With the mild winter I was really afraid of insect and
disease pressure this year. So far…knock on wood…the insect and disease
pressure has been pretty typical. This of course means we DO have all sorts of
problems with insects and disease, but luckily nothing worse than what we have
seen before! Although beautiful, here is an introduction to a few of my
nemesis’s:
Harlequin beetles suck the juices out of the leaves of
anything in the brassica family (kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi,
radishes, turnips, etc). They are beautiful, but devastating. They are a
problem from early summer on.
These beetles cause the leaves of plants in the
cucuribitaceae family (squash, watermelon, cucumbers) to wilt and
die. They can transfer a bacterium to each leaf they eat from which causes the
plants to wilt and die.
These large worms burrow deep holes into tomatoes. Luckily
there is a natural predator which is a parasitic wasp that injects its eggs
into the worm and when they hatch the pupae eat, and kill, the worm from the
inside out…gross, but good for our tomatoes!
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