Garden Pests: How to Manage Leafhoppers in Your Garden
Leafhoppers are tiny insects that suck sap from your plants while spreading pathogens.
Leafhoppers are tiny insects that suck sap from your plants while spreading pathogens.
While we love having our pet rabbit to help with making free fertilizer, wild rabbits can be quite troublesome for your garden. These small mammals like to eat a lot of your greens and can be tricky to manage once they know where the food is. It is important to keep them out of your garden to protect your food!
These mites are extremely small relatives of spiders. They are typically found on the undersides of leaves. An easy way to check for them is to place a sheet of white paper underneath the leaves and gently tap. If you see moving specks on the paper then you have a problem.
Birds can be both a pest and an ally in the garden. Birds help with pest control eating a wide variety of insects including aphids, caterpillars, mosquitos, and spiders. On the downside, they will also steal seeds and eat your tomatoes!
The harlequin bugs, or stink bugs, are primarily black with brightly colored markings in orange, red, or yellow on the wings. It lays its barrel-shaped eggs in clusters. These bugs pierce the plant and suck out the juices, causing them to wilt and turn brown. If left untreated, the plant will eventually die.
Thrips are tiny straw-colored insects with two pairs of wings. They can damage plants by sucking out their juices causing discoloration and even death!
Cutworms are the caterpillar of a brown or gray night-flying moth. The caterpillars are black, gray, or brown and are about an inch and a half long. These jerks can go through your entire garden of new seedlings extremely quickly! It’s important to watch out for them in your garden and do your best to protect again them. They look like little brown worms, and they like to spin around into circles around the plant, cutting it off at the base.
We don’t have to worry about deer here in the city, but those of you in the country know all too well how destructive and challenging deer can be. They can jump over any fence shorter than 8 feet, and there are very few things they won’t eat.
Aphids are tiny insects that can usually be found in groups on the undersides of leaves and stems. A few aphids can’t do much, but they reproduce quickly, are born pregnant, and can take over a plant in no time at all!
Cucumber beetles look similar to ladybugs. They can either be spotted or striped with yellow and black coloring. The adults feed on stems, foliage, and flowers. The larvae weaken the plant by feeding on the roots. They also spread bacterial wilt and squash mosaic virus.