 Well, hello everyone. My name is Scott Swanson and I am your host today for the 10th Field to Fork webinar for the 2023 season. Julie is out of town, out of state, actually at a conference, so I'll be taking over the duties today. The Field to Fork webinars are brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. And if you missed any of the previous webinars, they are archived on the Field to Fork site and I dropped that in the chat a little bit ago. This is the eighth year we've done these webinar series and we're so glad you joined us today. We've archived all the webinars from the previous years. And like I said, those are on those Field to Fork webinar page. You can watch any sessions from previous years. On the next slide it shows our upcoming webinar. I can't say webinars this time because there is only one left. And it is our host, our normal host, I guess, Julie Gard Robinson, she'll be the presenter next week. So we hope you join us for that one next week as well. The next slide shows our webinar controls because of our large number of participants. We invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat. Don't worry about the Q&A button you might see at the bottom. You can just go ahead and type in the chat. So go ahead and try that out like many of you have in previous times and I see you already are you're put in your city in your state. That is great. Go ahead and keep doing that. So if you haven't done that yet, go ahead and click to open the chat, type in your city and state, and it's nice to see where everybody's coming in from. We've got lots of different areas of the country represented California, North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan, I see a Texas in there, Minnesota, North Dakota obviously as well. The next slide provides our, and just you, I don't know, provides our acknowledgement. I'm sorry. And so as you're working on typing in your city and state, I want to remind you that we have a special request. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's agricultural marketing service. And so we'd like you to complete a short online survey that will be emailed to you after today's webinar. And as a thank you, we provide prizes to the lucky winners of the random drawings. So be sure to complete the address on the follow up form including the city, state and zip code, so we can mail you that prize. And the next slide shows our NSU policy, the non discrimination statement. And then our next one, we are ready to get started. Again, today. Welcome to today's webinar. I'm pleased to introduce today's speaker. Dr. Janet Connolly is the professor and extension entomologist at North Dakota State University in Fargo. For the past 25 years she's provided statewide leadership in entomology and the integrated pest management program. Dr. Connolly studies pollinators, including bees, surf, surfid flies and butterflies and gardens and field crops in collaboration with Dr. Esther McGinnis, the associate professor and extension horticulturist and master garden coordinator at NSU. So welcome, Jan. Thank you, Scott. And hello, everyone. I hope you enjoy today's seminar and I hope I picked some of the insect pests of vegetable gardens that you're concerned about. First, because I didn't know the backgrounds, if everyone has had a basic entomology class, just a little bit about insects, they are cold blooded, which means whatever the temperature is outside, that's what their internal body temperature is. They have three main body parts, the head, thorax and abdomen that you can see on the beetle. Most insects have one pair of antenna and one pair of leg on each thoracic segment, and there's three different segments. So usually six legs, and then we have two pairs of wings. Here on the beetle you can see the first pair of wings is kind of a hard cover that we call litra. And the pair underneath is membranous that they use for flying. And just to cover the mouth parts because that's going to help you when you're out in your garden, determine what type of insect you have. So the first one is chewing. You can see the large mandibles here on this caterpillar. And the typical injury symptom that you're going to see out in the field is holes in the leaves or missing parts of the plant where they have defoliated the plant through their mouth parts chewing. And then the next most common one is piercing and sucking. This is a stink bug here. And this is a plant bug. And here's an aphid. And these are three examples of piercing sucking mouth parts. The damage that you're going to see on the plant is maybe a wilting plant because they're feeding on the sap of the plant that causes them to wilt when the populations of insects are high. Well, you might see some dead spots like here on this fruit. That's because perhaps the stink bugs was on here and it injects a toxin along when it's feeding. So that causes the necrosis of the plant tissue. So you end up with these dead spots. Also, aphids excrete a lot of honey do and we'll talk more about that later. But they also vector viruses with piercing sucking mouth parts. It's very common. And you may see some virus like symptoms on the plant, which is generally necrosis spots and plant death. So there's also two key types of development, complete development. This is characterized by beetles, moths, butterflies, bees, wasps, and flies. And they have four different life stages. Here you can see we're using the lady beetle as an example. This is the adult stage. Here's the eggs stage. And here's the larvae, which is the immature stage. And then we have a pupa stage, which is where they do the amazing transformation into the adult. So the each different life