What's eating in your garden today?

Definitely looks like deer browsed on them. That's what I look for in October while bow hunting. Looks like your garden is a good place to put up a stand. LOL

I'm getting a few holes in the leaves of several plants. Every now and then I catch one of those little black worms. But most of my garden is in great shape. I have some sweet 100 tomatoes setting fruit now. The temperatures were in the low to mid 90's all last week. No rain but the Mel's mix retains the water very well.

rschack, cabbage worms can be picked off one at a time, or sprayed with
BT (bacillus thuringiensis) spelling may be wrong because those are tiny letters on the bottle.

I use the "Safer" brand of Caterpillar Killer. Most effective when caterpillars are still tiny and have not caused lots of damage.

Mix with water following directions carefully, spray the leaves top and bottom getting thorough coverage. Can be repeated every three to seven days. Safe to eat the produce the next day.

The little holes are definitely not slugs. Up until Beryl came along, we hadn't had enough rain for those things to come out of the woods, and I haven't seen any slug trails at all. (I'd definitely recognize them, having grown up in Seattle )

I just realized today that the very bottom leaves have been nipped off the plant too, so now I'm confused a bit. I suppose that the deer could eat top & bottom leaves, leaving the middle ones alone...but I would think there are other things in my garden they would've gone after first before the pepper. I notice they're leaving the cayenne pepper plant they can reach alone and only eating the bell pepper. I wonder, if I sprinkled some hot pepper powder on my bell pepper leaves, would that keep the deer away from them? There's no new damage today...assuming the bottom leaves didn't get noticed earlier because of my sore back.

Don, you'd be welcomed by me in hunting the deer but I think the city would object. Maybe they'll go down to the lake and get eaten by the alligators. Our neighborhood fox is certainly not going to chase them away; he's been around as long as we've lived here and hasn't kept them off.

The stupid squirrels are still digging in anything that's not covered. I came home to holes in just about every tub and pot. Thankfully nothing was eaten. I went to my daughter's school's open house for about an hour, came back, and the furry little @#$%s were back! When I looked out the window, one of them was sitting in the zucchini's tub, digging up its roots, and then another popped its head up over the tub to see what was going on.

Grrr... they're lucky I'm too much of a softie to get a pellet gun! I won't have time until this weekend to build enclosures for everything (and still need to figure out the best way to do it).

And all of my butterbean edamame plants have rust.

Uh, Coelli, you mean the dog pictured on your avatar isn't a squirrel-hunting dog?

He would LOVE to hunt squirrels! And I would love to leave him (and my other little guy) outside for a while to protect the garden... but we live in coyote country and neither of my dogs is big enough to be outside without a chaperone. Maybe the stupid coyotes could make themselves useful for once and take care of the squirrels!

Yesterday while planting a sweet banana pepper -- right next to the hole a 2 inch diameter toad popped up out of the soil mix. He/she was completely covered in Mel's mix and glittered with vermiculite, actually pretty cute.

Found earwigs in the beans. I've seen them on the outside of my tulle, but now I'm wondering if that's what's eating my collards. Gonna try the oil dishes.

Kay

So far, just the neighborhood rabbit. Celery seems to be a 'trap crop' for the bunny, as it has left nearly everything else alone since I planted it! There are a few nibbles on my Dragon's Tongue beans as well, but I only planted them to get rid of the seeds. Altho' they look cool, I much prefer the taste and texture of the Tenderpods and Blue Lakes. So, bunny can have Dragon Celery breath if he will leave my melons and taters alone!

GG

Furbalsmom wrote:rschack, cabbage worms can be picked off one at a time, or sprayed with
BT (bacillus thuringiensis) spelling may be wrong because those are tiny letters on the bottle.

I use the "Safer" brand of Caterpillar Killer. Most effective when caterpillars are still tiny and have not caused lots of damage.

Mix with water following directions carefully, spray the leaves top and bottom getting thorough coverage. Can be repeated every three to seven days. Safe to eat the produce the next day.

I've been picking them off by hand and that seems to be working alright. When I first noticed them I had to pick off at least five of them from my one cabbage plant and when I checked today I only picked off one.

Okay guys, every day seems to find something new and different going on... I mean, WHAT could be causing THIS?!?!?!

Sorry it's fuzzy, I had to hold the camera above my eye level so I couldn't see if it focused...but I think you get the drift. No, none of the lower leaves look like this, only the upper leaves, and so far only a few.

Other thing I found was an extremely mushy spot near the soil line on my round zucchini plant. I don't know if some critter caused it, or if it's just rotting, but I am trying to figure out if I need to pull the plant out before my other squash are infected or infested or whatever. I didn't discover it until the light was too low this evening for photos, so will have to snap one tomorrow. But, if it sounds familiar, give a shout out, would you?

Hmmm...

A few of my bean leaves look like this, as well. I've seen no sign of bugs, nor have I spied the cats nibbling there. Any ideas?

Slugs. It's the weirdest thing. I harvested a radicchio that was just FULL of slugs deep down, but there was no damage to the leaves! I guess maybe they were crawling out to dine on the lettuce at night then hiding in the folds of the radicchio during the day!

