers.
- This is what I’ve found helpful to remove them…
- Lady bugs, they love to snack on them! You can buy lady bug eggs at your local nursery and just release them into your garden!
- If you can handle touching bugs, just squish them
- Neem oil
- Use a trap plant, sacrifice one plant for the good of the others
Cucumber Beetles are the next little monsters…
I hate these things… they come out of nowhere and can destroy a cucumber plant overnight! They have a hard exoskeleton that can protect them from so many sprays, except pyrethrin.
