How to Treat Common Garden Pests

Seeing your garden flourish after spending time and resources, planting flowers, fruits, and vegetables brings so much joy. However, it is essential to stay vigilant and proactive in protecting your plants from garden pest infestation. It is heart-breaking to lose your plants mainly if you depend on them for food and additional income. Therefore, watch out for these common pests in your garden.

Japanese Beetles

It is effortless to spot a Japanese beetle because of its glossy greenback that resembles jewels. However, it is difficult to control them because even after killing every grub in your garden, they will likely migrate to your yard from the neighbors. They attack small fruits, vegetables, and flowers, particularly roses.

It is best to be vigilant if you have roses in your garden because once a Japanese beetle comes out of the ground, it will go straight to rose plants. It is common in every state east of the Mississippi, so it is essential to invest in pest control in North Virginia. Develop a habit of shaking them off your plants every morning, use floating row covers, spray them using insecticidal soap, and set baited traps.

Aphids

These soft, tiny, and pear-shaped insects cause a lot of problems; they are mainly black, green, grey, yellow, and sometimes pink colored. You will mostly find aphids in flowers, fruits, shade trees, vegetables, and ornamentals. It is difficult to notice them until they cause visible problems because they often congregate on the leaves’ underside.

The signs of an aphid infestation include yellowish spots, curled and sticky leaves, or sooty mold’s appearance on the leaves. Control them by spraying plants with water, apply garlic or hot-pepper repellent sprays, and promote native parasites and predators like lady beetles and aphid midges.

Scales

Scales suck the plant’s sap hence weakening the plants. Signs of their infestation include yellowing and dropping of leaves and the excretion of honeydew in fruits and foliage. More than 1000 species of this pest live in North America’s greenhouse plants, backyard trees, houseplants, and ornamental shrubs.

You can purchase natural predators like lacewing and ladybugs, prune infected leaves, branches, and twigs, or organic pesticides to control scales. Additionally, for minimal infestations, you can spray hand pick or dab each pest with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol.

Mexican Bean Beetle

These pests are indigenous to Mexico but rampant in many states found east of the Rocky Mountains and some areas in Colorado, Utah, Texas, Nebraska, and Arizona. Although they cause most destruction in their larvae life stage, adults can also defoliate plants and cause severe losses. They accumulate in fields with widespread bean plantation feeding on plants like lima bean, soybean, snap bean, and cowpea.

Mexican bean beetle removes the leaf’s lower epidermis hence killing the upper cell layers and causing a lacy transparent appearance. It is prudent to inspect your plants early in the summer for a quick response in case of infestation.

Control them using floating row covers, handpicking, planting soybean trap crops, and treat severely infected fields using insecticides. You can also buy and introduce Pediobius refoveolatus to the farm at first sight of larvae.

Flea Beetles

Flea beetles are tiny dark insects with a shiny coat and big rear legs that tend to leap like fleas if interrupted. There are several species of this pest, and while some attack specific plants, others wreak havoc in a wide variety. The most susceptible crops are kales, broccoli, turnips, cabbage, and radishes.

Adult flea beetles cause many problems during planting seasons, so watch out for young plants with “shotholes” in their leaves; damaged new leaves are often lacy. To get rid of them, dust plain talcum powder on plants, capture them while they fly using white, adhesive traps, or use insecticides early in the season. However, keep in mind that pesticides are unnecessary on mature plants.

Cutworms

The fat segmented larvae chew the plants’ stems from the ground at night and can entirely devour tiny plants between May and June. Some cutworms travel up the tree, causing even more damage. You will see them in young flower and vegetable seedlings.

It is challenging to identify cutworms because various species appear in varying colors and hide inside the soil during the day. Some cutworms are brown, grey, black, green, or pink. Also, you can find some with stripes, spots, or soil hues.

All the damages done by cutworms occur during their larvae stage, and the destruction is more severe in untilled farms, so make sure you plow your farm well before planting. Early plantation and weeding also help. Create barriers by placing cardboard collars or aluminum foil on transplants to keep them out or pesticides to kill cutworms.

Taking prevention measures save you time, resources, stress, and raise your chances of reaping plentiful produce. Therefore, use the correct fertilizer, completely composted waste, cultivate disease-resistant plants, water well, and choose the site appropriately.