Here are some helpful factsheets that may help as you deal with pests in your vegetable garden.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
What is IPM?, Entomological Society of America: https://www.entsoc.org/sites/default/files/files/Science-Policy/ESA-Factsheet-IPM.pdf
What is IPM?, NYS IPM, Cornell University: https://cals.cornell.edu/new-york-state-integrated-pest-management/outreach-education/what-ipm
Pesticides
What is a Pesticide?, Cornell Cooperative Extension Pesticide Safety Program: https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cornell.edu/dist/b/9225/files/2021/09/What-Is-a-Pesticide-PSEP-Fact-Sheet.pdf
Hazard vs. Risk, Cornell Cooperative Extension Pesticide Safety Education Program: https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cornell.edu/dist/b/9225/files/2021/08/Hazard-vs-Risk-CCE-PSEP-Fact-Sheet.pdf
Home Remedies to Control Pests, Cornell Cooperative Extension Pesticide Safety Education Program: https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cornell.edu/dist/b/9225/files/2021/08/Home-Remedies-to-Control-Pests-CCE-PSEP-Fact-Sheet.pdf
Pests
Aphids
Aphids in Home Yards and Gardens, University of Minnesota Extension: https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/aphids
Aphids, University of Maryland Extension: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/aphids-vegetables
Cucumber Beetles
Cucumber Beetles in Home Gardens, University of Minnesota Extension: https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/cucumber-beetles
Cucumber Beetles, University of Maryland Extension: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/cucumber-beetles-spotted-or-striped-vegetables/
Flea Beetles
Flea Beetles, University of Minnesota Extension: https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/flea-beetles
Flea Beetles on Vegetables, University of Maryland Extension: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/flea-beetles-vegetables/
Imported Cabbage Moth
Caterpillars on Cole Crops, University of Minnesota Extension: https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/caterpillars-cole-crops
Imported Cabbageworm on Vegetables, University of Maryland Extension: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/imported-cabbageworm-vegetables/
Slugs
Slugs in Home Gardens, University of Minnesota Extension: https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/slugs
Slugs and Snails, University of Maryland Extension: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/slugs-and-snails-vegetables/
Squash Bugs
Squash Bugs in the Home Garden, University of Minnesota Extension: https://extension.umn.edu/fruit-and-vegetable-insects/squash-bugs
Squash Bugs on Vegetables, University of Maryland Extension: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/squash-bug-vegetables/
Squash Vine Borer
Pest Watch: Squash Vine Borer, GOC Blog: https://blogs.cornell.edu/master-gardeners-cce-oc/2021/06/23/pest-watch-squash-vine-borer/
Tomato Hornworm
Tomato Hornworms in Home Gardens, University of Minnesota Extension: https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/tomato-hornworms
Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to provide correct, complete, and up-to-date pesticide recommendations. Nevertheless, changes in pesticide regulations occur constantly and human errors are still possible. These recommendations are not a substitute for pesticide labeling. Please read the label before applying any pesticide. The information given herein is supplied with the understanding that no discrimination is intended and no endorsement by Cooperative Extension is implied.