stage looks very different. And then they're simple or incomplete development. And this is common in grass supper, beef and plant bugs. It has only three stages adult here for the grass supper, egg, and then a nymph, which is the immature stage. And you can see the nymph looks just like the adult, except that it's much smaller. And the wings aren't fully developed yet. Here you can see just a wing pad. So they can't fly yet, they can only crawl. There's no pupil stage. So just understanding a little bit about the development and the biology will help you a lot out in your garden. And I recommend integrated pest management or IPM. It's just a more sustainable way for managing pests. And we use different strategies to do that biological, cultural, physical, and then chemical as the last resort. And we'll be talking about these strategies for several garden insect pest vegetables. And here's a fact sheet on IPM if you want to Google it from NDSU, but it's more for field crops, but it will give you some more background on what IPM entails. So we do have a toolbox and IPM. And we kind of recommend that you use this in your garden. First and foremost is pest identification. You need to know if it's a natural enemy, a good insect, or a pest that's going to feed on your vegetables. And then you need to know when to get out for pest monitoring. And then thresholds. Sometimes there's thresholds established. And then other times, you know, if it's a more minor pest, there's probably no thresholds that have been established. You may have your own threshold in your garden. And then predictive models. We primarily use degree day models, which take into account temperature. And when the insect will be coming out. And that'll help you time your scouting. So if you wanted to scout for like the cutworm stage, the larval stage of cutworms, you know, you could use a model to tell you when they're going to be in that stage. And then here's all of our strategies over on the right side. And the ones at the top are more preventative ones that we can do, like cultural control, host plant resistance. Then as you move down the spectrum here, you get into more innovation. So you got to use biological control that requires maybe release of some parasitoids or predators. And then chemical control, you need to apply the chemicals. And then of course toxicity would also increase and perhaps risk to the environment. So first principle, know and identify the pest or insect. And here we can see that this is a lady beetle. And this one's the spotted cucumber beetle, which can be a pest in your garden. Then scout, you need to know when to get out there. And if there's any information on thresholds, and then you need to know how to assess and do counts. And then finally, integrate you want to, you know, don't just rely on the chemicals and reach for that first. And I'll make sure you practicing some of the other strategies like cultural and physical control, especially if your garden small enough. So we're going to just go through some orders of insects and I'll talk about some of the key insect past of vegetables. Hemitra. Hemi means half and then Tara means wing. And here you can see this is the brown marmorated stink bug. That's an invasive insect past here in North America hasn't been confirmed yet here in North Dakota, but we have had several interceptions, I guess I should say. But you can see half of the wing is membranous. And then the other half is kind of more leathery. So that's how it got the half wing. So in plant bugs, leaf hopper aphids are all in this group. It's actually quite a large and diverse group. And they all have that piercing sucking mouth part in a simple development phytophagus, which means they can be found on multiple plants. And many of them are good insects as well. Predators aphids. So they're very, very small and usually found on the undersides of leaves. So you need to make sure you pick up that leaf and look at the bottom for aphids. And they're usually kind of pear shaped. There's many different species on vegetable crops. But you can always tell it's an aphid because of the cornicals here kind of look like tailpipes projecting out the back end. And color can be varied. Green is pretty common black. There's red ones and gray. So you can find just about any color. So look for those tailpipes to confirm that it's aphid. And then they have different stages where they can be winged or they can be wingless. So it just depends on what stage they're going through right now. So you may see them with wings. That means they may have migrated in recently. And they're on your found your plants. Or if they're going through reproduction mainly and there's plenty of plants, they'll be wingless. So and the other thing with aphids is they reproduce so fast. It's a sexual reproduction carparthenogenesis. And they're all females that are born pregnant. And then they give birth to live young. And then those live young mature quickly usually five to seven days. And then they're ready to give birth to live young. So you can have a telescoping of generations, and they can quickly go from 10 to 100 to 1000 to 10,000, you know, in 10 days. And especially if the temperatures are moderate 72 to 80, that really favors the population increase. So you got to watch the aphids quickly are quite often me often I mean. And then I here's the honey do because they feed on the plant juices and sap in the form. They have high protein and lots of sugars in it so they need to excrete that and they do that in the form of honey do. And you may notice the leaves are actually sticky and shiny in the sun. And that's from all the honey do that they excrete. And then you can get