 Hello and welcome to Hands in the Dirt. I am Megan Humphrey and I am the executive director of Hands, which is a nonprofit in Burlington, Vermont. And first off, I want to give a little shout out to Marie Davis. She makes these great little veggie earrings and they're always fun. So the mission of Hands is to get food to seniors who are 50 years and over. And we provide these Hands in the Dirt gardening programs with the famous Charlie Nardosi meal and gift bag delivery all over the county on Christmas day. Nutrition education workshops called Hands in the Kitchen and Support Buddies, which is a partnership that we started right at the beginning of COVID with Heinerberg Community Senior Center. And that was to get meals and groceries to seniors who were isolated at home and that program is continuing even now. And we would like to give our special thanks to AARP Vermont, CCTV, Town Meeting TV, Gardener Supply, Hannaford and Red Wagon plants. They've all been hugely supportive of this program. So we're thrilled about that. So take it away, Charlie. Thanks for coming. We've been doing this since February and I'm glad people are still watching and still coming to these events, to these monthly gardening talks that I've been doing. It's really encouraging and it's a great time of year to be out in the garden. It's been beautiful. It's been raining a lot recently. Things are growing flowers, herbs, vegetables, and we're mostly going to be talking about vegetables today. Without further ado, I'm just going to jump right into my talk about organic pest control and particularly we're going to be talking about insect control. And what I decided to do, since we are doing these on a monthly basis, is that I was going to break it down. So I'm going to talk about controlling insects in the vegetable garden of this talk. And then next month in July, I'll be talking about diseases and animals. That way, you know, the topics are so broad and even, even just taking the time to just talk about insects, I can go on for hours. But at least this way we can kind of focus it a little bit and hopefully get some solutions, some of your problems. So organic pest control for insects, you know, it. The idea of organic pest control has really kind of gone through an evolution in time. You know, it was, of course, in the early days, when there's a lot of chemicals around people were just spraying chemicals and discriminately to kill any kind of pest they saw in the garden whether it was causing the problem or not. And then of course the organic movement really moved that into a more reasonable and more logical direction so that we were more aware of what we were spraying and the effects of what was having in the garden and using sprays that were more organically oriented, meaning that they are derived from organic sources, more directly organic sources. And hopefully they didn't have as many side effects as the chemical sprays that we were using. But now we're kind of in a phase, an era where things are evolving yet again. And I think it's a really encouraging side where we're looking at pest control and having a much more deeper appreciation of the ecology of our garden and the ecology of our yards and our landscapes, and realizing that these things that we call pests, that are out there, are fulfilling a key and vital role in the ecosystem. And in fact, 99% of the insects you see out there in your yard flying around on your plants and the lawn wherever they are, are either benign or they're beneficial. It's really a small, small percentage of them that are the ones that are harmful that we're mostly concerned about. So the idea is that let's create an ecosystem, let's create a situation in our yards where nature can take care of some of this. We can do a little help to kind of encourage nature in different places, takes care of some of it too, and get away from this whole idea of spraying period, meaning not using chemical or organic sprays. It is a transition. So I'm not asking people just to go cold turkey with this, even though many people have and have done so successfully. And what I'm going to try to do in this talk is really help us with a whole arsenal of ideas that will get us to a place of all the things we can do up to the point of actually spraying something. And I will mention some sprays too. I will not neglect to just talk about those a little bit as well. But really the focus is going to be on all the other things we can do to control insect pests that we may have in our garden. And this is not a new idea. It's called IPM or integrated pest management. It's been around for decades. And it is, again, evolving, like I'm saying, more so. But with IPM, there are a number of tenants that we want to do before we reach for the spray container or spray bottle. First of all, we want to have healthy plants. It's pretty simple and pretty logical and easy to understand. You know, the healthier the plants, the less likely they are to get attacked, just like our bodies. You know, we keep our bodies healthy with good food and exercise and good company. What ends up happening is that we stay healthier. It's as simple as that. I'm going to run through these different IPM steps pretty quickly and then go into them in a little more detail here in a second. We want to identify the problem. A lot of times people see something, some chewing damage on the leaves or something stole the tomato, whatever it is, and we quickly think it is some kind of insect pest. It is something that was out there chewing it. Or what we do is we see an insect on the plant and we see the whole and therefore we conclude, oh, that must