Welcome to gardening questions answered pest in your vegetable garden today we’ll I’ll be joined with three of our Master Gardener volunteers Lynn chenny Cecilia Lillard and Kathleen Readington iser so let us get started one of the most common questions we get in the summer is what’s eating my
Vegetables and what can I do about it so we have a solution for that it’s called integrated Pest Management and it’s a multi-pronged approach it combines science and Common Sense to have the least environmental impact and it’s safe to use at home on farms it minimizes risks to people and other creatures that
You’re not trying to control and we’re going to go through the steps of the process there are five steps the first step is to identify what the pest is if you have trouble with that you can submit pictures to the helpline we’re happy to help with that
After you figure out what it is you have you move on to do I need to worry about it evaluate how much damage they’re doing if you just have a few pests it may be fine and then the third step can I prevent it in some way sometimes that’s next year planning a
Disease resistant crop physical barriers changing the way you grow things if that doesn’t work then step four is to take action and when we do that we’re going to go through the it’s called the IPM pyramid there m there are five steps to go through in that and once you do take
Action the final step is to monitor it do you still have a problem do you need to move up a step in the IPM pyramid or was one solution perfect for this year when we go through the IPM pyramid there are five different tactics it goes from prevention up to
Eradication and they talk toxicity increases particularly in the past the top two steps so the first step starts with cultural are you plant the right plant in the right place are you watering at night when you should be watering in the morning are you cleaning
Up in the fall things like that are you letting pests over winter so first we take care of the cultural problems if that doesn’t work then we move to physical and mechanical do you need to weed are you multing properly some sometimes a light rototilling interrupts the life cycle of
Some of the pests those sorts of things that’s step two if that doesn’t work there are biological Solutions every pest has a Predators can you get predators in there or parasitoids or are there diseases for those pests that are not toxic to humans we try those three things first after
That we move on to chemical these are not traditional pesticides but you have to bear in mind a pesticide is anything that kills a pest so horticultural oil dious Earth kale and Clay those are still pesticides those are called biopesticides or biorational pesticides so they’re either made from an animal a
Plant a fungus or a microb they can either destroy the or they can inhibit some part of their growth process or they could just repel them so that’s them are starting to reach into toxicity not so much for humans the final step if none of those others work are conventional pesticides and those
Are the most toxic you really have to read the label and you need to make sure you have the exact pesticide for the pest that you have which is why that identification is so important because conventional pesticides are not targeted the way chemical pesticides are they will kill beneficials as well as
The target Pest and that’s why it is so important to read the labels once you’ve tried the other four steps in that pyramid if you have to use a pesticide you have to read the label some people like home remedies Grandma used to spray vinegar on the weeds to kill them
Vinegar contains acetic acid kitchen vinegar is 5% you can buy up to 30% at Home Depot or Lowe’s or someplace like that it’s corrosive to your eyes and if it gets in waterways it’s toxic to Aquatic Life so stay away from home remedies like that and stick with the
Biopesticides if you have to go that route and always always always read the label thank you so much cilia and so now we’re going to turn over to Kathleen she’s going to tell us about some of our the pests you’re going to find in your garden so so first question is what can
I do about apids all right and those are the little bugs there if you’re having aphids usually they’re green but they can be black red Brown yellow or gray you’re going to notice they have like these two little cornicles in the back that look like little tail pipes that’s like a key
Feature depending on the type of apit it might be they might be bigger or smaller they can be winged or wingless and they’re a little bit oval or pearshaped honestly if it’s green they kind ofat they love all kinds of plants so you’re going to find them on your brasas CCIS
Legum solonas they in the picture here they’re on a cabbage aits tend to be in large colonies um signs of them would be like the cluster the leaves can be distorted you can see over here there’s some ants and they they do discharge a honeydew which is a Sweet Life a sweet like
Substance that some of the other Little Critters are going to be eating and you can also see that you have Leaf curl as one of the symptoms of and you can see them on the underside of leaf so since they are so common there are some
Easier ways to deal with them such as just spraying them down with your gardening hose getting on the underside um and and just using the water okay you don’t want to over fertilize your plants because they’re going to be attracted to any plant that has a higher nitrogen content for
Biological controls you’re going to want to encourage beneficial um insects like your lady beetles your Lace Wigs the serapid livas the paracoid was and you can do that by planting attractive plants elsewhere in your yard so you can try to get these to come to your garden area some other
Options would be Horticultural oils like NE oil and seti cdal soaps you’re going to want to be going to the underside of your plant leaves but a lot of times aphids are there and they don’t necessarily mean you’re going to be having a problem unless you had some of
