As we keep talking about, we’ve been suffering some pest damage as the season goes on and our garden keeps growing. We have two major pests hanging around: flea beetles and cucumber beetles. There are slugs around, too, but they move a lot slower and so are easier to smoosh and thus less of a headache.
The flea beetles seem to be especially found of brassicas: radish, kale, cabbage, mustard greens, though there are exceptions to this. The turnips, for example, are doing just fine. The damage isn’t restricted to brassica crops, either, and there is a lot of damage to our beet crops, as well as some early damage to our tomato plants and some to our little eggplants. Nasturtium, which are supposed to repel insects from our squash plants, are also being devoured.
The cucumber beetles stick mainly to the cucurbrits, which includes squash, cucumbers, zucchini, melons, and pumpkins. We’ve planted a lot of those crops, though, so even though they aren’t devouring everything, the damage causes some concern.
Not all of our plants are suffering damage, though. A lot are doing really, really well with minimal damage. For example:
- Turnips
- Lettuce
- Peppers
- Chard
- Transplanted kale
- Beans
- Peas
- Tomatillos
- Basil
- Various herbs
- Clover
- Corn
- New tomato growth
We hope that the pests calm down and go away, but we are still considering remedies for making them leave. We’re planning on spraying a mix of soap and water onto the plants that are really damaged, something that we have read helps repel pests. However, we’ve also read that brassica don’t take well to this treatment. If nothing else, our row covers will be coming off the squash soon and we will have those to work with. Of course, we’ll let you know if anything works really well.
