Considering how tasty home-grown vegetables are, you shouldn’t be too surprised to find that other creatures want to share in your harvest. The following sections help you identify insects, animals (sorry, we can’t do much about your neighbors), and diseases to which your vegetable garden is particularly vulnerable. If you want more detailed information, click here
In order to fight properly, you need to know your enemy, and insect pests command the largest army of invaders. The following list includes the most common insect pests that are likely to infest your vegetables:
Aphids: Tiny, pear-shaped pests infest many vegetables, including cabbage, cucumbers, and broccoli.
Caterpillars and worms: Moth and butterfly larvae, including tomato hornworms and cabbage loopers, are avid eaters and can cause substantial damage to a variety of plants.
Corn earworms (or fruitworms): Found throughout the United States, these 11/2-inch-long (4-cm) caterpillars attack a variety of plants, including tomatoes, beans, peas, peppers, potatoes, and squash. In spring, night-flying moths lay yellow eggs on the undersides of leaves. The resulting first-generation caterpillars feed on the leaves. You find the eggs of later generations on corn silks; the emerging caterpillars feed on the silks and the kernels at the tips of the corn ears, just inside the husks, as shown in the image below.
Corn infested with earworms is still fine to eat. Just break off the tip of the ear of corn and munch away.
Cutworms: Half-inch-long, grayish caterpillars eat the stems of young seedlings, causing them to fall over like small timbers.
Flea beetles: Tiny 1/16-inch beetles feed on vegetable leaves, riddling them with small shot holes. Various species feed on just about any plant in a garden, including eggplant, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, corn, potatoes, spinach, peppers, and sweet potatoes. Adult beetles can spread diseases - wilt in sweet corn, for example - and larvae feed on roots. Adults overwinter in the soil and on garden debris, emerging in early spring, and they can destroy young plants quickly.
Japanese beetles: These 1/2-inch-long (1-cm) beetles feed on the foliage of many vegetables, including corn, beans, and tomatoes.
Nematodes: These microscopic wormlike pests infect soil, especially in warm climates. They feed on the roots of plants and attack many vegetables, including carrots, tomatoes, and potatoes.
Snails and slugs: These soft-bodied mollusks feed on tender leaves and flowers during the cool of the night or during rainy weather.
Spider mites: Barely visible arachnids often infest tomatoes and beans.
Thrips: These almost-invisible troublemakers commonly feed on beans, cabbage, onions, and eggplants, often passing on diseases as they feed.
Whiteflies: Looking like small white gnats, they congregate on the undersides of leaves, especially on tomatoes and beans.
If you need to take further action, start with physical barriers that keep the bugs away from your plants. The next step is using pesticides that are effective against a certain pest, that are pretty safe to use, and that have a mild impact on the rest of your garden’s life forms. For more on pesticides, click here....read more
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