April 13, 2017

Good morning, recently I did a google search on how cold it needs to be to kill insects. The temperatures that kill cold hardy veggies will also kill insects. The one note that they mentioned is that the cold needs to be sustained. But it did not mention how sustained it must be sustained.

When Deb and I lived in Central Oregon we had winters every winter. Night time lows were usually in the teens and on the warmer days we would find ourselves in the “balmy” thirties. We would usually find ourselves many days if not weeks below freezing. In my mind this would be considered sustained

A tomato horn worm outbreak would be one horn worm for the whole year. “All year” meant the 90-day growing season. Because of the lack of insects, I completely forgot how to combat them.

This “winter” we have had several mornings in the teens but the temperature would then warm up very nicely (60+).

I am already seeing mature cucumber beetles, squash bugs and a gentleman at market mentioned seeing full grown grasshoppers. This implies to me that several hours of cold is not long enough to be sustained cold.

This does remind me of 2011. We had two freezing events that were back to back with a very short warm up between them. These freezing events were several days in length and the cold was in the single digits. It must be noted that after this freezing period was over there were no more freezes until fall. Save for 4 inches of rain the year was also very dry. This was a bug free year. 

It would be hard to quantify if it was only the freeze that killed the bugs. Because with the lack of rain it is difficult for insect eggs to hatch.

It is noted that 2010 and 2012 were both moist years.  2012 was the year that squash bugs just about ran me out of town. Insect eggs are like weed seeds, they remain dormant in the soil until there is enough moisture for them to germinate or hatch.

Ah yes and then there is the in congruence before the rain a week ago, I noticed a lot of very small grasshoppers that had recently hatched. I thought maybe they were hatching in my beds where there is adequate moisture until I saw several small grasshoppers down at the market.

Because of the lack of cold and if we have decent moisture, this will be a very buggy year. It is my intent to be on the offensive with bugs this year. I will hit them at first observance and maybe they will not take over. As they say, “this too will pass”