Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Garden Pests

This week the fearsome garden pests showed up on the scene. I caught my first cucumber beetle taking a snack on one off my cucumber plants. I haven't seen any more since I squished him.

The snails and slugs seem to be everywhere with the wet weather. I've noticed a few missing seedlings, and so I've done my fair share of crunching and tossing them over the hedge.

The other pest to arrive was the cabbage moth caterpillars. I first noticed some damage to my kale this weekend. Up until now, we'd been enjoying pristine kale.
Inspection showed a few caterpillars. I've found a few for the past couple of days, but today as I took a closer look, I noticed the yellow eggs on the edge and undersides of the leaves.
So after one round of inspecting all the leaves for caterpillars I took a second look and rid the leaves of the eggs. I did buy BT this year to try on the caterpillars, but I understand you have to re-apply frequently when it rains and right now that is just about every day. My plan is to do a visual inspection for the next few days. I'm concerned what damage the caterpillars might do when I go away for a vacation, so I'll probably apply the BT before I go. At least I know I've eliminated quite a few eggs now so they won't have to start damaging the leaves before I find the caterpillars.

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