Good Bug, Bad Bug

My wife has an amazing ability to buy me great books.  I read a lot of different things and she’s found a way to match my bizarre interests in science and history to the perfect book choice.  Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries… she’s very thoughtful about it.

She usually includes a gardening book or two in the selections and for vacation she ordered Good Bug, Bad Bug by Jessica Walliser.  (Her blog is worth reading too.  She’s got a cool wire frame potato bin thing happening there that is likely to be the way I do potatoes next year.)

When I was a kid I had these cool animal cards.  The company sent out a set of 5 or so each month for a while and it came with a green, plastic container.  I loved organizing it, alphabetizing, and reviewing each animal.  I can still see the cool, freaky picture of the aye aye in my head!  And when I decided that the armadillo was my favorite animal in sixth grade, that card started me on the road to know-it-all armadilloness.

Good Bug, Bad Bug reminds me of those cards!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched for pictures of my garden pests.  And this book is simply set up with great pictures of all of them, descriptions, organic treatments (if they exist) and how to spot the damage.  She’s also got a section on beneficial bugs with the same info and she describes how to attract them.

The book is small and easy to flip through.  Check it out… no more searching online for me..

Filed under: pests, reviews , good bug bad bug, jessica walliser

Get Your Estate In Order Aphids: Good Guys Arrive

Here’s the thing with pests. By definition they must be doing something to bother you. And in a very weird way, I welcome the sight of pests in my garden. If they’re trolling around on my tomato, lettuce, and potato leaves it must mean that they value the meal. And if they value the meal, it must mean that good stuff is being offered. Twisted, but it just seems like if the bugs dig my plants I’m on to something.

I don’t use sprays and chemicals. As I explained in the monkeys eat bugs post, I mostly just get down in the dirt and pluck the bugs off myself. Still, I love it when the cavalry arrives!

Today the cavalry were all ladybugs AND (this was cool) ladybug larvae.

The ladybugs are all over the potatoes, peas, and greens. They cluster together sometimes in the shade of leaves (or twine), strike out on their own for some water or bugs, and get down to larvae business.

It is worth rejoicing if you are seeing not just ladybugs, but the larvae. They eat like my 1 year old son – cramming fistful after fistful of pests into their jaws while they build up the means to hit the pupae stage before becoming the black-spotted dealers of bug justice that we all know and love.

The larvae just look amazing to me. Most of the time they are described as alligators and I can see that. They taper toward the end and the tail can look like the scaly, segmented tail of an alligator. But the blur of dusty red on their middle, the black of their bodies, their impressive jaws – they look like deadly aliens.

The larval stage lasts a while, several weeks. The pupae stage happens when they decide to take a little rest. After about a week, the pupae are gone and we’ve got adult ladybugs ready to defend the harvest.

The good guys are here bad guys. Head for the hills.

Filed under: garden pests, pests , ladybug larvae

Delousing: A Practical Primate’s Approach To The Garden

If I was an old world monkey, I would choose my social grooming targets carefully and in accordance with my life-defining mantra of minimal effort for a suitable reward. Would I choose the baboons with the broadest backs or the thickest pelts? The tallest, strongest baboons? The baboon who is richly nippled with billions of bloated bugs begging to be my protein shake?

Would I seek groups of baboons, loads of them, all to be groomed by my skilled fingers and teeth, one after another in a merry go round of blissful bug squeezing, popping, and biting – all to sate my unending hunger? The work! The effort to peel so many ticks from so many broad backs! All for the potential return of altruism and the honey of bug guts?

I doubt it.

I would seek the smaller backs, the more manageable plots of monkey fur, just enough to make my connections, feed myself and call it a day. I’d leave the large pelts and group pickings to my more industrial brothers and sisters, the ones with the technology and patience to comb all day and all night.

The moral my friends! The moral…

Plant yourself a smallish garden cuz it’s easier to pick the freaking bugs off of the damn leaves. Too many plants means too many bugs and too much popping of beetles. In this case… three lined potato beetles.

Filed under: pests , three lined potato beetles