Summer Garden

Typically, the weather's been so awful or I've been so busy that I don't see my gardens for weeks at a time once July and August get going. But this year has been a nice mix of rain at the right time and making time to enjoy. Just sharin'.

Tomato Hornworm

Ah, the tomato hornworm, ‘Manduca quinquemaculata’ … if you’ve seen one of these 4 inch, fat, green, silken-skinned beauties on your tomatoes, you’ve no doubt had the same deep-seated reaction I have… _barf_.

While the hornworm does end up making a fairly cute moth, they ravage tomato plants, stripping them overnight sometimes. What's a gardener to do? There are a number of tactics that practiced together can reduce the population.

It’s important to note, in pest management a 50% reduction each year is an aggressive goal. Most problem pests can be reduced over time to a 10% population that is manageable. The following represent a multi-pronged offense that together can help reduce their population.

Cultural Practices
Mature worms drop to the soil, burrow about 4 inches down, and form a red brown pupal cell. Good tillage has been shown to help break up more than 90% of these in a large infestation, cutting down on the number of eggs that are laid the following year.

An important cultural practice is one of doing nothing… in a specific circumstance. There’s a parasitic braconid wasp, ‘Cotesia,’ that lays its eggs to feed on the horn worm. (The paper wasp 'Polistes' also preys directly on the adult hornworm itself - delicious.)

If you should find a hornworm that is covered in little, rice-like cocoons, do not remove this worm or harm it. Its survival (until the wasp larvae have eaten it from the inside out – there’s some poetic satisfaction there, eh?) will ensure the survival of more parasitic wasps, who will hatch in the same season, lay more eggs, devour more hornworms… well you get the picture. Circle-of-life, miracle-of-birth -- all that.

Manual Removal
As icky as it is, hand picking is the most successful control in the home garden. It is unfortunate that they are hard see until there is a lot of destruction. Hornworms are very small when young and at all larval stages will avoid the heat of the day, sticking to the inside of the tomato plant.

They’re most easily spotted around dawn and dusk. Picking these guys off and (eesh) squishing them in whatever method you find least nauseating… is your key to success.

Hornworms are in their egg stage for too short a period to pick off or smash as one might with the eggs of other garden pests, usually 5 days or less. The green to white eggs are also very small (1.5 mm) and hard to find.

Biological Controls
Bacterial insecticide containing ‘Bacillus thuringiensis’ or BT (e.g., Dipel, Thuricide) can be applied in the very early stages when the worms are small (always follow label directions, even with 'safer' biological controls like BT).

This is a good preventative to use in gardens that experience regular infestations. Apply early in the season before there are any signs of the worm. BT is a bacteria that harms only certain insects like the caterpillars, mosquitos, and others; it has little or no effect on humans, wildlife, pollinators, and most other beneficial insects.

Unfortunatly, BT will also do little to harm the adult worms; treat early!

Chemical Treatment
Hornworms can be controlled with limited success using carbaryl, permethrin, spinosad insecticides. Read the label carefully before using any insecticide.

Icky? Yes. (i got all yicked-out just writing about them.) Picking them off icky-er? *shudder* Definitely. But gardeners who love tomatoes will brave these grodies. Think of them as… dragons of the garden, and you the St. George of Tomatoland.

Or maybe try not to think about it at all. Just squish and get it over with.

Japanese Beetle Treatment

These little pests are driving people nuts. They're eating roses, maple leaves, raspberries, daisies, basil ... and they're everywhere in lazy, disgusting swarms. Sometimes there are clouds of them in the morning after they get their first warmth from the sun.

What to do?

Actually, I haven't had much trouble from them this year. They're nearly non-existent in my yard compared to years past. When they made their debut in late June this year (a little early for our area) I was spraying for the dreaded pumpkin vine borer at the time and also sprayed the beetles and the main areas they were occupying with Malathion. While there's little to predict what kind of Japanese beetle season you'll have or what could actually reduce their populations, I'm experiencing a significant reduction from last year. I just can't say why with any certainty.

Others I've talked with have tried the following with some success:

Putting out Japanese beetle traps
The traps have a pheromone that attract the beetles who are super interested in mating as frequently as possible before their die at the end of the month. You will attract other beetles to your yard, maybe from the whole neighborhood. If you have a large lot, put the traps to the far reaches of the lot to draw them away from flowers and food crops. Expect to dump or toss them frequently. Dead Japanese beetles will happily compost. Heck, they're so dumb, some of the live ones will too.

Terro mosquito fogger product
I don't know if this is a good idea for anything you're planning to eat later; I don't know what's in it. A fellow told me that he was using this for mosquitoes and found the Japanese beetles on his flowers disappeared as well. I'd guess any beneficial insects would be eliminated too... This one's a last resort in my opinion.

Grub control
Japanese beetles spend most of their lives as grubs under your lawn. They only hatch as beetles in July to mate and lay more eggs for next year's beetles before they die. While some state extension services note that they cannot determine a that the beetles are controlled by grub control (they cannot see a direct relationship between using grub control and beetle populations, especially if, for instance, you're the only one doing it in your neighborhood), a fellow gardener reported success using grub control products in a limited and unique way.

She put grub control around the locations the beetles were the thickest the year before last, instead of treating her whole lawn. She treated under certain trees and around her roses. The result last year was fewer beetles, though she did not use grub control again that summer. This year, she is again, rife with beetles.

Mechanical removal
I know, this method is never fun, fast, or sexy, but it works 100% with no ill effects. Go out in the morning when the beetles are slow (they're always slow to me and dumb as posts) and flick them of the plants into soapy water. Done.

So, what works? Who knows. If you find a method that has been reliable year after year, post a comment - I'm super interested to know.

Japanese Beetle Fraud

It's July and in much of the eastern Midwest, that means the Japanese Beetle is back. With it may come some other pests: con artists who prey on your frustration with the beetle. 

In past years, some communities have seen 'exterminators' offering to rid your yard of these coppery-green menaces. Their promise? Buy their control service and they promise in only a few weeks, your Japanese Beetle population will be gone. They also guarantee you won't see the beetles again for an entire year. 

I will extend the same guarantee to you, without even having to come to your yard. 

The turds offering this service could make good on their guarantee just spraying your yard with water. The adult beetle will indeed be gone in a few weeks as Japanese Beetles live for about a month to breed and lay eggs in lawns. After that, they die and the larvae grow underground until next July when they emerge as new adult beetles.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Cleome Fireworks

Isn't it a happy coincidence that right at the time of the year when we're about to have the 4th of July and fireworks, the Cleome starts to bloom?



This plant even looks like a bursting rocket with trailing smoke and burst of color at the top.







Planted en masse they look like the grand finale at the end of the night.