It is hard to guess what anything is without seeing it, but what I think will happen is that now that the plants are out in the open air and are readily available to beneficial insects, you'll see a lot of the insect issues disappear. Without seeing the black stuff, we'd only be guessing about what it was...it even could be frass from one insect or another. There are winged black aphids and I usually only see them briefly in midspring, so that might be what you're seeing. Once the lady bugs and green lacewings are active, none of the little pests you mentioned seem to last long, so I tend to not worry much about them. One beneficial insect or another will gobble them up. The tiny beige things may have been the shed skins of aphids or something else.

I've seen one mealybug destroyer in my garden this year, but no mealybugs so don't know what it will live on or if it will stick around.....and I don't know where it came from. Normally, I don't think they could overwinter here, but this past winter was sort of the winter that wasn't wintery, so I guess anything is possible.

When plants are held inside a greenhouse for a long time, they do tend to get lots of pest problems, partly because greenhouses stay abnormally warm which lets pest populations, like spider mites or white flies, explode, and partly because there's a lack of beneficial insects in there. To explain the warmth connection, it can take spider mites over a week per generation in cooler weather, but then in hot weather, they can be giving birth to new generations every couple of days. That's why the hotter it gets, the more the spider mite population explodes. I haven't had plants in my greenhouse since the next to the last week in April because the greenhouse was just getting too hot for plants. The chickens still patrol the greenhouse daily looking for insects, but I don't know how much luck they're having since there's no plants in there.

The pest population in my garden is incredibly low this year and I wonder if last year's flooding rains have anything to do with that. There's been no flea beetles, no Colorado Potato Beetles, almost no cabbage worms (6 or 7 showed up one day and I hand-picked and destroyed them, and no more have shown up), no mealy bugs, no white flies, and almost no aphids. Yesterday I found one southern pea plant (out of dozens and dozens of them in the garden) covered with tiny black aphids being farmed by a carpenter ant. A little while later, a lady bug landed on my hand. I took it over and put it on the plant with the aphids. I imagine that the next time I remember to look at that plant, the aphids will be gone. The sugar snap peas never had a pea aphid on them.

I found lots of cutworms early in the year, but had cutworm protection on all the plants, so lost none of them. I haven't seen spider mites at all, but I haven't been looking for them. Since we've already hit temperatures as warm as 94 degrees, I'm sure the spider mites are there, but I haven't noticed any and haven't seen any damage. My cucumber plants don't have cucumber beetles and my squash plants don't have squash bugs. It is just bizarre, because generally there's lots of everything around.

We do have lots of tiny grasshoppers and had tons of crickets in all sizes, but I did put out Semaspore and hope that will take care of them. There were lots of sow bugs and pill bugs earlier in the year, but I put out one round of Slug-Go Plus, and that knocked back the population to a low level. I haven't seen any tomato worms nor any tobacco worms. I'm sure that any day now the whole pest population thus far not seen in our garden will suddenly show up. Bring them on. The lady bugs, green lacewings and assassin bugs are ready and waiting. I did see a praying mantid the only day, but only one, which is good because they'll eat anything (including each other) so I really don't like having too many of them around. There's tons of frogs, toads, turtles and lizards, so maybe they are controlling the pests that I am not seeing. There's also lots of songbirds in the garden, especially cardinals and blue jays, and they are right in there with me all day, so I know they are eating bugs or they wouldn't be spending so many hours a day in the garden. Hopefully they're eating grasshoppers.

I just don't get wound up over insects in general. My garden is always fall of them, and the beneficials need the pests for their food supply, so I just go with the flow and only worry about the pest insects if they are going a large amount of damage and if we don't have anything in the garden that is controlling them. That generally only happens in drought years, though, as in rainy years we always seem to have plenty of beneficials around. So far, this counts as a rainy year, but May has come up really short on the rainfall, so that could be about to change. I tried to plant insanely early whenever possible so that, if El Nino suddenly gives way to La Nina and the rainfall stops, the garden will be so far along that I won't have to spend a ton of time and dollars on irrigation. It is a strategy that is paying off. Everything is growing so rapidly and maturing so quickly that I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do with myself in July and August because most of the canning will be finished before they arrive. The garden looks as good as it ever has looked by mid-May in any year, and it is mostly weeded and mulched, so I kinda get to coast through the rest of the month without working myself to death. I keep waiting for the huge onslaught of pest insects to arrive, but they don't seem in a hurry this year.

The sides of my greenhouse have been rolled up. I would remove the plastic, but it does provide some hail protection. I think the plants that were on the floor didn't dry out as much or get as much air circulation as the ones higher up. About half the tomatoes have been sitting on strawbales outside. And of course, everything would have been better off if it had been in the ground 3 weeks ago. The year I do things on time it will freeze in May. I took some notes today, about what varieties looked sturdy and which were buggier. I I've seen some slugs, but not really any damage. I do have flea beetles. I may actually have seen one today, but, knock wood, no other major pests.