Yeah, I agree with Bon. I do spray BT on cabbage worms, and tomatoes if I feel the need. I just hose off aphids. Last year some cowpeas got aphids bad, but as I was about to spray with water I saw a lady bug larva. I was hot. I don't like disturbing lady bugs. So I thought...experiment, can the good guys clean this up. It took longer than I would have liked, not much production on those peas. But I went out with a magnifying glass and looked at the bugs, got to know them, looked them up on line. It was interesting.

SVB. Grow under netting. Squash bugs, grow under netting. Last year, very late in summer, I planted some winter squash. I put cedar shavings (animal bedding) under them. No pests showed. But there may not have been any regardless. It was too late in the season to get a crop. This year I will experiment again. I have seen things on facebook where people wrap the base of the plant in foil to prevent SVB. I can't figure that out. They attack my plants anywhere along the stems. Even when the crazy old lady chases them with a portable bug zapper or hairspray (the only thing I had at the time.)

Spider mites are evil. They attack things in pots. Well, and tomatoes, but so far my tomatoes can handle it. They always kill my thyme. If I'm desperate, I put Bug Right on them. It is supposed to work on aphids, too, but it would also probably kill lady bugs and good guys.

I have DE on hand (I have used it in the house). Never used it out side. I just bought some sluggo, but have never used it.

Thanks you guys - plan on trying the BT if needed. I lost 10 zucchini last year and was so mad. I am planting Tromboncino Squash this year and have read some love the flavor of the young green instead of zucchini and some don't so we will see. Also ordered two varieties of butternut (Waltham and Rogosa Violina) from rareseeds that are c moschata and am excited to try them. Amy - aphids got our green bean vines last year. We tried the Dr. Earth Vegetable Garden Insect Killer that worked great and strongly smelled of garlic, LOL. You can hook to your hose which was really easy. The aphids left but the beans didn't recover after. I have not understand exactly what to with DE? Just sprinkle it on plants or what? I also hatched praying mantis and bought lady bugs last year and they all disappeared! HMPH!

I figured out a squash bug trick, some years ago. I'd plant my squash and, as they got to about tea cup size, they'd stall out. If I was too busy to get out there, they'd sometimes die. One day I did get out there and noticed that they looked anemic. I don't recall why, but I poured a half bucket of water on one hill of squash and was surprised to have a half dozen squash bugs surface, sputtering for air. Using my fingers, I pinched and killed them.

I went out every afternoon, after that, for about 5 days, and repeated the treatment. The little plants recovered and went on to produce a good crop. Eventually squash bugs did resurface. But by that they the plants were large and robust, and, as in the case of at least some c. moschata, when they are large it seems that the squash bugs don't make nearly the headway. Their population never seems to bloom. I do this every year now.

Another important principle: If you see a "bug" and don't know what it is, or for sure, if it causes damage, leave it alone. Let it live! Over the years there have been a couple times that I've had an epiphany: "That ugly bug I've been killing, was working FOR ME!" Remember, the predators reproduce at a lower rate than the pests. So, try not to hurt them. I never have to spray anything for potato beetles, since I started leaving the wheel bugs alone. Some years I have to hand pick potato beetles for a week or two. But pretty soon the wheel bugs show up and take over that job. Some years I end up being more concerned that there isn't "enough food" in the garden for the good insects!

George

Katie, I love stuffed squash. Imagine my horror. Fighting squash bugs is futile. Dawn and others will start the regular summer squash early indoors and plant out under row covers attempting to harvest before the squash bugs show up. I'm not proficient, yet. This year is the first planting c moschata squash varieties including trombocino. We'll see. There's always the grocer when I need succulent yellow and green squash. lol Would love to hear how you like the Rogosa, if you remember at that time.

I don't know anything about DE.

bon

DE, Diatomaceous earth, NOT the kind sold for pool filters. It is the fossilized remains of diatoms. It supposedly cuts the exoskeleton, or wikipedia says it absorbs lipids from the waxy outer layer of the exoskeleton causing the bug to dehydrate. The bug has to come in contact with it for it to work. I lied above, I put it on a melon plant in an attempt to save it from the squash bugs that moved to it after they killed my squash. I DUMPED it on top of them. Squash bugs laughed and laughed. Silly human, you can't kill us.