Those earlier symptoms so the next question is how do I get rid of cucumber beetles listen they’re kind of cute for a bug in my opinion they come striped or they come with the polka dots on them and they would have 12 dots they have a black head and black anten ey you’re
Going to find these on your cubits which is your cucumbers melons pumpkins and all types of squash and you can see the striped ones here busy munching away if you did not put a cover on your crop you might see dead seedlings like in the top left picture you’re going to see
Holes in the stems and leaves it could be holes in the blossoms fruit and they are a carrier of viruses so you may see bacterial Wilt as one of the result of having them in your garden one of the best treatments is really preventative care so you want to be cleaning up your
Garden at the end of the season so that you don’t have any dead leaf litter you don’t want to place for them to be overwintering you’re going to want to lightly till your soil so you can help interrupt their life cycle once you’ve got your seedlings just starting you’re
Going to want to put your cover crop or your row cover on top of it and then you’re going to want to remove that as soon as the plants start to flower so that pollination can occur um one of the things you can see like in the bottom
Picture that there is a squash or cucumber plant that’s been sprayed with with kale and Clay it’s a mixture of water and the clay it’s on the um you’re going to be spraying the underside you’re going to want to maybe do a couple of applications and reapply after
Rain it interferes with their ability to eat the leaf okay and the other thing you can do is you can plant trap crops such as herrid squash so that they go to the plant that you’re not that interested in as opposed to the crops that you want to raise for biological
Controls once again encouraging beneficial insects like ground be needles and parasitoids you can’t really buy these but you can encourage them with the other plants you put on your property for another option would be uh using either neem oil or pyrin okay once again it’s spraying on the
Undersides the neem oil I think makes it not taste so good so you end up starving your little bug friend but you’re going to really need to judge how much damage do I have do really want to get involved with this type of activity but they are
Safe and they’ll be washed off when you harvest your vegetables I just want to add one comment about chemicals no pesticides are safe but these are just lower risk because it’s a chemical we can’t say that it’s safe we just can say that it’s a lower risk chemical ah okay
What is making all these small holes in the leaves of my eggplant these are the flea beetles so they’re small they’re a little bit oval they’re black and they hop like flea they have big back legs and you can see them if you have them they’re going to like start jumping
Around when you disturb the leaves okay they like to be on your brasas your broccoli your collards your turnup grains they apparently love an eggplant and sometimes you can find them on some of the Sol aous crops but not as common I would say that when you look at this
It’s like a buckshot or a splatter paint job you’re going to see all those little feeding wounds kind of splattered all over the leaf once again you’re going to really want to do a good job cleaning up your garden at the end of the season you’re going to want to make sure that
You’re doing a good job weeding your garden because you don’t want one of your bug friend pests I guess we should say going from the weed saying woohoo that’s great but I’m done here and moving onto your plan because they do come out earlier in the year if you can
Stall your planting until later when the ground gets warm you might get lucky and the flea beetles might have eaten something else instead of your plants okay once again doing that row cover will be beneficial but you do need to remove it once the plants have got
Flowers so pollination can occur and you can also spray these with the Kalin clay but once again going on the underside and like this year with so much rain you would need to reapply once it’s washed off so you can use the neem oil on these
As well as spinosad those are two risk options and you do need to kind of monitor your plants to see you know how is it going with what you’ve done and then you may need to reapply but you need to read the bottle and all the instructions make sure to do
That safely how do I stop caterpillar from destroying my cabbage so this is the imported cabbage Worm okay um you know they they’re kind of cute so you’ve got the little light green larvae stage of the cat pillar then you’ve got that pupo it’s next stage on the bottom side of the leaf then they make that whitish with a little black dot kind of moth butterfly
On it and then you got that big guy that’s big to that one’s easier to pick up so that might be a little bit more common and easier to deal with of the three phases so they love your brasas so they’re going to be on your broccoli cabbage cauliflower kale radishes
Turnips and you can see that little guy eating a hole in the leaf right there okay so the way you’re going to be able to look for them is obviously if you see it but the signs are going to be the irregular holes in the leaves and on the
Bottom side you’re going to see the fro which is the caterpillar poop on it make sure you’re doing a good job cleaning up your garden beds at the year end you’re going to want to put your row covers and these are not fast moving caterpillars you can just pick them off with your
Fingers put them you got a like a with some soapy water and deal with them that way would be like an easy non-invasive approach okay you can um once again encourage the beneficials with other plants on the property to draw them for your lowrisk chemicals you can use the
