Hello there garden gals and guys. While I was working on the farm as part of my trainee program, I got a really good first-hand education about bugs. I’ve read about them and seen pictures of them, but now I’ve seen them first hand and I want to share them with you!

OK, if you grow tomatoes, you may have come across a tomato hornworm. I never have until this week. You may have had them and just not known it because they blend very well with the tomato plant foliage. But if you’ve ever gone out to your garden and seen a tomato stem stripped entirely of its foliage, that is from a tomato hornworm!

Here is a picture of one:

Gross, isn’t it? But a good thing if you have hornworms. The best thing to do is to leave this insect be if it’s like this. This is a good example of beneficial bugs taking care of the bad ones.
That picture is the best advertisement for not using chemicals in your garden.

That hornworm has eggs laid in it from a braconid wasp. This wasp lays its eggs in the hornworm, which kills the hornworm. Those eggs then hatch and the new wasps find more hornworms. Yay!

Next up, a Mexican bean beetle. These little yellow critters love string bean plants. They basically destroy the foliage and eat the flowers off of the plant before any fruit can form. Best method of control: squishing them (double yuck).

This picture is the best I could do…they are a little on the small side. Click on the picture…it’s that little yellow dot:

Here is a harlequin bug:

Now this bug will destroy cabbage plants or any other plant in the brassica family. They can destroy an entire crop if they aren’t controlled. They suck the sap out of the plants causing them to wilt and then die.

So there’s your bug education folks!

Now on to more pleasant things. Here’s some pictures of my latest harvest. Onions (a little small but they looked like they were starting to rot on the outside so I harvested them while they were still good):

And here are some of my maters:

And here’s a tomato and basil dish I made:

And here’s a shot of one of my watermelons. Her name is Lucy. I’ve got about 15 in the garden about this size:

That’s all for now garden gals and guys! Until next time….

Happy gardening!