black suity mold growing on the honey do. And you may also observe ants tending the aphids. That's because they like to feed on the honey do. And they actually protect them from predators. But as I mentioned earlier, aphids are the number one vector of viruses and other plant diseases. So there's over 200 viruses or more. And cucumber mosaic virus is one that gets into the vegetable garden on many of our crops. And you can see why here you can see the piercing sucking mouth parts that go right into the foam. So it's putting that virus right into the plant tissue. And that's why they can be very deadly to plants. So what you look for when you're out in your garden, you know, look for stunted yellowing plants, maybe some poccering here on the leaves. They'll go after the flowers as well. Here you can see the suity mold from the honey do subscriptions. And overall the vigor of the plant just won't look very great. And you may see some virus infected plants and the symptoms vary quite a bit, but this is one on zucchini. So there's several ways you can control aphids. If you have a small garden, I recommend that you try, you know, using a forced water spray at high pressures. And make sure you get it on the undersides where the aphids are and try to wash them off and drown them. You may have to do this several times to get, you know, an effective control. Aphids move around a lot in the summer, so you may get reinfested as well. And several aphids up here in North Dakota are migratory. They don't overwinter here. So they'll be coming in with different wind fronts throughout the summer. And of course, we have our broad spectrum insecticides, but use those with caution. Of course, we don't want to injure or kill our pollinators that are so valuable for pollination. So be sure you use those very carefully if you're going to use a synthetic insecticide. And then there's bio-rational insecticides as well. They can work, but often they have a shorter residual because they break down easier from the sun, soil, microorganisms. So you're probably going to have to respray more frequently with a bio-rational. And meme is from a tree that's grown in Asia. Isidaractin is the active ingredient. And some can be phytotoxic to the plant like this hot pepper wax. So you need to be a little bit careful when you apply it. And here you can see some of the predators of aphids. Lady beetle and a lee swing larvae. And there's many, many predators of aphids. Lady beetle is probably the one most people recognize. But you may not recognize the larval stage, which looks like a little alligator. And then here's the resting stage. I get at least 10 questions every year about this because they see it as attached to the leaf. They think it's another insect pass that is sucking out the juices of the plant. But it's just the pupil stage of the lady beetle. It's just attached to the leaf to complete its development. And they eat a lot of aphids as you can see adults over 300 aphids per day. It does vary by species, but this is kind of just an average larvae 30 to 50 aphids per day. So you want to see them in your garden. That doesn't mean you have aphids or some other insect eggs or small caterpillars. Hoover fly or surfeit fly is a fly that mimics a bee. And this one doesn't do anything to the aphids. It's a pollinator actually feeds on the flowers nectar. And then the larvae though are voracious predators. They kind of look like a slug. You can see their headless and legless. And they'll consume up to 400 aphids during its development. I've seen all different colors red, black, white, yellow. So they'll be all different colors, but they kind of look like a very, very tiny slug. And then we got the green and the brown lay swing. Again, these don't do much feeding, but the lay swing egg is laid on the stalk. And for a good reason, because once the larvae hatch, they'll eat the siblings that are hatching from the eggs right next to it. So this one is voracious known aphid predator consumes about 200 per week. And inside the cyclical mandibles here, there's a canal. And that's where it pierces the body of the aphid. And it'll suck the juices right out. And then we have many parasitic wasps or parasitoids we call them. And they are specific to aphids. And they'll stick the egg into the body of the aphid. And then the larvae will eat the aphid out from the inside. And then the aphid body becomes hollow and puffy and looks like a mummy. So we call these aphid mummies. And then when it's ready to hatch again into a adult wasp, it'll cut a little circular hole and emerge and repeat the cycle. And we also have when it's wet weather and moderate temperatures, we can get a lot of fungal diseases as well that will attack and infect aphids. You can see some of the white mycelia growth around this aphid body. So some of the good insects in this hemipteran group is pirate bug, a very small insect that's black and white. And again, you can see the membranous wing and then the more leathery part of the wing. And it's a very important predator of aphids. Again, has the sparsine sucking mouth parts. Here's the immature stage. It's more of a reddish color with the red eyes. Here it's feeding on some eggs. So then there's a assassin bug. This is the wheel bug. You can kind of see a little spokes there. It looks like half a wheel. And they're very voracious predators as well. Here's the nymph stage and damsel bug. This one's very common. A lot of people think it's a pest, but it's not. It's a nabbit bug. And you can see it here feeding on the tarnished plant bug, which is a terrible pest. And here we have an aphid that this nymph is feeding on. So again, you're going to see a lot of