have caused the whole. So the first thing we should do is really step back a bit and take a look at all the different possibilities for what the problem could be. It could be a problem that is insect related disease related animal related neighbor related. Unfortunately, dogs running through the garden, that kind of thing. Or weather related. Cold snaps, hail storms, things of that nature. Heat spells, you know, we've had a heat wave a week or two ago where temperatures were in the 90s and I noticed some browning on the tops of my pea plants. Because of course peas like cool temperatures. And that was the heat stress or heat damage. There's nothing wrong with the plants. I was, we were doing a good job watering them and keeping them healthy. It's just that's what happened. So identifying the problem is really a key step at the beginning before you decide to do anything about it. Then once you have identified it as say an insect anyone understand about that insect and stand about the life cycle understand about the habitat it likes understand about what kind of things it eats and doesn't need. These can be ways where you can find what I call the chink in the army armor. Now you'll see the life cycle of an insect and you can decide oh it's at this point where if I am diligent and I'm crushing eggs or picking larvae whatever it is, I can really stop this whole thing from getting out of control. And then we can use cultural controls to do those types of things too and I'll mention things like rotating crops and planting the right varieties and things of that nature. And then as we're getting a little more active. These other things are not working we can create barriers, excuse me, that would block insects from coming in laying eggs or attacking our plants. We could use traps whether they be mechanical traps or pheromone traps to reduce the population of them and then finally I will talk about organic sprays as a last resort and ways to approach that so that we don't harm the bees the butterflies and beneficial insects in the air and in the soil. So let's go into a little bit more detail. Healthy plants equal healthy garden it's as simple as that. And when I talk about healthy plants certainly you want to have plants that are growing strong and and growing really lush foliage on them, actively growing really strong plants. And the way to do that of course is to make sure you have healthy soil and I wrote a book on no dig gardening which talks a lot about building healthy soil. The idea of layering different materials and then working with compost, adding that compost material in there. So that year after year when you're looking at your garden, you're continually building more and more soil on top. As that compost it'll settle down and then you can continue building it up. If you can do that on a regular basis, really building up that organic matter. You know if you did a soil test you should have somewhere between five and 10% organic matter, which is always a nice thing to kind of notice to feel assured you're doing the right thing. But other than that on the soil test unless it shows some extreme deficiencies or excesses I wouldn't worry too much about the other numbers that are there. It's really what you're looking at is that organic matter organic matter is going to help feed the soil feed the microbes that are in there. To make it a richer healthier environment so that those plants will grow stronger. So that whole idea of no dig gardening based on my book that's out there as a complete guide to no dig gardening. Talks also about maintaining the beds and taking care of them going into the winter. But also when I talk about a healthy garden it's not just about keeping the vegetables you have in there healthy. It's about creating a diversity of plants. Actually now an old photo friends of ours that used to live up in Craftsbury probably back in the 1990s. I had a nursery called stones throw many years ago, but they also were avid cooks and so Frank and john also love to grow their own vegetables and cook meals. This is their vegetable garden, and I always always impressed with it because back then in the 90s this was kind of a newer concept for me. And I look at it and I say wow look at all these flowers in their vegetable garden. There's flots there's Rebecca there's Holly Hawks, there's sunflowers there's a list of there's all kinds of things in there. Not only does it make it more attractive to look at than just a traditional row by row vegetable garden. There's animals attracting beneficial insects in attracting beneficial creatures in confusing some of the predatory animals and insects that are out there and so the garden is easier to maintain and you get a better harvest from it. So the idea and we've been doing this in our garden in Ferrisburg now for a number of years of moving more flowers and moving more herbs and we even plant some shrubs now in our garden. So the idea is to create more of a natural ecological habitat instead of just having row after row, like farmers have to do because they're really looking for production of certain kinds of vegetables. Diversity is key so a healthy garden should be a diverse garden as well. And it encourages like I was mentioning insect diversity, and the idea was insects too is that it's good to have some of the harmful insects you know that might sound strange. And when you're talking about controlling pests in your garden. But if you have for example some aphids well that's going to encourage the ladybugs to come in. You know if you have some certain caterpillars that's going to encourage some predatory wasps and parasites to come