Here's what my zucchini looks like:



Any ideas on this? Is it SVB? I've never seen it before, so don't know what to look for.

yep SVB. Seen them second year i planted pumkins also that was same year a large lot of watermelons were planted commercially not far from my home in ocala. (silver springs shore area) If you see any red flying mothlike butterfly like bugs around any curcubits take a swatter to them. I keep a few outside. Also once they lay eggs inside your plant and you notice the "bulge" you can cut them out with a sharp clean Knife and then spray with an anti bactirial. Just make one clean cut a little larger than needed carefully scoop out bug larva. If stem is large enough it will recover in most cases although having a vine type that is rooted in more than one place can make a differance. This will usually get you buy so that fruit that is set will finish well but your main root probably wont support another round of fruiting. But you can start another plant to be ready to go while you wait. Hope this helps. Mary

Yep. That's what mine looked like, too. I have a volunteer pumpkin that although a good part of the stem is shredded, seems to be doing quite well. You may notice inside the stem, that there is a "tunnel" where it has been eating. On my squash plants, it decimated them all.

Test pic of pumkin Grown from a plant that had svb "surgery"

Yesterday afternoon I cut a leaf off one of my Eggplants and at first didn't see anything. Then I noticed a very small catapillar or worm. It was the same color as the leaf and very tiny, maybe 1/4". Then I started noticing more and more of them as they moved. There were at least 10 on the leaf. I sprayed all my plants again in hopes of catching them early enough. Sorry I didn't get a picture.

givvmistamps wrote:Not absolutely sure what's eating my bell pepper leaves, but I have two problems that I believe are unrelated. One is holes in the leaves all over the plant (though it started on the lower leaves first) similar to the holes I find in the Swiss chard, but I can't find a caterpillar or worm like I found on the chard. The other is where entire leaves (except the stem) at the very top of the plant are being eaten. My husband thinks the second problem is deer, so I'm going to put my son's stinky socks out to see if that helps keep them away. Those socks chase those of us who love him away, so they gotta work on deer!

If you have any ideas on what might be eating little holes in the leaves, I'm all ears! I've tried spraying Organicide on it, but it didn't seem to help for very long...but the Organicide is from last year, so maybe it's lost effectiveness? At least I was able to harvest the first peppers off the plant today. I just hope there are enough leaves left by the time I chase off the critters so my next batch manages to grow as big and lovely!

I've been finding itty bitty light green grasshoppers doing that to my plants.

My garden has been completely decimated this year by Squash Bugs, Grasshoppers, and either roof rats or squirrels. Don't know which on the latter but they take one bite from a tomato and leave the rest and its high up on the tomato plant.

Also have some beetles.

Wow, and it started out being such a wonderful lush garden. They came in like a storm and the squash bugs don't care how much soap I put on my tomatoes. The watering and rain keeps washing it off anyway.

Then, I got late blight on a lot of them. So much for heirloom tomatoes.

On the brighter side of things. Only in the state of FL can you rip everything out and start all over again three times per year!

backwoodsgirl123 wrote:On the brighter side of things. Only in the state of FL can you rip everything out and start all over again three times per year!

Can't beat year-round gardening! (SIGH) At least this year in the upper midwest we got an extra 1 1/2 months of spring! I just hope it isn't taken off of fall - I have plans for a fall garden this year.

GG

I am reposting my pics of damage to my potato plants to show what earwig damage is. I have been stressing about the damage to my potatoes because I have been looking and looking for pests (but not at night with a flashlight). Whatever was eating my potatoes was also eating my beans, spinach and other plants. I researched lots of insects, read lots of posts here on SFG, I was finally suspecting the earwigs were getting to my plants. I read about using vegetable oil in short containers and putting them in the garden. I cut down plastic cups to less than 2" and poured used canola oil into the cups and into one short metal container. I put them in my beds last night and this morning I hit pay dirt!

I had about five containers spread out among where the most damage was. I probably got at least 50 earwigs between them all! They were all dead, ha ha ha (that was an evil laugh if you couldn't tell! I left those cups out there since I was too busy with grand kids to dump and refill plus why waste it. I will be putting more containers out tonight in addition to those so as to really put a major dent in the population. I noticed I have lots of earwigs in areas where I haven't gotten all the weeds pulled and/or dug near the fence enclosing all my beds. I will take some pictures tomorrow morning after my all out war on those creepy things! I am also going to cut the severely damaged leaves off to see if this does the trick and I think it will!

Deer, This is the first year that they have ever gotten this close to the house. Usually I make sure to leave the dog out close to the garden and we moved the kennel last fall, hmmm, now what to do. They ate the tops of a few peppers and some impatiens, so I guess they have been pretty generous so far.

So I found what at first glance I thought was striped cucumber beetles on my tomatillo plants. After a bit more digging, I found they were not striped cucumber beetles, but three lined potato beetles.

Three lined potato beetles have red heads:


Striped cucumber beetles do not:


I'd much rather have these than the cucumber beetle since these do not spread bacterial wilt like the cucumber beetles. Thus far I've only found a couple and have squished them. I did find three or four eggs laid in a row that I destroyed. While looking for beetle eggs, I also found a ladybug on the underside of a tomatillo leaf, maybe it was eating eggs?

Here is a good resource for three lined potato beetles:
http://extension.unh.edu/resources/files/Resource001192_Rep1517.pdf