different insects out there and not all of them are insect pests. Thank goodness. Moving on to the coleaptor or the beetle. That means shield wing for a good reason because that top wing, as I mentioned earlier, is hard. And it's called the aletra. And they have the chewing complete development larvae are often called rubs. And they're phytophagous, often on multiple crops. So first, I'll just talk about a couple of soil insect pests that you may have encountered wireworms. They have a very long life cycle, three to five years. And they spend most of it in the larval stage. The larvae are kind of heavily scaritized or hardened. That's why they have a darker brown color, but they do most of the damage to the vegetable crops. They'll feed and tunnel through the seeds, killing the seed. And also into tubers, the crops that have tubers like carrots, potato, and you'll see these little narrow tunnels into the potato. Now the adults are not a problem at all on the vegetable crops. They don't do any damage. They're known as click beetles. And if you turn them upside down, they'll make a clicking sound as they try to write themselves. They have a little mechanism on the sternum that they need click to get themselves to the right side. And then another soil insect that we have is white crumbs. Again, these are from May or June beetles that we see flying around at our lights at nighttime. So keep the lights off around the garden because you don't want the lights attracting the May, June beetles. They'll just lay the eggs right into the garden then. And they got generally a three year cycle and the larvae cause damage in soil. And they feed on the roots of plants. They're mainly a key problem on grass, your yard and golf courses and turf. So that's where the beetle often is the most damaged, but they do get into your garden as well once in a while. There is a threshold in the lawn, but I don't think there is anything in the home garden. They're very difficult to control because, you know, we're trying to control the library stage and they're there for a long time in your soil. So the best thing we can recommend is cultural control, you know, crop rotation. You'll plant wherever you had the problem. So you had it in potatoes. Well, wherever it was the last year planted as far away as you can in your garden. So on the other side of your garden to try to prevent the soil insects from finding it. And then there is some broad spectrum of insecticides, but it's really limited with the old chemistries of the insecticide no longer available. We really only have, you know, limited chemistry. Carbohol is probably one of the most common ones. There's granular liquid and powder formulations and you apply it right into the soil where you're going to be planting in the row. Usually for soil, I recommend a granular formation because it's formulation because it's safer and it does a better job killing the soil insect because they're around for a long time and it provides a little longer residual. Now, there is some bio rationale insecticides for the grub. There's nematodes. They're called neem seek. And there's different species of nematodes in the formulation, but you need to keep the soil moist. They need moist soil to move around in and find the pest. And then there's a fungal disease, Bavaria bossiana, but I don't think that would be fast acting enough, but it might help prevent or reduce the population for the next year. And then adults, you can try with neem and the perythrides, again, or perythrins, pyganic. And I usually go to our arbico organics to find out about the organics insecticides. They have a fairly good list of things that are available. And then flea beetles. They're a big problem here. I hear about it every year from both the gardener and our canola growers in North Dakota. They have 16 to one eighth inch long, mainly black, metallic, gray, bronze. Some of them have stripes on the wings. And you can see the enlarged hind leg here. And that's used for jumping when they're disturbed. They're on a lot of different vegetable crops. So mainly the bracaicea group, radishes, broccoli, turnips, cabbage. There's one that's potato, flea beetle. There's a spinning flea beetle. So some of them are more specific to just a handful of crops. And I do some work on the species. These two species in canola here in North Dakota. And we're also having problems with them. And the populations are especially high right now. So what you're going to see when you're out there is probably we'll see the flea beetles hopping around their active during the day. And they love the sunny part of the day. And you'll see the pitting, the chewing mouth parts cause all these little irregular shaped holes. And then the pits sometimes coalesce and form a larger hole. So you're going to see lots of little holes to start with. And then they're going to get bigger and bigger. And the crop is the most susceptible and they can actually be killed in the seedling to the four to six leaf stage. After it gets a little more mature of the crop and developed, it can outgrow some of this damage. But again, it depends on your population. And they do stunt the plant growth and they may even take out some of your plant stand. We do monitor with yellow sticky traps. And you can commercially buy those from gamblers or Great Lakes IPM. And there's some treatments that have thresholds that have been developed for coal crops. That's more than five beetles per plant or 10 to 20% of the leaves defoliated. For control, you know, reduce any bracae weeds that you might have like fleck's weed or wild mustard. That does increase the population in the area. So try to keep those in check. And then planting