I have heard DE doesn't work when wet. I have heard wet it and spray it on plants. I really don't know what the best way to use it is.

Macmex- I don't know why but the sickly part of me loves the idea of drowning them and watching them scurrying around with me snapping them up with scissors! LOL! Can you tell I had tons of them last year and they drove me crazy?

Amy - so I guess that is the same thing I bought to put it in with my dirt for my chicken dust bath in the chicken run? I don't have a lot of faith in that either I must say! LOL

Yes, Katie, DE is recommended for use with chickens. It's not that I don't have faith in DE, it is that you can't kill adult squash bugs that easy. Who knows, maybe they did die, but were replaced with the hoards from new generations so I couldn't actually tell they died.

I want to start off by saying that approximately 95-97% of the insects in a garden are not doing to do any harm, so I leave them alone. The more I leave the insects in general alone, the less of a pest problem I have. Your garden is its very own ecosystem and the less you interfere in its natural functioning, the better it functions. Having said that, there are a handful of pests that must be dealt with. For some of them, there are no easy answers. I have found that what works best with each type of pest can vary, so I tailor my response to the situation.

Squash Bugs: The most important thing you can do is scout daily for them. The minute they show up, killing them all must be your top priority. If you can kill the early ones before they reproduce, you've won half the battle. I will kill them using any organic method possible. What works best for me depends on what I am doing at the time. If I have scissors nearby and see them, if I am very quick, I can snip them in half with the scissors before they see me and run to hide. I keep a lint roller in my tool bucket that I carry out to the garden with me. When I see them, I slide one hand underneath the leaf they are on and lower the lint roller down on top of them, rolling it right over them and catching them in its stickyness. The reason for the hand beneath the leaf is that so when I press down from above, I am not endlessly pressing down, down, down as the leaf lowers to the ground. Once they are stuck to the lint roller, I remove that piece of sticky paper, wad it up around them tightly so they cannot escape, drop the balled-up mess on the ground, step on it to crush them to death, and then pick it up and put it in the trash. If you're lucky, you will catch several squash bugs on one piece of paper all at once.

I don't scout the undersides of the leaves for squash bug eggs until I actually see squash bugs, but after that I try to check the leaves daily.

For early squash, I put plants in the ground in March, and those often get to grow for a couple of months before squash bugs even show up. Our current squash plants now have actual squash and zucchini on them. Later on, if squash bugs show up at some point, I'll put Micromesh or Biothrips Proteknet netting over low tunnel hoops covering the whole bed. Last year we never had squash bugs or SVBs at all, which happens about twice a decade. In fact, we had none last year and none in 2011, so I guess that is our two good years and we shouldn't expect another good year for another 4 or 5 years.

For later squash, they are covered with Micromesh from Day 1. You can do this either by growing parthenocarpic varieties that do not need to be pollinated or by hand-pollinating the flowers yourself every morning, which requires uncovering them just for a minute while you do the hand-pollinating. Or you can keep them covered until they begin blooming and then uncover them and hope that by then they are big enough to survive the squash bug assault.

I grow the vining Korean summer squash that are C. moschatas (not C. pepo or C. maxima) for squash in the hot summer months. Because the C. moschatas are rampant growers, they can literally outgrow damage from squash bugs, and because their vines are solid, not hollow, the squash vine borer grubs cannot tunnel through them. Kitazawa Seeds sells three varieties of Korean summer squash. Two are avocado squash (so named because their shape, size and coloring resembles avocados) and they taste like squash. The third is cylindrical and is like a zucchini. Growing this will change your life because you won't have to give SVBs another thought. I like the flavor of these. I do not at all like the flavor or texture of the commonly grown Trombocino or Tahitian Melon forms of winter squash. Didn't care for them young as summer squash or older as winter squash, but that's just us. I grew them until I found something we liked better, and then I stopped growing them. They are rampant growers like all C. moschatas, but it doesn't do you much good if you don't find them tasty.

For squash vine borers, it is just easier to grow C. moschatas than to use the common methods like wrapping stems, etc. to try to thwart the SVBs, and there is no way I am going to spend my precious summer garden time and canning time in the garden slitting plant stems, fishing out SVB grubs with a piece of wire, and then trying to wrap the slit and heal the damaged plant. Some people do that, I don't. I value my time more than that. There's some things I just won't do, and that's one of them.

