PESTS! I do not use chemicals or insecticides and with the warmer than usual spring and a very hot early and mid summer we had more than fair share pests. Aphids, grub worms, flea beetles and grasshoppers were our pests this year.
- Aphids started early on our pepper plants that we had housed during the winter. Pepper plants are perennials, so we decided to keep them alive and transplant them this summer. We lost at least four plants before the last frost. But the ones that made it thrived in our garden this year. The aphids soon lost interest in the pepper plants, for the most part, and moved on to our cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower where we battled them for the remaining of the season. The damage wasn't severe but I did rinse the plant leaves and removed by hand as many as I could.
- I hate grub worms mostly because we had no idea that we had them until we lost squash and cucumbers to them. We only found them in our whiskey barrel plants. The only way we could get rid of them is to dump the whiskey barrel dirt out on a tarp and pick through the dirt and remove them. Robins love grub worms so we made quick friends this year and served them their delicacy! See picture above of grub worms.
- Flea beetles were not a huge problem and I only saw a few, because they are real quick to jump out of sight. But I suspected it was flea beetles when I found leaves eaten through to the point that they looked like lace. I could be wrong. However, I didn't need to do anything about these pest, not enough damage was done.
- Grasshoppers came very late, in August, and only ate our tomato plants and cauliflower leaves primarily. They went for the fruit on the tomato plants and the leaves on the cauliflower. I let my husband pick them out. They were huge!
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