late might help a little bit because the seed germinates quicker and the plant grows a little quicker when you have warmer temperatures and adequate moistures. And then you can use as a physical control of the plant. So you can use the plant to cover or screening just to keep the flea beetles from feeding and off the young plants. There is some broad spectrum insecticides for the homeowner, but I've had complaints that they don't work quite as well as people would like. And part of the problem here again is that the flea beetles are highly mobile and they're growing something they really like, like radish. And some of the biologicals here as well. You can try. For larger gardens, a trap crop might work where you can plant it earlier. Flea beetles usually come out in May here in North Dakota. And if you plant 7 to 14 days earlier, you can, they'll be attracted to that trap crop, especially if it's like a radish-turning mixture, which they just love. And then once they get concentrated, then you can try to spray them out with an insecticide before and then plant the crop that you're desiring. But you may get reinfestation again. So there's not really a surefire way. They're just a really difficult test to manage. All right, a potato beetle. Another past you've probably seen. Very easy to identify. They're large. They're not something where you need to get your hand lens out. Yellowish, orange, and then 10 narrow black lines on the wing covers. And the larvae changes color kind of when it's younger. It's more radiation than orange, than a pink and cream. And it has the two rows of spots here. And the host is mainly potatoes, but other solanaceae crops like tomatoes and peppers. So what you're going to see for symptoms out in the field, well, you'll obviously probably see the larvae and the adult. The adult does a little bit of feeding, but the larvae does most the significant defoliation. If left unchecked, they can kill the plant. And once they get to the larger, mature larval stage, they do most of the feeding damage. There's some thresholds that have been developed in the vegetative stage, 30% defoliation. And then when the tubers start to bulking after flowering, that goes down to about 10% defoliation. So for cultural control, again, removing weeds and planting early maturing varieties less than 80 days. That way you'll escape some of that second generation of Colorado potato beetles. And then maybe instead of growing them every year, because once they know potatoes are in the area, they come back usually to the same place every year. If there's no potatoes within a half mile away, that does work, I guess. I've never tried it. But you can also just pick the beetles because they're so large. The eggs tear the leaves off and the larvae and then put them into a bucket of soapy water to kill them. There's a lot of biocontrol out there in the field. So you can watch for some of the predators that we discussed. Broad spectrum insecticides are not really recommended at all because Colorado potato beetle is notorious for developing insecticide resistance to just about every class of insecticide that we have thrown at it. So they're pretty much resistant. It may vary somewhat in your area. But even here in North Dakota where we don't have a lot of potatoes, Colorado potato beetle is pretty much resistant to everything. And you need to switch to a new mode of action. It's called insect resistance action committee group, IRAC. And also there's some biorationals that you can try. So it looks like the physical method is probably best if you don't have a real large garden. Some of the good beetles are the lady beetles which we already discussed. There's a lot of different species of lady beetles. So you'll see a lot of variation. Some have spots, others don't. And they're very common in the garden in natural areas. And some have actually been released on purpose for biocontrol of certain insect pests. And most of them are generalists, but aphids are one of the preferred hosts they will feed on small caterpillars and eggs of many different insects. So they're very, very important in biological control. Moving on to the order leprodoptera, a scale wing. If you were to take your finger and rub that wing with it, it would rub off the scale on that wing. And this is for butterflies and moths, complete development. And we generally call the larvae caterpillars, which have the chewing mouth parts. Then the adults feed mainly on nectar or pollen sucking type mouth parts. So coutworms, they're a common problem in the spring with vegetable gardens. There's many different species of coutworm and they'll be active from May through June. The adults are called millermaws, and that's because we often see them flying around the lights at nighttime. Coutworms will feed either above the ground or they may feed below the ground but they're always active at night time. They generally will feed on the roots, leaves and then once they get large enough they'll cut the stems of the plant. And here you can see a close-up of the mandibles and the variegated is one of the more common ones in the garden. But there's different behaviors in the coutworm caterpillar, some of them are climbing, so they'll actually climb up and cause defoliation. Then you have the subterranean ones which stay below the ground and mainly feed on the roots. And when they're mature, the worms can be, caterpillars can be very big up to two inches. Some of them over winter here, others migrate in. So it just depends on the species of coutworm that you're dealing with, but you don't have to worry about identification. You just need to be able to recognize that it's a coutworm. Here's this one's