APHIDS:

Most of the time, I do not see aphids in my garden. When I do see them at all, it tends to be under one of these three situations: 1) very early in the season on some broccoli varieties (while other broccoli varieties have none). My solution was to stop growing varieties that seem prone to have them, but even before I stopped growing those varieties, the lady bugs always showed up about a week after the aphids and gobbled them up and that was the end of that problem. 2) Cowpea aphids sometimes appear on southern peas (blackeyed peas, pinkeye purplehull peas, crowder, zipper, lady or cream peas) in hot weather. I ignore them and the lady bugs show up, eat them, and that's the end of that. 3) Peach tree aphids sometimes show up on peach tree leaves. I ignore them, lady bugs show up and eat them.

When someone seems to have a perpetual problem with aphids on everything, that normally is a sign that there is excessive nitrogen either in the soil or being added to the garden via fertilization. Excess nitrogen causes plants to produce excess carbs. Excess carbs are incredibly attractive to many pests, but especially to aphids. If you are seeing a lot of aphids each year, be sure you are not overfeeding nitrogen.

Releasing ladybugs often fails and is an exercise in frustration. There are a few ways you can encourage them to stick around. Do not release all of them at once. Release a few each evening over several days. Spray water on the plants before you release them and often they will go to the plants to drink the water. You can make this even more effective by using sugar water which also will feed them. Or, you can make wheast (recipes online and easy to find), smear it on stakes in your garden and hope it will keep the ladybugs in the garden. Have flowers with small flowers from which they can feed. I always have sweet alyssum, verbena bonariensis, yarrow, fennel, dill, tansy, catnip, catmint, lemon balm and other plants that have the kinds of flowers they like. These encourage the adults to stick around long enough to reproduce, and it is their babies that will feed voraciously on many pests, including aphids and spider mites. If you don't have flowers in and around around your garden for them, they will fly away in search of what they like and need and you'll never see them again.

If you purchase ladybugs, be sure you are purchasing native lady bugs, Hippodamia convergens, as they are more likely to stick around...not the imported Asian lady bugs. Arbico Organics only sells Hippodamia convergens, and their service is impeccable. They also carry some lady bug accessories, including the Monterey Lady Bug Attractant that contains pheromones that will attract lady bugs to your garden, and a Good Bug Blend of plants that will produce flowers the lady bugs like and need.

Once lady bugs know they can count on your to supply them with diverse flowering plants for food, and with water and wheast to supplement the pests they eat, they'll stick around forever.

CABBAGE MOTHS/WORMS: Last year I grew my brassicas underneath Micromesh and Biothrips netting and never saw any cabbage worm, imported cabbage worm or cabbage looper damage. I really like doing this. It is simple and since those plants don't need pollination, you can just leave the netting over them until it is time to harvest.

This year I haven't even put the Micromesh or Biothrips over them yet. I've just had bird netting over them, suspended on low tunnel hoops, for hail protection and so far that appears to have kept the moths from being able to reach the plants and lay eggs on them. I'm not sure how long this will last, but I'm watching just to see. If caterpillars show up on the brassicas, I'll hand pick and destroy them (usually just by dropping them into a bowl of soapy water) and then cover up the plants with Micromesh. I've virtually stopped using Bt 'kurstaki' in my garden because I don't want to hurt all the butterflies and moths that visit the garden. It is full of them every day, and it doesn't make sense to me to grow plants specifically to attract butterflies while also using a product that will kill them. I don't miss it. I've never used it much, and I'm happier not using it at all.

If you choose to spray it on your plants, understand it degrades quickly in UV rays, so you'll have to reapply it every few days. Try to avoid letting it drift onto desirable flowers that the butterflies and desirable moths visit.

Now to address other comments:

Amy, Wrapping the plant stems at the base with aluminum foil, row cover cut into strips, pantyhose, etc. is an old, old method that people used back when they couldn't figure out what else to do. It worked early in the season when SVB moths tended to lay their eggs at the base of the plants, but not so great later on. I think a lot of people still try it because their grandma always did it or whatever, or they're getting their advice from old, out-of-date books written before we had summerweight floating row covers or insect netting products available to use for exclusion. Plus, exclusion doesn't work for folks who are at work and not at home in the mornings to hand-pollinate. I have found wrapping works only for the earliest SVB moths, and the later ones do move on up the plants and lay eggs everywhere.