in too. And that again is going to create that diversity that you need in the garden. So the idea is that we don't want to have a sterile garden where you see no pests at all. You just want to have them at a reasonable level so you can still get a bountiful harvest and not lose a lot of the things you planted. And that includes other kinds of helpers I would call them snakes are great in the garden we're blessed in Vermont to have native snakes that are not poisonous so you never really have to worry about them. Other than maybe giving you a heart attack when they startle you because they do that. We have a stone wall around one of our flower gardens and there's snakes that live in there and our dogs are always chasing them around. But those big garter snakes that are there are doing a service for us they're eating things like slugs and snails and all kinds of creatures, creating a habitat, or maybe you're, you know, like snakes so much and you want to encourage toads and frogs in your garden. Toads are great because again they eat a lot of those creatures that are in the garden. A simple way to create a little toad habitat is to take a clay pot turn it upside down, break a little hole in the side of it so a toad can get in there and put it in a shady spot in your garden. That's going to be a toad home or a toad house. So they would go in there, especially in a hot summer day where it could be a little cooler in the shade and in that clay. And that will be a home for them where they can forage out and eat all kinds of insects. You can also use online pest directories. This has come a long way since when I was a junior horticulturist just starting out at Gardens for All and National Gardening. We would have these volumes of books about pest controls and we'd have to look up things when people sent us questions about what pest is in their garden, try to figure it out. Now you can do it all online. It's really simple and no gardener supply has one. There's a number of them online where you can go in, you can talk about, you can search for the kind of damage you have on what kind of plants, and then a whole bunch of pests will pop up and you can take a look and see by space in the photos are these the things that are in my garden and of course then they give you controls too. There's a lot of resources out there. The whole idea though is to try to know what's going on know who it is it's out there that's causing the damage, and then learning a little bit about them. So what conditions is it like for example, an obvious one to be slugs and snails. We all know that they like cool, wet moist shady conditions right. So if you can create the opposite of that around some plants maybe some lettuce plants that might be getting inundated with slugs. Some survive and it's not going to make an environment where the slugs and snails are wanting to want to go cross and live in there. So you want to create conditions that will discourage these pests from getting going. You know, some, some insect pests have different kinds of lifestyles and enjoy different kinds of habitats. Some are out really early, like asparagus beetle for example, as soon as asparagus pops out of the ground in the spring in our garden. The beetle's starting to feed on it, and it's laid its eggs soon afterwards and it has these little larvae which I see now on the ferns as we're letting some of them go to fern now that are there. And you can just knock those off where you can control them, but it's all very early in the season versus something that might be later on like squash bugs for example where the population builds. Understanding a little bit of the life cycle will understand when you need to kind of interject yourself in there and take care of that pest problem. And also think about what you can reasonably change, maybe grow a different variety, maybe grow in a different location, maybe grow a different kind of plant and maybe mix in some flowers and herbs and try to have more of an integrated ecological garden. So those are the kind of things you can start thinking about about what's going to be reasonable for me to change out here as opposed to, Oh, I'll dedicate myself every six hours to go out and look for that squash bug that's out there. That's probably not going to happen. So do things that are reasonable and work in your lifestyle. And that leads us to the idea of cultural controls different things you can do in the garden. One of the easiest things, especially in a small garden since many of us have small raised bed gardens or container gardens. Plantation is an easy thing to do and that especially is effective for something like the leaf miner that you see on beats and on Swiss chart in particular you'll see it on kale and other plants. They cause the dying of the leaf you can see up there in the left hand corner, but also you see that tunneling that's in the leaves to that's a telltale sign, simply go through and just snip off those leaves periodically and compost or get rid of them. So doing that the plant will you know beets and Swiss chart in particular very aggressively growing plants still just replace those leaves. And now let's just by cleaning up some of the plants like that you can reduce the population of insects. If you have a whole row of cucumbers and a couple of them are looking kind of wealthy like they might be diseased, you might want to just yank them out, especially when they're young, that'll give room for the other ones to fill in. We're all planting more than we really need. I know I do every year I swear I'm not going to plant as many zucchini and summer squad, and I still look out there