curled up into a C-shape and that's characteristic of what they do when they're disturbed. And here you can see this corn was cut by the black coutworm. So they usually, once they get going, they'll just move right down the row. So when you see this, you wanna, in the cutting, you want to have a trawl with you and dig around in the soil three inches or more deep because they're active at night. So you're not going to see them during the day when you're out there. So you need to look for a freshly killed or cut plant and then dig around till you can find it to confirm that it is a coutworm. They're very, very common on many different vegetable hosts. So they do feed at night. So if you're gonna do any type of insecticide application, we recommend that you spray that, not when it's dark out, but just before the sun sets. And it's important to look at the stage of coutworms as well. We don't wanna be treating for them when they're mature because they're getting ready to go through the pupil stage then. So you wanna treat when they're quite small yet, usually a half an inch or less. And you need to be on it, the coutworms for scouting. You know, you need to get on it right away. They can be very devastating. So scout for them early. You know, look for that freshly cut off or wilting plant and then they're most active in the evening so you can even do some scouting late evening and look for them. For control, you know, removing weeds that does attract them to the fields for egg lanes. So just keeping the garden clean. Tilling can also, in the spring and fall, exposes them to predators and also may kill the overwintering larvae or pupa. Then of course they're large. So if you wanna go out in the late evening and hand pick them again, that would work as well. Then you can also use aluminum foil or a cardboard collar and make sure you put it three inches down in below the ground and three inches above around any transplants that you may have. This will act as a barrier. There is some broad spectrum insecticides that you can purchase from your garden supply store. And again, you know, when they're small and spray at night. There's a lot of caterpillars. You'll see them on all your vegetable crops. Some of the more common ones are the imported cabbage worm, larvae and moth and the cabbage looper and the diamond back moth. And then of course our largest caterpillar, the tomato horn worm, that can get to be four inches long. So I'll just cover all these together since the damage and symptoms and control techniques are similar. So they're gonna cause defoliation here. You can see this is the imported cabbage worm and you can see defoliation and they can cause the growth of the plant too to become somewhat distorted and especially in cabbage cauliflower and broccoli. This is diamond back moth where it kind of leaves a little window. The membrane there is still there where they were feeding. And it's a much smaller caterpillar, only about half an inch long. And then you're probably also gonna see when you're out there scouting some frass or their poop on the plant. And for the coal crops, they've been using a general threshold of 30% leaf defoliation as a treatment. So again, clean garden to eliminate overwintering sites and remove alternative lead hose that would increase populations. And then they're out there a lot so you can either hand pick and crush them or drop them into that bucket of soapy water. So you're loading row covers of work to prevent the moths from laying eggs and you wanna get those out as soon as you see the moths flying. There's a lot of biological control out there in your garden. So trying to support that and limit insecticide applications. Here's the paper was that is feeding on a imported cabbage worm larvae. So bio control for diseases. Viral disease. This is a fissile caterpillar or was. And they become very mushy and liquidy and that's oozes out of the insect and further spreads the viral disease. This is a bacterial infection and then you can also have the fungal infections. But you do need the right weather temperature conditions for that high humidity warm temperatures for this to happen. There's many parasitic was. This is one katizia that gets on the tomato horn worm. And here's some more virus infections. And then they're very essential for part of the ecosystem as food for other insects and birds, frogs and rodents. So we do need our caterpillars. And there's many broad spectrum insecticides, but usually they're not necessary in the garden. Unless you have a real large garden where you can pick them off. You know, you can make sure again, just like the cut worms, you know, apply it when they're small. The older ones are much harder to control and you probably need a higher rate. For birational, there's several listed here. And then also we have BT, bacillus thuringiensis, crostaceae for caterpillars. It works quite good. Here's another trade name caterpillar killer. However, the key is getting it onto those young larvae. So you don't want to be too late with it because it has to be ingested. And once it's ingested, the bacteria will explode in their guts, create holes, and that's what kills the insect. And it works really well. I've used it and it's much safer for natural enemies and bees. And it is for organic use. Here's some thresholds that were developed by Michigan State. I'm just going to leave these. I'm not going to go through them, but for your information, they have more information on their website there. You Google it. Caterpillar pests and coals crops. And here's from the Minnesota website and some of their thresholds. Moving on to squash vine borer. This is a beautiful insect. It's in the Clear