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How to Control Bugs
Coming soon is the Cabbage Looper. This is the worst of the little green worms and they eat just about everything. They get their name from the way they move their upper body around in a loop when disturbed. Innocent children call them inchworms, but they are not measuring the marigolds like that old song used to say. They come from those little brown moths that gather around your porch light. Control the loopers with Bt, or Spinosad. Control the moths with a bug-attracting black light that electrocutes them when they get too close or a 100-watt light bulb suspended over a bucket of soapy water at night. Be sure to locate the light at least 25 feet from your garden. The idea is too make the moths move away from the garden where they won't lay their eggs. With everything else going on, I bet you didn't see the aphids already sucking the life out of some of your early spring flowers. They secrete that awful honeydew and will just make everything ugly and dark once the honeydew begins to grow mold. When controlling aphids, try not to use a broad-spectrum insecticide that will kill beneficial insects because aphids have a lot of natural enemies. Control with Spinosad, Pyrethrum or insecticidal soap (when the temperature is below 86.) Insecticidal soap should be washed off plants after about two hours when the weather is hot. It does not have a residual effect. Cutworms come into the field from migrating moths just like the cabbage looper. They cut small plants to the ground and eat the leaves. They hang out in the soil and feed at night. Use Bt, spinosad, beneficial nematodes, or cardboard collars around new transplants for organic control. Also, prepare fallow planting areas as soon as possible so the newly hatched worms have time to mature (in about 3-4 weeks) and fly away in search of new plants to cut rather than hang out in the dirt and wait for you to come along and feed them new transplants. The leaf-footed bug is a black or brown stinkbug with a white or yellow marking across the central part of its back. It can be distinguished from the beneficial assassin bug by the way its back legs are flattened on the lower section (like a leaf.) These guys will really damage tomatoes and cause them to be mottled or cat faced. Control by handpicking or pyrethrin. When handpicking any bug that lets out an odor when smashed, including squash bugs, be sure to put them in a can of soapy or oily water and drown them rather than smashing them. When you smash them and they emit that awful odor, it attracts other bugs like them to the site. Small beetles that resemble ladybugs but are yellow or bright green with a series of black spots on their back are either potato beetles or cucumber beetles. Control with Spinosad or Pyrethrin. Skip a year between uses so the bugs won't become resistant. Spinosad has a residual of up to 25 days, most Pyrethrin products about 48 hours. Read labels carefully.
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It's time for the annual bug festival now showing in your garden. First on the list to make an appearance is the Harlequin bug. A shield shaped stinkbug that is shiny black with orange spots and about a fourth of an inch long. They like to suck plant juices from crops like broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower and can damage a whole crop in short order. They can be controlled with Pyrethrum, Bt, or Spinosad. When pulling old cole crops that are no longer productive, leave a few plants in the garden for a few days so the Harlequin troupe will congregate on the leftover plants and you can hit them all at the same time with one of the aforementioned control products. Harlequin bugs tend to show up late in the season and are usually a sign that the cool weather vegetable season is about over.
