Once again the garden delayed dinner. I ran out to pick some herbs and noticed a pot of eggplant was really dry...while giving it a quick drink I saw a really cool mass of something on the underside of a leaf. It looked like bug hatching's and eggs; but was it a good bug or a bad bug? Not wanting to leave a big mass of "bad" bugs int he garden, I was tempted to squish them straight away, but what if they are "good" bugs? I snapped a photo and went straight to Google.
About an hour later I think I figured out what they are, Stink Bugs, I found a photo on The
Bug Guide Website that looks like a match to my critters, however the match is Harlequin Stink Bugs, and my garden doesn't fall within their range. While most stink bugs are pests (they cut and suck out plant juices) there are a few that are pest predators. I decided to give them the big squish. UC Davis has a guide to
managing stink bugs in the garden; generally hand picking is the recommended method.
No comments:
Post a Comment