Wing Maw Cessidae family. It's black and orange and very distinctive and has these black spots down the center of the abdomen. There's one generation per year. And the adults are most active in mid June through July. About a half an inch long. And then the larvae's an inch long with a black to brownish head. And they feed for four to six weeks and cause the injury to the squash crops. And sometimes the pressure can be so high that it can destroy your whole crop. So here's what you're first going to see is this wilting, especially if you come out to the garden in the morning and it's wilting. That's a good sign you probably have squash vine borer. And then you'll want to start looking for holes near the base of the plant stem where the larvae bore in. And what you'll see is kind of a bunch of moist greenish orange sawdust frass in that hole. And usually there's several borers per plant. And here's a picture of the hole. You can see that frass in there. And they dug out the larvae. So you can monitor, you know, just look for the moths flying in the garden. And there is a pheromone trap, but it also catches similar species. So you need to be able to separate them and identify them. And then yellow pails are attracted to the yellow color. So you can put some water and dish soap in there to monitor for them. Cultural control, again, you know, move where you have the kerbits and then maybe alternate seasons. And also if you do get a plant and it's just heavily infested and going to die anyway, just get it out of the garden and just put it into the garbage or burn it. Then you don't want to leave any residue either for the overwintering sites of the squash vine borer. So clean up the garden at the end of the season. And then late planting has been shown to reduce the egg lane period because you're planting later. You're missing the peak egg lane period. So you can use the floating row covers again to prevent egg lane, but you want to make sure you get them out as soon as you see those moths and then you anchor the ends down so they don't crawl underneath the netting and don't plant the kerbits where they were the same area the previous year because then you'll be trapping the moths in with your plants. So just some common sense there. And then of course you're going to need to remove any netting for pollination when your plants are flowering. So you can, a lot of people use a knife to stick inside the stem and try to kill the larvae, but that also does quite a bit of damage to the plant. So it's very difficult to do. And then you can try, you know, we cutting that stem and mounting the soil over it and keeping it moist for new growth. So it'll start kind of a new plant, but that can be difficult since you need to water it frequently at the beginning. And then there is some whole plant resistance. The squash vine board doesn't like the butternut, cucumber melon or watermelons as much as the squash and pumpkins. Chemical control is hard because they're inside and protected in that stem. So you need to really target the base of those stems. And then when they, usually you start the treatments when the vines begin to run, which is late June, early July in North Dakota. And then you supply the dust or the spray to the base of the stem. And my friend tried injecting some bio insecticide into the stems and she got, you know, partial control using this, that technique. Then you need to repeat probably two applications, seven days apart. There's some bio rationale insecticides. The BT, if you look on the website, it recommends only marginal control. And that's because it's hard to get it where the larvae are feeding inside that stem. Because remember the BT must be ingested in order for it to work. And here's my friend, Amy. And she mixed up BT per stock high. And she did multiple injections per plant. You can see she injected it into the base of the stem there. And she did it at one, one weekly interval. And she got some control of some of the plants, but she did lose some as well. Moving on to the order hymenoptera, membrane wing. These are the bees, wasps and soft fly. Complete development. Larvae are often called grubs with the chewing mouth part. And the adults often have chewing mouth parts except bees where it can be chewing, sucking and lapping. So this is group has parasitic wasps. Many we already discussed them. So I won't spend a lot of time, but they're in this group. You get the mummied aphids. And then moving on to order dipter flies. Dipter means two wings and two halters. So halters are used for balance. So the insect can tell if it's upside down or not. Fly some mosquitoes. Larvae are often called maggots because they're headless and legless. Adults have a modified sucking mouth parts. And I'm just going to show you a good insect. A surfrid fly, which I've shown you earlier, they have the slug-like larvae that feed on soft-bodied insects. And again, just want to end here with emphasis of safety for our pollinators. Many of the plants like musmelon, you know, requires bee pollination, pumpkin squash and zucchini. So we need to be aware of what's going on out there with our pollinators. And please don't spray a flower or flowering crop. Just spray where the pest is and so you can have more targeted sprays. We really do need to protect our pollinators. They're struggling. And I try to avoid spraying blooming plants altogether. Or if I'm going to spray it, I'm very specific. The underside of leaves or the squash vine more whole. And if possible, I use the least toxic pesticide and formulation. And I spray late in the evening when most pollinators are back in their hives or nests, when the temperatures are below 55, using short