Sunday, November 7, 2010

Look underneath your leaves for Pests.

While Hunting the other day I happened to notice a female house wren flying from tree to tree looking underneath every leaf. It seemed like an efficient way to hunt because she knew bugs would just love to hang out underneath leaves to protect themselves from the elements and and avoid being eaten. This got me thinking about my garden and after an uneventful day of hunting I came home and started looking underneath the leaves of my vegetable plants and I was surprised. There were many mosquito's, I guess due to the cold weather setting in the mosquito's are lethargic but nonetheless, they were there hiding underneath the leaves. I killed about ten. yessssss!! To my surprise I also saw these little buggers. I am doing research on them. They look like aphids but Im not sure. I noticed that many small holes were on my eggplant leaves and when I looked underneath them I noticed that there was an infestation of these leaf suckers. Going forward I plan to use insecticidal soaps and stronger applications as needed if beneficial bugs can't keep these vampires at bay. But at least I know where these guys love to hang out now and be ready for war as I plan for next years garden

3 comments:

Lanie said...

Great to discover your blog. Very insightful...and so true that often the pests are on the underside of the leaves. I love the concept of watching what other animals do to find food in order to help us in the garden.

ATW said...

Thx for stopping by Lanie; if were not fighting with life isuues were fighting with bugs ughhhh!

jelly beans said...

we are having the same problem with our lemon tree :(
greetings from Barcelona.

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