It can be devastating to lose your vegetables to pests.
Pests are tiny organisms famous for ruining crops and food, infecting livestock, and spreading diseases. Garden pests can severely harm vegetables.
They can drastically impair the quality of your product or possibly kill the entire crop if you fail to manage and control them carefully. According to research gate pests and diseases are the most common constraints to vegetable production, limiting farmers' ability to achieve higher crop yields and provide food security.
Here are the common vegetable insects that can attack your garden and how to do away with them.
But before that let’s get to know a few things about insects.
What You Need to Know About Insects Pests
Not all insects are pests. Some bugs are beneficial to the garden. These good guys are known as "beneficial insects," and they can greatly benefit your garden by consuming pest insects that would otherwise feast on your plants.
Examples of beneficial insects include:
- Playing mantises
- Robber flies
- Hoverflies
- Assassin bugs
- Ground beetles
- Ladybugs
- Green lacewings
- Spiders
- Soldier beetles
You should look for a way to attract these beneficial insects to your vegetable garden to help you put insect pests at bay.
Insect pests are tiny creatures that destroy your vegetables or kill your plants altogether.
When we talk about insect pests we are referring to:
- Aphids
- Caterpillars
- Cutworms etc.
Now that you know what insect pests are, let’s learn how to keep them away from your vegetable garden.
Common Vegetable Insect Pests and How to Get Rid of Them
Note. The best way to manage insect pests is to prevent them from invading your vegetable garden in the first place. It can be tricky to eliminate them once they have established themselves in your garden.
Keep them out of your garden for good by using insect netting and row covers in your garden. After all, prevention is better than cure.
That said, let’s see how you remove insect pests from your vegetable farm
Aphids
Various types of aphids attack greens, but peach aphids and potato aphids are the most prevalent. These insects are usually tiny, pear-shaped, green, pink, orange, or dark red, and have lengthy sucking mouthparts.
They feed on the sap of the leaves and stems, producing leaf cupping and curling and restricted plant growth. They may also spread diseases like sooty mold. You can apply a broad-spectrum insecticide on the branches and the leaves to control aphids.
Armyworms
Beet and southern armyworms are the most prevalent vegetable armyworms, and both are adult moths. The brownish-gray moths cause damage to vegetables by depositing eggs on blossoms and leaves.
The larva is more dangerous: it eats vegetative tissue and bores holes in the crop crown. You can treat armyworms with pesticides that you can apply as a foliar spray. You can also manage weed control and agricultural residue destruction.
Beetles
Cucumber bugs, seedcorn beetles, and click beetles are the most frequent beetles found in vegetable gardens. Cucumber beetles have a yellow or green thoracic and body and are small, oval-shaped insects.
You can identify seedcorn beetles because they have dark brown wings with light-colored stripes.
Wireworms, sometimes known as click beetles, are dark brown with short hairs and a massive tooth-like protrusion. These pests target every part of the plant, including the roots and crowns. They can spread illnesses like bacterial wilt and mosaic virus.
You will notice them for causing notched leaves, uneven patches, and leaf window panning. You can use botanical insecticides to control them once you identify the pests.
Intercropping, early planting, weed management, flood irrigation, use of Japanese beetle netting, the introduction of predatory animals such as birds, spider preys, and ladybugs can all help to control them.
Green Vegetable Bug
Mealy, squash, and stink bugs are the most popular vegetable pests. The three problems are notorious for piercing the stems and leaves of plants and sucking the sap, resulting in crop deformation and regional growth.
They are popular in sheltered areas and come in pale pink, grey, or white.
Organic sprays, such as garlic fire, and predators, like wasps, can help control these bugs. You can also use other physical means such as squeezing and crushing by hand and smothering oil to manage them.
Carrot Rust Flies
Carrot rust flies have an acute sense of smell and can identify carrot seedlings with only two leaves. At 60-70 degrees F temperatures, these eggs hatch in 6-10 days under optimal conditions.
Coastal locations are more vulnerable as a result. As the larvae emerge, they burrow and begin feeding on the tiny rootlets, eventually moving on to the main tuber as they mature.
Using Japanese beetle netting at planting time is a simple way to keep carrot rust fly at bay. These keep the parent carrot insects from releasing their eggs in the soil surrounding your plants.
To avoid egg laying around your carrot offspring, sow seeds after the adult flies have appeared in late June when planting carrots.
Cutworm
Cutworms can be a nuisance in the garden. They are the larvae of the night-flying moths (in the caterpillar stage). The larvae of the moths, that is, the cutworms, damage young plants by chewing the stems at or near the earth's surface.
Cutworms are difficult to notice in the first place because they hide in the soil throughout the day. They emerge at night to feast on the roots of plants.
If you want to get rid of cutworms, use organic pesticides. You can also deter Cutworms can by washing your plants with a solution of bleach-free dish detergent and water.
Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring bacterium that targets several caterpillar-type pests, is another option. It's an excellent approach to get rid of cutworms in the garden because it's good for the environment.
Snails
Snails will consume just about any plant, although they prefer the fragile foliage of young plants and green crops like lettuce. Missing seedlings or big, irregularly shaped holes in plants or fruits signal their presence. They may also create a trail of gleaming slime on leaf surfaces.
A beer trap is a simple and inexpensive approach to get rid of slugs. Make one by partially filling a container with beer and placing half of it near sensitive plants.
Alternatively, you can expose slugs to natural predators by removing potential slug shelters. Slugs won't be able to survive in your garden if you make it unsuitable for them to live in.
Flea Beetle
Adult flea beetles eat on the leaves and stems, causing the most harm. In the leaves, they make shallow pits and tiny circular, irregular holes. Flea beetles are the only insects that can cause this kind of damage.
Seedlings are less resistant to feeding damage than transplants. However, both can suffer serious harm if flea beetle populations are high.
To limit overwintering locations, remove garden debris and plow under weeds. Floating row coverings are particularly effective when you place seedlings and left in place until the plants are old enough to resist beetle damage.
To catch adults, place yellow sticky traps throughout the vegetable rows. Apply beneficial nematodes to the soil to kill the larval stage, limit root feeding and prevent the next generation of adults from appearing.
Conclusion
Pests are microscopic creatures that harm crop output, cause human disease and assault livestock. You often get rid of pests by using pesticides.
An alternative strategy is biological control, which involves introducing predatory insects into a garden to feed on pests and keep them under control. A biological control method is an environmentally friendly and safe method of improving food safety and safeguarding human health.
Since 1996, Eyouagro has been an excellent partner for farmers, helping them preserve their livelihood from harsh climatic conditions and persistent pests. Farmers that use our products help to minimize the use of hazardous pesticides and chemicals that harm our environment, resulting in safer, healthier human consumption. We guarantee the quality of our products.
Contact us to find out suitable netting protection for your vegetables, or order online at Eyouagro.