and there's five plants. So we can sacrifice some of our plants through sanitation to prevent the problem from getting worse crop rotation is something you probably have all heard of to as a big thing for farmers for home gardeners who have a small garden it might be a little problematic because you don't have enough space to do a lot of this stuff. But if you do have enough space where you have a number of beds like just looking at here in this little diagram. It's good to not plant the same family of plants in the same spot for three years. So for example, if you have tomatoes in a bed one year. The next year you don't want to plant tomatoes or peppers or potatoes in that bed. You don't want to plant broccoli and Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. And then the year after that you plant something different like peas and beans, for example, the year after that maybe you go back to tomatoes or if you can do another do a fourth year of something like leafy greens or root crops. The idea is that you don't want to have the insect or disease populations building up in the soil that are specific to those plants if you do this it's going to really help. If you have a small garden where you don't really have the room to do this. What you would probably do that would be effective is of course adding that compost that I mentioned earlier every year, but also just like I was talking about integrating flowers and herbs in the garden. Mix it up. You know, don't just plant your tomatoes and then leave you know mulch underneath them throw a bunch of greens underneath them throw some radishes underneath them. Throw a bunch of plants that will mature quickly, but also create an environment that's a little bit different than just having all tomatoes or all peppers right. And what that does is that it creates that balance in the ecosystem because those other plants are going to attract other organisms to that soil which will help balance out the disease and insect populations that are in your soil. So that's kind of one way to get around the whole idea of having to rotate plants is by planting a diversity of plants in that bed. You can also plant resistant plants. So a good example classic example is for squash vine borer. So if you want to grow winter squash like acorn squash or buttercup squash or Hubbard squash or pumpkins. There's a lot of squash vine borers on them. But if you don't want to have to mess around with that and you like butternut squash, grow butternuts because butternut squash does not get the squash vine borer. It might here and there but for the most part, it's pretty resistant to it. Another way you can use this and I'll talk more about companion planting as we go along is use of those other squashes as what we call trap crops. If you have butternut squash, maybe on the other side of your garden or somewhere else grow some Hubbard squash because of squash vine borers love Hubbard squash. They'll be laying their eggs over there. They'll be tunneling through the stems over there. When it gets to be a big disaster in the Hubbard squash area, you can either come through with a knife and cut out the squash vine borer or just rip out the plants and get rid of them. So it's deflected their attention while your other squashes are able to grow and mature. So planting resistant plants is a great idea. And using things like row covers and one that we really like to use is called micro mesh. And what's nice about these barriers is that it prevents insects from laying the eggs in the first place. So if you have cabbage worms, if you have Colorado potato beetles, you have those leaf miners that we're talking about little fly lays those eggs on the leaves. You can cover 90% of the vegetables you grow with a row cover or a micro mesh kind of a window screen like material or tools and other material you can use. And the plants will be fine because most of them are either wind pollinated or we're not eating the fruits we're eating leaves or roots. The only group of course you have to worry about with this would be the squash, cucumber melon family that needs cross pollination from bees. And for us, for example, our brassicas broccoli and Brussels sprouts we grow them under hoops and that's where they live the whole summer law, we never take them off. And we stop, we don't have to spray for cabbage worms anymore and it's fine. We can grow our greens under hoops, and we don't have leaf miner damage so there's a lot of advantages to having these hoop systems set up in your gardens as barriers and sprays can be used as barriers. So this is a clay spray called kaolin clay kaolin kaolin clay is like a potter's clay you spray it on the leaves, and it creates a dusty environment that the insect doesn't like so we do this every year with our grapes it's like this researcher is done here to keep the Japanese beetles off, and you see that the land Japanese beetles will land on the grapes, and they'll mess around a little bit but they won't feed and they won't hang out very long because they don't like the dusty environment. So it's a simple barrier that you can apply. It does make your plants look white, you have to accept that for part of the summer, but it is pretty effective. And there are garden traps. So as we kind of get more proactive in there beyond barriers and cultural controls, we have garden traps like the yellow sticky trap. Now the yellow sticky trap is a simply a yellow card that has a sticky substance called tangled foot on it. And for this it's great for things like cucumber beetles. Cucumber beetles are attracted to the color yellow works for aphids and thrips to, but when