The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Bugs are a common problem in all gardens. They may pose a severe threat to vegetable gardens as they can make plants vulnerable to disease, rot, and viruses. Take a look at the bugs I have found while having my cell phone camera handy in the garden. These are just a few of the good, bad, and ugly that I have run into while working in the garden over the past 2 months

Bad

Adult green stinkbug: Known for chomping down on fruits, but also has a taste for other greenery. I found this one in a row of strawberries. Looks kinda cool for a stink bug. 

Mostly Bad

Red thorax beetle: I tried finding information on this beetle, but had little luck locating a description of this little booger. Beetles generally aren't favored in the garden unless they are big beetles that can eat smaller bugs. 

Bad

Candy-striped leaf-hopper: This is a common North American insect that carries plant diseases. This is a picture of one on my early peas and guess what? My peas all have gotten sick with a virus that kills them from the bottom up over a week or two after an initial discoloration of the leaves. Beauty kills in this case and I'll always squash them in the future.

The reason leaf-hoppers are bad bugs is that their feeding can cause damage by discoloring leaves, by interfering with the transport of liquids in the plant, by causing curled and stunted leaves, and by spreading disease. 

See week 11's post that references the discoloration in my pea plants.

Week 11 

Good

Centipede: Often used as a horror inducing image in scary movies, but that have just as many reasons to like them as they have legs. A few reasons are they feed on slugs, grubs, worms, cockroaches, ants, and flies which make them champions of the garden. 

Good

Ladybug: Beautiful, colorful, and wonderful for the garden. They eat aphids and do it with style. This particular ladybug was looking for an aphid with a side aphids for lunch.

Good

Spiders: They are welcomed in the garden because they pretty much kill anything that lands in their web. Can't say that I am personally a fan because they bite, but I've noticed they typically run when they see my hands getting close to them. I have a habit of not wearing gloves and spiders a good reason to do the opposite.

Bad

Cross-striped cabbage worm: These pesky worms or caterpillars are eating up my broccoli leaves and kale leaves like they are going out of style. I continue to find them and kill them by hand every other day. 

Bad

Lesson learned: Don't judge a bug by its appearance. The leaf-hopper is one to be reckoned with and I remember distinctly feeling captivated by its beauty while photographing it on a pea plant.

Pesky Squirrels and Peach Blossoms

My desire to become Carl Spackler from Caddyshack is about to manifest. I'm afraid if I go to bed tonight, I'll wake up in the morning with the bright idea to throw dynamite at squirrels. As usual, I find the damages from those pesky rats with fuzzy tails every morning when I check on the chickens and the new sprouts in the garden each morning. In response to the local squirrel A-Team, I added a plastic netting over the bed that was left from the prior owners of our house which protected their grape vines from birds.

As I mentioned in my Week 1 post, I left a row of potatoes and onions open because I laid hay over the plants and had not noticed any disturbances on the soil. I suppose the squirrels took what they could get and dug around 3 holes in the that one bed.

 "I smell varmint poontang. And the only good varmint poontang is dead varmint poontang, I think."
-Carl Spackler from Caddyshack

These beautiful peach blossoms have been introducing themselves and I'm hoping to get my hands on some yummy peaches this year. Last year, there were only two peaches because there was a late frost that killed the buds before they blossomed. This is my first experience with peach trees, so we'll see what happens.

I haven't done any research on peaches, but it is about time I learn given there might be an abundance of peaches soon to care for in the garden.