Like George, I leave the wheel bugs, spined soldier bugs and other beneficial insects alone and let them do their work. They will take care of many of the pest bugs for you, which is a good thing because true bugs (as opposed to insects) are hard to kill. This year I had spined soldier bugs show up about the same week that stink bugs showed up (they look almost identical), which is better than what I usually see. Often the spined soldier bugs don't show up until 2-4 weeks after the stink bugs, so I hope their early arrival keeps stink bugs under control.

I do not kill any insect or bug in my garden unless I am sure it is a pest AND am sure it is doing enough damage to warrant being killed. The damage level has to rise pretty high to get me riled up. I will kill leaf-footed bugs whenever, wherever I see them because they reproduce like rabbits, but otherwise I leave the pest bugs for the beneficial bugs to handle. If you kill every bug you see, for example, the wheel bugs and spined soldier bugs will not be able to find anything to eat and will move on to someone else's garden. Most beneficial insects will not and do not reproduce until your garden has enough pests in it to feed their young, so if you wipe out their food supply early in the season, they have no reason to stick around and reproduce in your garden. It can be hard to be patient and wait for them to do their thing, but it is important or you'll never have a good population of benficial insects.

Like George, I have used the water trick to flush hidden squash bugs out of hiding. It works really well. You can use the hose, a bucket of water, etc. or just head right out to the garden after a rain shower to see if any squash bugs have climbed high on the plant. It is a great time to kill them. The more squash bugs you kill, the fewer there are to reproduce and give you dozens more.

DE particles have sharp edges that cut the insects' exoskeleton, causing them to dehydrate and die. It is not necessarily a quick kill because when it gets wet (even from dew), the sharp edges soften and lose their sharpness. I no longer bother with it because we have dew practically every morning, rendering it worthless.

Spider mites are a constant issue. I see them on every plant in the pastures that surround us in hot, dry weather so I am not so naive that I think I can keep them out of my garden. This year they showed up on some pepper plants and tomato plants in March. Hopefully lady bugs are busy eating them. About the worst thing you can do with spider mites is try to control them with any insecticide at all. Know why? Because there are beneficial mites, called predatory mites, that help keep the spider mites under control. Anything you spray that will kill the pest mites also kills the predatory mites, so I don't spray anything. Normally, except in the absolute worst part of the worst year, healthy plants that get hit hard by spider mites will bounce back and survive. I have noticed that if I just leave the plants alone and don't try to help them out, eventually I'll see new leaves coming out that do not get infested by spider mites. This indicates to me that at that point the beneficial insects probably are eating spider mites faster than the spider mites can reproduce. Having the sort of patience to ignore spider mite damage is hard, but it usually pays off. If the plants don't bounce back, I can replant new plants for fall after I remove them, but I generally don't have to go that route.

Your garden is an ecosystem, full of all sorts of insects and bugs, both good and bad. I have found that the less I interfere in the process, the better it works and the better a job the beneficial insects do of controlling the bad guys. I can count on the fingers of one hand, or maybe a hand and a half, the kinds of insects that will do enough damage in my garden to warrant me being proactive and trying to get them first. Other than that handful of pests, not all of whom will show up in any given year, I let everything be. It requires nerves of steel and great patience, but it works.

Dawn, as usual, your wealth of knowledge astounds me! My two nemesis so far have been the cabbage moth and the squash bug so I value all of the suggestions! I think I'm going to try to do kale and collards (hubby LOVES collards so this my first year trying) in one raised bed and cover. That seems easy enough. I'm trying the c moschata squashes as well this year so think I'm in the right track!

Katie, If it is any comfort to know this, please understand that every single lesson that gardening has taught me....well, I've learned it the hard way. The great thing about hard lessons learned is that once you accept what Mother Nature and the plants are trying to teach you (even if you stubbornly resist for a while because you think you are right and Ma Nature is wrong), you never forget those lessons. Over a very long time spent gardening, you learn things.