they land on that card thinking it's a flower they get stuck and they die. Now this will not take care of all of your cucumber beetles, but again it's one of those pieces that you will apply to help keep a population in check, so that you don't have to resort to doing all kinds of sprays. So you want to hang this card right above the cucumber plants or the melon plants or the squash plants where you might have cucumber beetles right now. Now is a great time to do it because you know they're attacking them. And that way you'll be able to reduce the population. And then finally there are organic sprays whether it be homemade sprays or commercial sprays. I'll mention those as we go along to to give you a few ideas if you really have to resort to them what to do and what to use. And of course with these sprays. I also want to really focus on the idea that they should be targeted sprays as much as possible and the classic of course is BT Baxillus thuringiensis. It's a bacteria that kills Lepidoptera caterpillars. Lepidoptera caterpillars are the ones from models and butterflies. So if you have cabbage worms this works really well, but what else is in the Lepidoptera family. Yes, swallowtail butterflies, sulfur butterflies, monarch butterflies. So you have to be careful about where you spray it, because you could be killing those at the same time. So targeting the sprays to the pest and the plant that you have is really important. It used to be the idea that well if it's an organic spray it should be safe, but many plant based organic sprays like pyrethrums for example, are broad killers, meaning that they kill a number of different things. There's another one out there called spinosad it's a bacteria kills a number of different things, including bees at times. So you have to be very careful about using these and if you are going to use them use them towards the evening, using them on plants that are not flowering so you're not going to harm the bees and beneficial insects that are out there. It's often when they dried a little bit by the next morning they're not as toxic to the beneficials. But again, it is something that we have to kind of change our thinking around this and that thinking just because it's organic doesn't mean it's safe. It is still a pesticide and it still does kill many different organisms, both ones we see and the microbes that we don't see. So let's go through then some different plant problems and some different solutions so aphids. I mentioned those earlier that you know they love young foliage young foliage on your basil plants on pepper plants, you know on new plants that are out there, and they reproduce like rabbits in fact I think we should say rabbits reproduce like aphids because the aphids do a better job of it. You get a small population turning into a large one, literally overnight. Now the aphids will draw in ladybugs and so it's good to be able to identify not only the adult ladybug, but the what we call the aphid lion, which is the larval form of the ladybug which actually does more eating of the aphids than the adult would. So having a small investigation is okay but one of the best ways to control them if it starts getting out of hand is with a spray of water. So simply take the leaf or the branch or the stem that you have up in your hand, get your nozzle in the other hand and it's blasted with some water. You will blast the aphids right off into the lawn or into the garden, they're not going to climb back up again, and that will slow it down. Again, it won't get rid of all of them, but that's okay because it's okay to have some out there we just don't want to have an overwhelming amount. Then there's a tomato horn worm this is one you probably no one's thought about, well I have, but a lot of people won't think about it until July and then all of a sudden they'll come back from a weekend away. And they look at their tomato plants and all the tops of the tomato plants look like someone went in there and munched on them. And the first person we blame of course is the deer because everyone blames deer for everything. But if you look closer chances are it's a tomato horn worm. Especially if you see the leaves are gone some of the fruits even green fruits are chewed on, and there's these black kind of blackish green droppings on the leaves. That's the frass or the poop from the tomato horn worm. So this pest comes in, migrates in from the south usually. And it is usually July or so when it happens. It's only one generation a year thankfully you go further south and they have multiple generations a year. But they do come in and they eat fast and they grow fast and when they get this size they can just really devour a whole branch of tomato leaves overnight. But not all of them are harmful because if you see a tomato horn worm with these white little patrusions on them. Those are the larvae of the Bracanid wasp and the Bracanid was lays those on the tomato horn worm and they hatch and they literally it's kind of like one of those alien movies. They literally tunnel into the tomato horn worm and use that as a host as they're getting bigger and bigger. Eventually they pupate and turn into adults and fly away. So if you see those white patrusions on your tomato horn worm that's a good thing. Leave them there don't worry about it. I mentioned I was going to say a few words about companion planting well one of the companion plants that works pretty well is growing basil under your tomato plants. In fact grow a whole bunch of basil not only is it going to mix up the soil microbe thing that I mentioned before with crop rotation. What researchers have found is