BT the neem oil pyin or Pinos sads so some of those would be more like types of things that would be going on the ground as opposed to on the leaves so you just basically are trying to interrupt some of their cycle all right thank you so much Kathleen and now we’re
Going to turn it over to Lynn and she’s going to talk about a few more PS in the garden hi everybody um everybody’s favorite is slugs and this is a particularly awful picture Susan I have to say I kind of liked it okay uh I think we probably know what
They look like right they’re slimy soft bodied um they can be anywhere from a quarter of an inch up to 4 in long the little ones actually almost almost don’t even look like slugs I was very interested The Feelers that you see on a slug um the big ones there are actually
Its eyes and the bottom there’s little ones on the bottom those are the that’s what they smell with so something you’ve all wanted to know there you go so what do they like to eat and everything they’ll go from fruit to Greens and identif Ying the damage um they have
Irregular holes there’s a hosta on the right um in my yard that’s a common problem I have and on the left there that’s actually um a corn the leaf of a of a corn plant they also leave slime Trails so which is lovely to find too
How can we manage these things well we promote good air circulation and that’s can be as simple as removing the bottom leaves from your plant say you have uh you know cabbage all the way down to the to the dirt and they’re easily climbing up you could just pull the bottom leaves
Off stake them up again to get raise them off the soil improve soil drainage and remove the hiding places like if you have stones or boards laying around that they can sort of hide under uh they like to come out in the evening so you want to also make sure
That you water in the daytime that’ll help the soil dry out and keep them away a little bit more so how can we manage them with cultural and physical methods well we can handpick them obviously you can create a couple of traps one is putting a flat board down and in the
Morning you can go pick the board up and you should have your collection of slugs hanging on the bottom of it or put the infamous beer trap which is a small like container uh buried level with the dirt and some beer in it and they’ll go in
And they will drown um diet Tous Earth will work because it’s irritating to their skin but that is something that has to be done when the uh when it’s dry once it rains you’ve got to reply it’s pretty useless um another interesting method is the copper barrier method for
Whatever reason when the slugs climb onto copper they get like an electrical shot I just had one little tidbit to offer on that um you can go to the Dollar Store and get like a scrubby they have copper scrubbies and you take them apart and they become these
Long long tubes I used it on my hostas it works great so that’s another option and then our biological management is by again having beneficial insects ground beetles Ro beetles and even fireflies will attack and eat uh slugs toads and birds birds like chickens so if you have chickens you can
Feed them to your chickens and the lowrisk chemical so you know there are baits little pellets you can put around unless you have a really really bad infestation we always recommend going for the the cultural and or manual management methods squash bugs these are very popular so what do
They look like first you’ll see when they come out you’ll see the eggs they’re in the Clusters there reddish on the uh reddish eggs on the underside of the leaves and they’re usually like between the veins and often is up to about 20 20 eggs you’ll see there um the
Nyss are small and gray with black legs and anten antennas and then the adults they kind of look like a stink bug almost they’re dark gray to Brown and they’re about 58 inches long so just under an inch long so you can’t miss them when you see those guys um they’re
Posts are um the kir Cubit family again pumpkins squash winter squash zucchini they have sucking piercing mouth parts so they’ll put you know when they start eating on your leaves you’ll see the yellow spots left after the leaves turn brown and you’ll get marginal Leaf damage so on the edges you’re going to
See them not as opposed to in the center of the leaf and you very likely will see wilting wilting on your squash plants or your pumpkin and then of course if they attack your fruit you’re going to see those spots there one thing though is that they don’t carry disease like the cucumber
Beetles back to the usual culture and physical management techniques is cleaning up your debris as Kathleen had said if everything gets cleaned up in the fall they don’t have a place to hide the adults will winter over so you want to get rid of any hiding places that
They might want to live in over the winter those little brown eggs they’re very hard so if you can’t crush them you just rip off the piece of leaf that they’re on and get rid of them you can if you find the nymphs you can kill them more
Easily um the adults are they’re very fast so they’re a little harder to catch they’ll hide under the leaves so and again you can use a trap it’s similar to what we talked about with the Slugs using a board or damp newspaper down to to capture them all right so lowrisk chemicals
Again horticultural oil or insecticidal soap but the adults are diff difficult to kill as I mentioned even using low-risk insecticides so check often try to get them at the egg stage or the NY stage my favorite squash Vine borer I have been gardening for over 40
Years and every single year I get these fellas in my garden the easiest way to identify them is the this gross yellow goo that will be at the base of your squash fine the larvae stage is this white grub which again you probably won’t see on the outside of your plant