You do know that kale and collards are cool season plants and should have been planted between February 15 and March 10? So, I hope your kale and collards already are growing. One of the worst things we gardeners do, in terms of attracting pests, is to try to grow cool-season plants in the hot season. The plants get stressed by the heat, and the stress makes them attractive to pests. I believe the plants emit some sort of stress hormone or something that attracts insects (not kidding about that!). If you already have kale and collards in the ground, they should be well-established enough already to withstand the hot season. Mine usually last until at least July, and longer if I have them in morning sun and afternoon shade. Some of last winter's kale, planted in February or March lasted until the chickens ate it around December or January. Other cool-season plants won't last into or through the summer most years, as the biennial ones will tend to bolt.

I try to grow things during the season they are meant to grow, but sometimes (like most of 2017) the weather here makes it so hard. We have had so much alternating hot/cold weather, dating back to days in the 90s in January (the same month we also had a nighttime low of 4 degrees) that sometimes I wonder if the plants think we are crazy expecting them to grow at all in our wildly fluctuating weather.

I often say you don't have to be crazy to garden here, but it helps. : )

Dawn

Dawn - yes I did know that about kale and collards and planted both early February. (I was thinking about covering next year.) I am keeping a journal now about what works and what doesn't and my ideas for the next year because until I get it all down, it's helpful! We harvested kale all thru summer last year and put up a lot in the freezer (chopped). I haven't grown collards and planted in February because my hubby loves them but they have been really eaten away by something that i haven't found yet!

Ok, what about earwigs? I read they're harmless, they're harmless unless in large numbers, and they're a menace. We seem to have a huge number, Ill see dozens every time I pick up a container. So how do I reduce their numbers?

jlhart76 - I don't get any earwigs as of yet, but I have a major infestion of roly polies and slugs and bought SluggoPLUS which says it is also for earwigs. Warning on the SluggoPLUS is that it could also kill beneficial bugs so use only in case of major infestation.

Katie, I love collards but in order to grow them pest-free, I have to grow them under netting that excludes the insects. Of everything I've ever grown, I think collards are the biggest pest magnet. It seems like everything in the garden likes collards and eats them. If a person had the space to grow collards as a trap crop and could plant them, let's say, 15-25' away from the garden, they could be used as a trap crop to lure pests away from the actual garden. I use sunflowers grown away from the garden that way to lure stink bugs away from the garden, though the garden always has stink bugs anyway. I just think it has less stink bugs than it does when I don't grow the sunflowers. I generally use Micromesh netting. I also have one or two pieces of Biothrips Proteknet netting, but I like the Micromesh better.

Jen, I've never had many, if any, earwigs as far as I know. I saw one once and didn't know what it was. I had to come inside and look it up on bugguide or some other website to figure out what it was. I haven't seen one since then. SlugGo Plus is supposed to work for earwigs too, and I use it every year for pill bugs and sow bugs, so maybe that's why I have only seen one earwig ever. However, they are nocturnal, as are most snakes, so maybe I'm not seeing them because I get out of the garden before sunset.

You know, earwigs can be beneficial because they are omnivores. So, while they will feed on many desirable plants (earning them persona non grata status in gardens), they also will eat aphids, mites and other pests. They also can be considered beneficial because they act as decomposers (like earthworms, pill bugs and sow bugs do, as well), eating and breaking down stuff like mulch and helping turn it into compost or humus more quickly. I think they are a problem, though, when the population is huge and they're eating your plants. I try to ignore pill bugs and sowbugs most of the time, but when they are eating plants in early Spring, or feeding on tomato fruit or melons in summer, out comes the SlugGo. So, I imagine it is sort of the same with earwigs---if you have only a few, you can ignore them, but if you have a lot and they are doing visible damage, you have to do something to bring the population under control.

You can use cat food cans sunk into the ground sort of like slug traps, but with some oil in the bottom (preferably fish oil the experts say, but who has fish oil sitting around?). They get in to eat the oil and cannot get out.

Slug-Go and Slug-Go Plus are great products and are very effective, but I'm careful not to overuse them. Even organic products can be overused, and while organic products in general are safer than equivalent synthetic products, that does not necessarily mean they are 100% safe. It just means they are less dangerous. I like Slug-Go Plus because it delivers Spinosad in a bait form, so that only the pests that actually eat the bait are affected by it. I almost never, probably less than once per year, use Spinosad in any other formulation in my garden. As a pelleted fire ant bait or as SlugGo Plus, I'll use it. As a liquid spray? Nope. I've had the same bottle of Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew (active ingredient is spinosad) in my shed for about 5 years and haven't even used 1/10th of the bottle. I'm sure it isn't even any good any more and ought to just throw it away.