that basil emits enough fragrance into the air enough pheromones into the air to confuse the tomato horn worm from laying its egg on the tomato plant and that's really how a lot of this companion planting works. It's not like it repels the insect it masks the scent of the desired plant that they're looking for. So there's been a lot of research and there's a great book out there called plant partners if you really want to dive into this whole idea of companion planting and Jessica who I know Jessica Walzer did a great job doing research to find out what's what partnerships what companion planting schemes are the best ones to use in your garden to keep the insects and she also talks about diseases away based on science based on scientific research from around the world. And she compiled it all into this one book and that is one of the ones that's in there it's all about growing basil among your tomato plants to confuse the tomato horn worm. So that's a good one to look for potato beetles whether it be the Colorado potato beetle or the lesser potato beetle. These are of course big problems on potatoes but also eggplant if you grow eggplant you might see this problem too. You very easily can recognize the adult potato beetle it's pretty descriptive big enough to see. And what it does is it lays these orange colored legs on the back sides of the eggplant potato leaves in clusters, and then those eggs hatch into those gooey looking little red larvae and again the larvae is an active growth stage in any of these types of plants and caterpillar families. So those are the ones you really want to avoid because they're the ones going to do the most damage. So the weak link in this kind of chain you might say that I was talking about earlier, knowing when to insert yourself is when you see this. So by simply going out starting now flipping over some of the leaves your potatoes you don't have to get meticulous about it. You know choose different leaves around there and also look for the adult flying around to look for those orange clusters of eggs when you see them squish them. It's as simple as that if you're good about doing that. Every other day or so in the garden, if you can get out to your garden four times a week doing that kind of thing, you're going to see you'll have a lot less pest problems out there. It really kind of brings it around to you know when you're growing your garden make sure it's in a place where you're going to visit it pretty frequently and really commit yourself to going, even if it's for 510 minutes a day, you know taking a break at lunch, or in the evening when you get home or in the morning before you go somewhere, just take 510 minutes go out flip over some potato or eggplant leaves or there's be some other ones I'll mention here in a minute, like squash and look for the eggs. So the squash bug is something you need to be looking for right now. I was out in our garden a couple days ago and this kind of happened to flip over some our young squash and our squash are just our young ones are just forming some flower buds. I flipped over some leaves and lo and behold squash bug eggs already this early in the season. It's really can be a problem if you're starting to see squash bugs eggs in June because the population will quickly build so that by July August you have a it'll be devastated. And squash bugs look like these little guys over here having a little fun. They kind of look like stink bugs they're all kind of in that same family. And they lay clusters of copper colored eggs on the bottom side of your squash leaves melon leaves zucchini leaves any of those family of plants leaves, flip them over, and you'll see them they tend to be between the veins right cluster together, very obvious very bright, really easy to see this squish them take that take a scissors and cut them out. If you can do that like I was saying with the potato beetle, you know, every other day or so during the growing season just flipping over the leaves checking for the squash bugs looking for the adults and staying on top of the eggs. You will not have to spray and you won't have that many squash bugs, you won't get them all will be some that make it, but if it's August September and you've got a few of them wandering around causing a little damage. So squash bugs are something that you have to kind of really be alert for right now. Squash vine bar will be happening soon to that's another one you've learned for. So I talked earlier about different varieties of plants that you're growing and growing butternut squash versus a Hubbard squash and trap cropping idea that works well for those. But the squash vine borer for all other kinds of squash is what happens is that it lays its egg at the base of the plant at the base of the stem. And then it hatches into this caterpillar that you see there that this kind of tunnels out through the plant. Now one way to control it is to use those barriers I talked about those covers just cover your squash plants right now. And I had squash vine poor problems because until they start flowering and setting fruit, they're really not going to need that be policy be pollination to be happening. So you can keep them covered once they start flowering then you can either wrap those stems. I've seen people wrap them with aluminum foil to prevent the egg laying that's going on there, or you can plant something like nasturtiums now going back to the companion planting idea. Researchers or different researchers at different universities found that by planting nasturtiums around new zucchinis and summer squashes, not just one or two plants. I'm talking about trailing