Because they’re boring into the vine itself the adult which all these years I have never seen one they’re rarely seen they they’re you can see they’re black with orange on them so again they like the cbits mostly pumpkin squashes winter squash zucchini squash for symptoms you will see holes
In the stem surrounded by that yellow gunk which is frass really or you know also the chewing of the vine and if you’re not checking regularly you’re going to notice your plant is going to wilt because what happens is it starts interrupting the flow of um moist water
And nutrients up and down the Vine Vine so it’s on its way out um the damaging of fruits is less common it mostly just wants to go into the vine itself the culture and physical methods of management as we’ve mentioned in a lot of these is to lightly till the soil and
The fall and the spring to disrupt the cycle um some recommendations are to cover the stem with foil so that the moth can’t lay its eggs at the base of the vine cover use a row cover which is a very good method for a lot of things
And you can keep the rad cover on until the even after the male flowers are out and leave it on until you start seeing the female flowers so again we can get pollination because there’s a specific life cycle for these pests you can either plant very early uh or or later
On into the summer to um sort of catch them at their off time for their life cycle it you do see the larvey which you won’t see you can perform surgery on your plant so if you see the fras you see the gunk on the bottom you can take
A knife and cut along the edge of the base of the vine and you will be able to find these larvae in there the earlier the better because you might find a couple as I have and if it’s really bad they’ll even start going into the leaf
Stem um but Once you pull out these larvas and dispose of them you can re uh put soil over them and the plant will set out new Roots at that spot so that’s a very nice there’s also you there are less desirable varieties of squash that
Um that won’t be affected by the squash Vine Bor you also could plant extra just in case as they say I usually plant more than one even though you get inundated or and then the other option as Kathleen also mentioned is to put a trap crop of hubard squash for some reason everything
Seems to like hubard squash so that’s another option and for low-risk chemicals I’m sorry there is none so get your surgical equipment out and start operating on your on your Vines tomato hornworm so the question is what is eating all the leaves on my tomato plant it’s likely this tomato hornworm so the
Larv are large green caterpillars and they have these horns at the actually at the back end um they’re kind of nasty looking things and as they grow up they get very large probably the size of your pinky or if at least that size the adults is the
Hawk Hawk moth which is what um these caterpillars turn into and they are quite large these U Moss they can be four to four to five inches in their span their wings span B so um let’s see so tomato hornor it’s a tomato that’s their favorite plant and how do I know
That they are present you’re going to see your plant getting defoliated and it will happen very fast very likely almost overnight you’re going to see a good portion of your tomato plant leaves gone stop starts at the top down um so it’s pretty unmistakable and then the frass
You will see there you will see the frass or the poop and it gets bigger and bigger as the caterpillar gets larger so again if you miss the caterpillar you’re not going to miss the frass and the method uh the best method of management is to find them and remove
Them uh it’s recommended you check your tomato plants at least twice a week for them they’re going to be big and you’re going to see them there are some biological management techniques or M management options I guess you’d say and there are parasitoids that really love to lay their eggs on these caterpillars
And you can see that Rice looking eggs uh are actually going to eat that caterpillar you can if you want to encourage more of these um parasitoids you can rear them yourself so you would take one of these worms feed them some removed leaves and attract attract the
Wasps so that it they lay their eggs on them then they’ll hatch and grow go out and find some more caterpillars tomato horor again the lowrisk management or is BT but you’ll probably only see you know on the home Garden you’ll see one horn worm in your
In your patch two at the most so it’s probably not going to be necessary for to use any any kind of chemical treatment here so that’s a tomato horor for you thank you so much Lynn so here are the pests that we went over aphids cucumber beetles flea beetles imported Cabbage
Moth slugs squash bugs squash Vine B and tomato hor worms so for each of them we went through some cultural and physical methods to get rid of them for each of them there are biological controls for them just encouraging um last month we did one on on biological injects and as
Soon as that’s uh post on YouTube I’ll send it out to everyone but just how to encourage all those great predators and Paras toys in your garden um and then some of them uh have some low risk chemicals that you can use you know when using chemicals you know no chemicals
Are safe um but there are ones that you can use with low risk to yourself in the environment when it comes to preventing damage to your crops you know ident this is the IPM that silly went over at the beginning you know it’s really important
To figure out what it is and it’s really important to monitor um to make sure what you did worked because if it didn’t work you need to take other steps figure figur out how to do it make sure you start at the bottom of the pyramid work
Up the top I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten calls where they say I sprayed this thing can you tell me what I was spraying so that’s not the method we want to take we want to figure out what it is first and then start with the
Bottom part of the pyramid and prevent things before we start using um Pesticides a