January 23, 2017

Avalanche column

Dec 15, 2015

When ever I go into the garden I like to always pay attention to small details, this can thwart big problems later.

An ant trail going into the crown of a plant or a tree is an indication that there are a lot of aphids. The only time this is untrue is with stone fruit (peach, cherry...). These trees have glands located on both side of the petiole (leaf stem) near the base of their leaves. In both cases the ants are getting sustenance either from the glands or honey dew from aphids.

Accordion leaves on alliums (onion, garlic,leek..) indicates they are not being watered enough.

On brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower...) dark sticky deposits is honey dew from an abundance of aphids.

Small seedlings that are sheared off at ground level could be rodents but also could indicate cutworms, pill bugs or wire worms.

Skylight sized holes in leaves indicate grasshoppers or caterpillars.

The tops of your Solanaceae plants (tomato, eggplant,peppers...) being chewed on might be the indication of deer in the garden, only if whole portions of the plant are missing. If it looks like the leaves have been stripped, a closer inspection for horn worms is needed. Usually on the leaves or on the ground around the plant there will be block y looking feces, from tiny all the way up to 1/4 inch in size. The quarter inch ones come from the big Ones.

Stringy dark secretions on leaves is an indication that blister beetles may be present. They come in black and gray. Do not mess with these guys unless you are wearing gloves. Some folks can have very bad skin reactions to these guys.

Clusters of small bronze sand sized geometric clusters near the base of cucurbit (squash, cucumber, melon...) leaves are the eggs of squash bugs. Not always but usually they are on the underside of the leaf.

A small cluster of sand sized orange tear drops are lady bug eggs. These are usually located under the leaf, emphasize usually.

Small craters up to several inch craters in the garden beds after a strong loud lightening storm means you likely have spade foot toads in the garden.

Cucumber leaves looking like lace, means cucumber beetles are feeding.

Leaves on brassicas or cucurbits that are looking like they are wind burned and there has been no wind, indicates that there are squash bugs or even harlequin bugs feeding.

One winter I was having a problem with seedlings just vanishing. I was thinking I had cutworms but there was no place for them to hide because the soil was bare. It wasn't until I brought in some boc choi for dinner. After cleaning the veggies there looked to be dirt on the counter top. The dirt was moving! They were very tiny caterpillars. I had discovered what was eating my seedlings. I could then make appropriate measures!!!

Casual observations can discern a lot of valuable information. Once armed with this information, proper actions can be made.