Jaws, Aliens, and War Games

David’s Journal 7-25 or continue reading below!

I will admit that the above movies are from my past, but they are still present in our culture and in the gardens. July is the month when the nursery industry gets bombarded with insects, chewed up leaves and stories of sticky mist falling onto the car, driveway, patio and windows. There are three types of feeding methods that insects make use of and they are chewing, sucking, and rasping combined with licking.

Earwigs, grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, grubs, and worms all have terrifying mouth parts. These insects are chewing types and seemingly the scariest group to the plants. When you are watching some science fiction movie and a creature bursts forth or screeches with some frightening sounds, the movie folks got their ideas from the insect world.

Many of these insects can be controlled several ways. We have found something natural that affects the stomachs of chewing insects. Spinosad is a gut bacteria that causes insects to stop eating thus depriving them of food and the water the leaves contain, causing them to starve to death. Some insects like grasshoppers and crickets can be cannibalistic and consume their dying companions and in turn become sick themselves.

Neem is another organic insecticide that works in hours or sometimes days depending on the type of insect, the stage of life it is in and how much of the oil came into contact with the bug. Both of these materials may leave you frustrated because they don’t get rid of the problem NOW. Other conventional products work much faster and you can see results in minutes rather than days. Sevin and Eight are two fast acting productsthat we offer, as well as a variety of other fast acting and long lasting (up to a month) liquids that you can spray on non edibles.

The rasping insects often have a large to huge saw type feature on the side of the face that tears through the skin of the plant and causes the plants blood or juice to pour out onto the surface where it can be lapped up. This causes the leaf to discolor and look burnt. These creatures are often quite small in size but very numerous like spider mites or they might be a size up like a flower thrip.

Mites can easily be controlled by washing your plants down twice a month in June, July, and August. Sprays work great on these monsters as long as the product says mites or thrips. Mites are different to other insects like dogs and cats are to horses. Thrips need to be looked for when your flowers don’t open completely or are disfigured. They are often in roses, irises, peonies, snap dragons, yuccas, fuchsias or other cupped or multi-petal flowers. They live in the flower bud and do their worst damage even before the flowers start to open. Rose and Flower Systemic Granules or Insect, Disease & Plant Mite Control Spray help considerably.

The last major group of insects are the piercing and these are your aphids and white flies, leaf hopper and scales along with mealy bugs and squash bugs. These aliens have long snouts like that of an elephant which can stab the plant cell and start sucking on the sap. They often don’t cause a lot of damage to the leaves like the other two groups but think about how you might feel with hundreds of leeches stuck to you draining your life’s blood out 24 hours a day.

The plan’ts ability to pump water out of the ground and up to the highest part of the plant also pumps the sap into the insects with such force that it can be tremendous and causes the honey dew effect to the greatest quantity below their feeding zone. Yes, all of that sticky stuff that comes out of the trees and coats everything below is a combination of plant sap and insect poop. This clear sticky stuff coats the driveway, walkways, car, side of the house, hot tub, BBQ and anything else that the plants hang over.

This group can be controlled with contact sprays- either organic or conventional. Some just take longer than others and you might need a strong pressure spray to cover the entirety of the plant. There is a ground application that works very well called Annual Tree & Shrub which is applied to the ground usually and watered in weekly for several weeks which is picked up by the root system and transported up onto the canopy. This is a favorite of mine because it is a focused application product that doesn’t move in the wind, like so many other sprays might.

So while you are realizing that 50 years have come and gone with the movie Jaws and 40 or so with Alien and War Games, we have been living with these idea generating, life altering movies that often can be looked to the insect kingdom as inspiration for some of these movies and the terror that it appears that some plants express when being attacked.

I should point out that there are many insects which attack us on a daily basis also, but please don’t dwell on these worries. The other item of mention is that 95 percent of all insects are just living here on this world not causing any harm to you, me or anyone else, so just because you see some large body of bugs, it doesn’t mean that they are bad or going to cause unwholly terror to you and your loved ones. Snap a photo with your phone and make sure that it is clear, bring it to the cooperative extension offices in Reno, Carson, or Douglas and they can send it in and have it identified free of charge and quickly so you can get back home to rest or get ready for combat.