Cucumber beetle. Lots of them. I don't have cucumbers right now, fortunately.

First SVB moth today. I wonder how long my squash plants have until their demise?

Bon, I've only seen one CB this year so far, and it was one of the striped ones. It also was sitting on a leaf, not moving, and when I tried to thump it to knock it off, instead of flying away, it fell to the ground....so I stepped on it and squished it. Usually we have them everywhere all the time from February onward, although we see a lot more spotted ones than striped ones. We see them on literally every flowering plant from the moment they show up, so we usually have, at the very least, hundreds of them in the fields that surround the garden, and in the garden itself.

My pickling cucumber plants are almost to the top of their trellis and are flowering heavily and producing well. To a large extent, the cucumber beetles now are irrelevant in my garden. They are hardest on young, freshly sprouted seedlings and my plants have been in the ground for a long time now so no longer qualify as young or freshly sprouted. And, for pickling, I grow County Fair which is incredibly resistant to the diseases spread by CBs, so the CBs cannot interfere in my pickling plans no matter how hard they try. Once the pickling is done, I don't really care if we have fresh cukes or not. I can eat them fresh, or I can live without them. We grow enough Armenian Cukes that we never really are cucumber-free though.

James, It depends on how successful you are at finding them and killing them, but if they were here in my garden now, I'd guess my plants wouldn't last much longer. Maybe a week or two. Once the SVBs show up, I confess to just not caring that much. Fighting them takes a lot more energy and effort than I have to expend on them when busy with so much other stuff. I just grow yellow squash and zucchini until the SVBs show up and kill the plants, and then grow Korean summer squash (which is C. moschata) and a lot of kinds of C. moschata winter squash after they show up. With the solid stems on the C. moschata plants, the SVB grubs find it very difficult to tunnel through the plants, and that means the C. moschata types generally outlast the SVBs.

My feeling is that every gardener has to pick their battles, and I just no longer care to battle the SVBs. I feel like I have better ways to spend my time. It is just easier to grow stuff they don't bother. I haven't seen any SVBs or Squash Bugs here yet, but it is about the time of year that they generally show up.

Dawn

I spotted some wheel bugs in the garden a couple of weeks ago. But so far, almost not pests at all. The potatoes are growing great and the only thing I've seen on them are lady bugs.

We were away for a week and rabbits came in and ate 2/3 of my newly sprouted beans. Oh well, I have a 22. Today I've been working hard to get my sweet potatoes in. I brought our 12 year old beagle out for a while. She enjoyed nosing around the weeds, etc. Perhaps she put a scare in the rabbits.

George

I agree. It's too time consuming to fight the SVB. I think I will get my peas sprouted so they can go in after I pull the plants. James

George, Those darn rabbits! I think rabbits are cute except when they're in the garden eating plants. Maybe it is time for rabbit stew.

This definitely is our most pest-free spring in ages. I hope it lasts, but I kinda doubt it will.

James, That sounds like a good plan to me. Maybe the SVBs have just worn me down after all these years, but I am just so tired of fighting them that I've decided it isn't worth it.

Dawn

Stink bugs here in rural NE Norman as of today. Blech. No beetles obvious yet, but our squash was late planted so there's really not much here for them. And "that's a good thing."

Late Sunday afternoon I saw both the first stink bug (a green one) and the first cucumber beetle (a spotted one) in the garden. I killed them both. Without remorse. After a spring that has been amazingly free of the usual pests, I guess the usual ones are starting to show up now.

I'm confused! After doing a google search, the assassin bug and the wheel bug appear to be the same. Are they? Also the images look like a bug that gave me a particularily painfull sting or bite when I was a kid. Can you suggest a web site that has photos and descriptions of good and bad bugs in our region? Thanks Dawn

Keith

I have never noticed assassin bugs. Of course in previous years I couldn't see well enough to identify them. Maybe this year. But I look at those pics and they all look alike to me. I know it takes practice.

Thanks Dawn,

Very informative. If my memory serves me the bug, a wheel bug by the pictures, didn't attack me, I was messin' with it. I do remember a searing hot pain similar to a hornet sting. I've always killed these bugs since but now will "Live and Let Live".

Keith

Amy, Watching the bug behavior is telling. If you sit and watch one for a while, you usually can tell if it is looking for (and finding) a vegetative meal, or if it is sitting and waiting for a pest insect to come along so it can eat some meat.

Also, often (but not always) the assassin bugs and similar predatory insects are loners, and you'll see them hanging out alone on a plant, but the plant eater types, especially in the nymph stage, will appear in groups of 5 to 15 or more. That's one of my favorite ways to tell young assassin bugs from leaf-footed bugs. I'll see a single bug and can feel almost positive it is an assassin bug, and then I'll see a group together, especially on a tomato plant, and know I'm looking at leaf-footed bug nymphs.

Keith, You're welcome. The insect world is fascinating. Only about 3-5% of the insects I see in my garden really do any damage to anything. Most the others either do neglible damage that I can ignore, or they are preying on the insects that are damaging the garden plants. I try to live and let live as much as possible, but if a pest insect is stupid enough to be on a leaf right in front of my face, I'm going to go ahead and kill if it I am sure it is one of the bad guys.

Dawn

Today, while picking cucumbers, I saw a spined soldier bug nymph eating (sucking the life out of?) a caterpillar on a cucumber plant. It was pretty cool. While I had long ago learned how to tell spined soldier bugs from stink bugs, I didn't even know what my first spined soldier bug nymph was when I first saw one because it doesn't look that much like the adult. Seeing the one today reminded me of how I once spent a great deal of time one summer trying to figure out what in the world the nymphs of the spined soldier bugs actually were. So, for the sake of all of you who might encounter a spined soldier bug nymph in your garden, you can click on this link and see what the nymph of spined soldier bugs looks like. Page down and you'll even see a spined soldier bug that is feeding on a caterpillar just like the one I saw in my garden today, except this photo shows an adult and the one in my garden was still a nymph.

Stinkbugs.....Are Not All Bad....Some Are Predatory