residual insecticides that break down faster also help. And that's all I have. And thank you for your attention. Jen, great. Thanks for your presentation. We do have some questions here. I don't know if you want to open up the chat yourself, Jen, and read some of them. There is some terminology in there that might be a month for me. If you scroll up, it starts with, I think Paul asked a question sent to us about 219 there. I see lady beetles along with aphids. Do I need to use insecticide as well? It depends. That's a difficult question because how many lady beetles are you seeing and how many aphids? If the aphids are just getting started, then you probably will be okay. The lady beetles will be able to keep up with a reproduction rate. But you really, the aphids are so much faster than the lady beetles. Sometimes they cannot keep up. So you have to watch for that. And it depends on the weather as well. I've had thunderstorms that have come in and washed all my aphids off. And it has to be windy in a severe thunderstorm, but it does work. And also, you know, the growth, the growth stage of your plant. Is it very young? They're more tender then? Or is it very mature? So it depends on a lot of different things there. The picture of the lace wing larvae lifting up the aphids. Yeah, that is what they do. And you can actually identify them with that behavior where they will pinch, the lace wing larvae will pinch it with its claspers there or mandibles and then swing its head back and forth. So you can actually identify it as a lace wing larvae from that behavior. Yes, flea beetles fly. They're very strong flyers as a matter of fact. And they'll be able to find your little radishes. So wherever you plant them, they're attracted to some of the chemicals, the plant cement, the caramones. So yeah, they will get on broccoli as well. Any of the Brick ACA plant. We have time for questions. Oh, okay. A diatomaceous urge? Yes, that's kind of a generalist bio rationale type insecticide. Diatomaceous work. Earth is a little crystal. And you spread the dust usually on the soil or wherever the insect is at. And then they pick it up on their feet and it gets into their spiracles and essentially suffocates them to death. So yeah, it will work on insects like flea beetles. Be sure you, it is safe for the garden, but be sure you wash off your produce. Very good. Triple rinse it. Because you don't want to ingest any of that. Anything. Codling loss in apples. Well, I, yeah, there is sprays that you can use for codling moth. I would suggest you get a pheromone trap and monitor. So you know when they're present and also the density of the moth. And there's some thresholds. There's a lot of work and fruit that has been done in Michigan state. So you might want to check out their website. Yeah, there's a physical control is, you know, probably under use, but it's very time and labor intensive. But it does work when you have the time. Okay, purchasing lady beetles and putting them into the garden from some of the biological supply companies. I guess you can try that. But the part of the problem is the behavior of the Beatles. Once you release them, they have the tendency or the behavior to disperse. Because they want to go out and look for prey to eat and food. So it can be a problem because unless you're in like a greenhouse, it's worked really well where you have them confined, but sometimes in an open field situation like garden in your backyard, they may not stay there. So how can Mason bees come to my nest? I think putting out, I assume you're putting out some nesting boxes for them. They do like to face the sun as it comes up. And, you know, you may be at a too shady area or I just put mine kind of in a protected area too is good. And you just kind of have to experiment in your yard to find a spot where they'll come. There is some fact sheets on Xerces website that are really good and informative. So I would check out the Xerces website. Does planting help with leaf beetle? Yes, a little bit. It's a cultural control strategy. So usually the first fields get hit a little bit harder than the later planted stuff because the beetles come out and then they'll find the earliest fields that they can find. So it could help. It depends kind of on the, I don't know what state you're in or anything. It might vary if you're in California. Do insect develop resistance to be teased and spinosid? Yes, we have had resistance to be teased in the corn. That are very widespread, all the GMO corn. The BT has been incorporated into that. And we have resistance in corn rootworm and nothing in corn, European corn borer. Well, there is one event that growers have found with the European corn borer as well. So yes, they can. They can be adaptive and have develop resistance. Some insects are better than others like aphids are notorious too for developing resistance. But yeah, we shouldn't take any chemical for granted anymore. And we're not seeing a lot of new ones coming to the market either. So it's kind of a scary situation. So that's why I promote, you know, I don't use any insecticide. I don't use any insecticide. And only using insecticides when you really need to. I don't even use in my corn in my garden. I don't use any insecticide. I just break off the tip with the corn borer or the cornier worm. And throw it in the garbage or the mulch pile. Jen, thank you so much. That was the last question and we're a couple of minutes after this. Thanks everybody for joining us. Remember next week is the last one. I think the 11th and final one of the field of work webinar series. So please join us again. Next Wednesday at two o'clock central for our last one. So thanks again, Jen.