nasturtiums that cover an area. If you can plant that many nasturtiums and really get them covering an area you're going to see that you're going to have less squash vine borer and squash bugs, because just like with the basil. There is a pheromone scent that the nasturtium puts off that confuses the fly that wants to lay the egg that turns into the squash vine borer. So, trying something like that will be kind of cool in the garden plus nasturtiums are great to look at and great to eat. Cucumber beetles another one we've seen already in our garden. Another one's causing some damage out there. These you can see them as yellow and black striped or yellow and black dotted little beetles that are elongated. They will chew on ceilings and they first come out of the ground and can kill them. If you have ceilings out there and you see a lot of damage on the leaves you're probably seeing them they're hard to trap and hard to control. Because when you try to squish them they just dive into the ground and then burrow into the soil so they're hard to get that way. And that yellow sticky trap I mentioned earlier that will help reduce that population. You can also use these dusts and you know this used to be that people would use seven dusts and do this to their plants and I would always cringe because I don't know how many other things are killing in the process. This is not seven dusts. This is that dusty material I talked about kale and clay. There's another material you can use it's organic that works called diatomaceous earth. Now this one will kill a whole bunch of things you know it's always interesting on these bags they tell you all the things it kills that are harmful insects you know beetles and slugs and millipedes and cluster flies and fleas and all these other kinds of things. And it's true, but they also kill beneficial insects so I would use this again as a more of a last resort thing to spray that I would try the clay first. But the diatomaceous earth does work because it's a dusty material that the cucumber beetles really are not going to like. You do have to reapply this kind of material on the ground after a heavy rain like we just had. Flea beetles another one that's if you put out little seedlings earlier this spring or if you still have them out there and you're wondering why they had all these shotgun like holes in them. If you look closely you'll see these little black beetles that hop that's why they're called flea beetles. And these flea beetles can really take down an eggplant seedling or they love radishes and bok choy for example, and the way to take care of them is to use a trap crop just like we were talking before so radishes and bok choy in particular or any of those mustard green. And these flea beetles go crazy over those. So if you have egg plants if you have broccoli planted out, and you're getting flea beetle damage, or you're concerned about the flea beetle damage next to them or close by plant some radishes and bok choy they'll go over there, and either you can just let them eat the radishes and bok choy or you can try to control them there and pulling the plants out or, or squish them and then when you get a chance to be able to do that. That's a way to kind of reduce the damage on the more desired kind of plants. The cabbage worms I talked about you know the thing that we use is the floating row cover and remate to prevent the cabbage worm moth or butterfly excuse me, from growing from laying its eggs. This is the white butterfly often has a black dot on its wing that's flying around when you start seeing that you know the cabbage worms are probably already on your plants. You just haven't seen them yet, they lay single eggs on the undersides of the leaves that you can squish if you know what to look for. But it's easier to kind of control them by putting some kind of cover over them so that they don't get started in the first place once they start getting big like this, you can pick them off throw them into the pale of soapy water that will help to. One of the things about this is that if you get on top of it even if you have some damage your broccoli your cauliflower cabbage will be okay. And of course, as I mentioned covers are really good for this kind of past. And then there's slugs and snails we've had a bunch of wet weather recently. And so these guys are going to be out they know we pick lettuce all the time and there's nothing but slugs and snails and it seems sometimes. They love the nice succulent moist environment and they love the nice leaves of the slugs and snails. There's lots of different controls of this you probably heard of many of them the beer traps. Yep, indeed. Get a basin of water a little put some beer in it not all the way to the top maybe about leave an inch or two from the lip of the top of that container, so that as the slugs who snails come to it they just, you can see in this great illustration here. They're stretching their bodies to get a little drink of the beer they get a little tipsy fall in they drown with a smile on their face and so that's, that is a way to accumulate a lot of slugs and snails in one area. For those who are wondering the beer of choice for slugs and snail is Heineken. There was research done at Colorado State University and that's, that's what you do when you're in grad school these days. You lay out all the beers and see which ones of slugs need first. There are different traps that will do that as well. Wall is kind of an interesting way to deter slugs and snails. So I saw this when I did one of my garden tours to England a year years ago. And they had hostas that were mulched with wall and it was