A lof of people are unhappy with SlugGo and SlugGo Plus because of the perceived (and likely real) danger involved in one of its inactive ingredients. Well, you know, I understand that, but SlugGo and SlugGo Plus still are safer than the equivalent synthetic product, so when I do use it, I know I am chosing the safest product of that kind. I also don't use SlugGo Plus, containing Spinosad, if it is a case where plain old SlugGo (Active ingredient Iron Phosphate) will do. The truth is that there's almost nothing we can use in our gardens to kill pests that doesn't have some kind of downside to using it.

The older I get, the less and less I use anything at all in the garden. I stopped using Bt years ago, though I won't say I'll never use it again---just that I try everything else, including insect netting to exclude pests or handpicking pests off plants---first, and by doing that, can avoiding using Bt 'kurstaki' 99% of the time. I won't spray liquid Spinosad because of its effect on beneficial insects. I don't like to use neem oil in the garden. I won't spray soap on my plants. Once I run down the list of things I'll still use, as needed and on a limited basis, there's not much left. I like that. I like knowing I am eating food that hasn't been sprayed with anything. In the real world, though, cases will arise when sometimes you do need to use BT. We had one year when the climbing cutworms and army worms were literally eating young gardens down to bare ground. No plant of any kind was safe for them. Everyone used everything that year---generally Sevin or something stronger if they used synthetics, and Bt 'kurstaki' if they were using organics only. I expect we'll have that sort of year again one of these days, and I'll be out spraying Bt along with everyone else, but I won't be happy about having to do it.

When I am about to spray something on my edible garden plants, I have one question I ask myself that stops me from spraying 99% of the time. I ask myself if I'd take that product, whether it is synthetic or organic in origin, and put it in a bowl and put it on my dining table for us to eat during a meal. You might guess that the answer is no 99.9% (okay, 100%) of the time. It isn' even a fair test, because when we spray products on our plants, as long as we are not using systemic products, they are on the surface of the plants and can be washed off. Of course, we have to follow label directions for each product and wait X number of days until we can harvest and safely consume the food. Still, my favorite thing about eating home-grown food is knowing that most of the time, it hasn't been sprayed with one single thing. Many of the foods we buy at grocery stores are sprayed with multiple products. Some are sprayed multiple times per week. Even if I do have to spray my garden plants with something, it might be only once or twice during its lifetime, so I know our home-grown food is much safer to consume than conventional grocery store produce. Still, by asking myself that question above, I stop myself from spraying my plants almost every single time. It is a very high standard for a gardener to hold themself to, but I try. If I wouldn't eat it, I really don't want it in my garden. At least with the pelleted baits, they aren't really on our food---they are on the ground and only absorbed by whatever eats them, so using them bothers me less. Using something like DE doesn't bother me, but since it doesn't work while wet, it isn't very useful in OK in springtime. Handpicking insects doesn't bother me and in the years when I handpick and destroy things like Colorado Potato Beetles or squash bugs or whatever, I've noticed I often don't see them for another year or two or three. I think when you handpick, you watch for them carefully and kill every single one you see and none of them survive to breed and create more. When you spray, some of them always survive and go on to breed and create the next generation, so I find handpicking is more effective, long term, than spraying anyway. It just requires time---and gloves! I don't handpick anything bare-handed.

Dawn

I do use collards as a trap crop. I was about to jerk them out one year because of the damage and realized the collards were the only thing really being hammered so I left them until the flea beetles left. It worked really well to keep all my other greens safe b

I may hold off doing anything then. But last year we had a priblem with the little demons in the house, which if that happens all bets are off. I can handle the crickets, they get fed to the turtle. But freaky alien mutant bugs get a quick death sentence.

I've heard they can come into the house but haven't witnessed that myself. Hope I never do.

Trust me, you don't. Little monsters were everywhere last year.

My parents live in Michigan and they get earwigs in the house - they love water and hang out in the bathtub and sink faucets and when they turn the water on they wash out or scurry out :(