sheep's wall. And I asked the gardener there why I was like that and he said well that keeps the slugs and snails away from the plants they don't want to go across that scratchy surface and something in the tannins to keeps them away. And so the slugs and snails never get on the hostas. So if you have a bed of lettuce, for example, it's getting a lot of slugs and snails. And you know someone's sheep shop farmer so you can get some of their older wall and wallet that don't need and just mulch with it at least at the very least it'll be a conversation piece in your neighborhood. And then of course if you have containers whether they be containers of wood or plastic or metal whatever it is if you can put a strip of copper around this copper flashing around it. And the slugs and snails because they have such aqueous bodies come in contact with the copper they get an electrochemical shock and they don't like it. So they turn around and they go back down again. So this is a good way to kind of keep the slugs and snails out of your containers to. And then finally I want to wrap it up with some Japanese Beatles because they're not out yet but you know they're coming. The Beatles usually start coming out late June early July. They're around most of the summer they can devastate hundreds of plants everything from basil to zinnias to raspberries to grapes. I see them on everything almost. And, and it is the adult stage it causes the damage in this case. So the first thing we have to realize about Japanese Beatles. Excuse me. So what we should talk about with the Japanese Beatles is the life cycle. So again understanding something about the enemy that you have out there is a really good and important thing to know. So they start out in the winter as the C shaped white grubs in the soil, and then slowly as the soil warms they make their way up. This timelines a little off this is actually from an extension service slide from further south. Eventually by May June, they they're pupating and then they're turning into an adult beetle which in our area arrives in June, July. And that's where all the damages cause now the adult beetle all they live to do is eat and mate and lay eggs. And so that's what they're doing in the summer. Those eggs hatch in August or so and then you see that C shaped little grub that they're right on the surface of the soil. And then eventually as it gets colder they tunnel back down deeper in the soil. So the time to control or the stage to control Japanese Beatles is the grub stage and the time to do that is now. If you can get a product called beneficial nematodes and I'll talk a little bit more about this with the next slide. The beneficial nematodes, what they will do is they will parasitize these grubs and they don't harm other creatures that are in the soil. So the time to spray is now in June, or as you can see from this illustration, August and September when those grubs are still at the soil surface eating on the grass roots there. That's when you can really reduce the population and we did that we first moved to where we are now I did it pretty religiously for a few years. We still have Japanese Beatles they come in every year, but we don't have a devastation and our roses and other plants from the Japanese Beatles. So different controls for the adults you can certainly just handpick them. My wife Wendy goes out in the morning with a pail of soapy water and she very diligently picks them off when they're on the grapes and other plants drops them in there that's good if you have a small planting of things and you want to protect them. So you can use the Japanese beetle traps those bag traps do you see, but the key is to place them at least 200 feet away from your garden, and preferably upwind so that when the wind blows mostly from the south this time of year. The Japanese Beatles are flying in on that when they're going to hit the trap before they hit your plants. Don't plant don't put the trap right next to the plants because then they just go to the plants and they don't bother with the trap. And so many people do that. And then of course the first on the bottom is spraying those beneficial nematodes which is something you would spray now you can get a special sprayer hose and sprayer that you can spray these they're microscopic you're not going to see them. You just squeeze them out into a pail of water but the water and sprayer spray the lawn areas spray the areas where the Japanese Beatles were feeding that's where they're going to be laying the eggs. And that's where the grubs are and you do that and then afterwards you want to water them in really well by water them in really well that will get those nematodes down in where the grubs are and parasitize and kill them. So beneficial nematodes are available locally or through the mail so you can get them you can just check out with the local garden center for them. Hopefully in this short time I've been able to give you some great ideas about how to garden organically thinking beyond sprays thinking about the ecology of a garden thinking about mixing flowers and herbs in and then also trying to get a little more on top of the issues that you have in your garden because chances are there's probably a handful of insects that are driving you crazy. And if you can learn more about their life cycle wins the best time to apply spray to apply barriers and cultural controls to control them that's going to make your life a lot easier. So let me come back here and first of all thank everyone very much for coming I appreciate it we do these every month so hopefully we'll be seeing you again and good luck in your garden.