272 Q&A - Bugs!

Show Transcript

GB 272 TRANSCRIPT Q&A BUGS!

Farmer Fred  0:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred

Today, America’s Favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower and myself tackle your garden questions. And they are all about bugs, including the big three of bugs that vex gardeners the most: Aphids, wasps, gnats, and for some people - especially if they are allergic to them - bees. And that one serves as an introduction to one of the more vexing questions we received: are there any plants to repel bees?

It’s all in today’s episode 272, Questions and Answers about Bugs.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

Q&A, Pt. 1: Aphids

Farmer Fred

Obviously, the answer to the question, “What is your most despised garden pest?” is going to vary by location, time of the year, and who you’re asking. After all, the rose gardener has their own sworn enemies, as do vegetable growers. But, in general, everyone, at one point or another during the course of the growing year, will encounter aphids. Lots and lots of aphids.

And this year is no exception. Multiple questions have come in lately asking about aphid control techniques.

So we begin our little q&a session talking about a garden pest that is born pregnant and can give birth to 5, 6 or more new pests every day of its adult life. What’s the deal with all these aphids?

Farmer Fred

The birds are singing, the flowers are flowering and the aphids are aphiding. Oh, the aphids. What are we going to do? Debbie Flower is here, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor. And no matter what we do, aphids come back.

Debbie Flower

They sure do, year after year after year.

Farmer Fred

What are they doing? Should we even get rid of them?

Debbie Flower  2:28

Well, that's a good question. I would, in some cases. I don't bother. In other cases, I go after them. There are many different kinds of aphids. There are many different colors of aphids, different sizes of aphids. And so finding a good reference that shows you pictures of them might be helpful. They are rather specific in terms of like the yellow ones are on the Asclepia, which is butterfly weed. And my apricot has some  green ones  on the leaves that are very protected, the understory leaves. So, there are many different ones. Some look waxy, some are white, some are black. There's all kinds of aphids.

Farmer Fred  3:10

There are dead aphids on there too, which look like black specks.

Debbie Flower  3:13

Oh, and there are cast skins. Yes, aphids are born pregnant. And so they give birth, live birth to these babies. And then as the babies get bigger,  much like a snake does, they cast off their skin. They grow up. they break open their skin and they come out, and they have a new skin on underneath. And they leave little white specks, called casts, meaning throw away the skins, among their population on the plant.

Farmer Fred  3:45

Yes, something like they'll molt four times before they're an adult. Here's one wonderful fact from the University of California. In our mild climate, aphids can reproduce asexually throughout most or all of the year, with adult females giving birth to live offspring, as many as 12 per day without mating. 12 babies a day.

Debbie Flower  4:07

yeah. Wow.

Farmer Fred  4:11

No wonder they suck all those plants.

Debbie Flower  4:12

So they're a sucking insect, they put their mouthparts into the plant, and the pressure within the plumbing of the plant pushes the sap into them. They use that for food. It doesn't all get used because the pressure is so great. It comes out faster than they can consume it. And so some comes out the other end. They actually have a special plumbing arrangement inside the aphids body where some of it just totally bypasses the digestive system and comes out the back and that creates those sticky spots all over the place, called honeydew.

Farmer Fred  4:43

And if you're looking for some honeydew, look for any plant with new growth. Because probably on the new growth this time of year, you're going to see aphids. Touch that portion of the plant. Your fingers will feel sticky.

Debbie Flower  4:54

Right. And if you don't see it, but if you see a whole lot of wasps lying around a portion of the plant, they may be eating the honeydew. They like it for food. So that's another way to potentially find the honeydew.

Farmer Fred  5:09

Speaking of loss, there are parasitic wasps that are small and they don't sting humans, and you probably would have a hard time seeing them, but they will lay their eggs inside the aphid.

Debbie Flower  5:20

Yes, they do. And then the aphid body becomes tan, and round. They're generally sort of long, bulging in the middle, tapering at either end. Aphids are insects with six legs, but they will become round and tan. And that's when the aphid has died, but the wasp is developing inside and then the wasp will cut a perfect round circle in that tan body and escape. Yeah, so that's one reason not to kill the aphids. If it's not a problem, the problem being that it distorts the leaf shapes, and it produces this honeydew which can be a problem on the sidewalk, it can be a problem on other parts of the plant where it allows it turns black and prevents light from getting to those parts of the plants. So if you don't have the distortion, or or the honeydew problem, or other problems that aphids may cause, then just let them do their thing and let  what we call beneficial insects come in and consume the aphids and there are quite a number of them.

Farmer Fred  6:21

The smartypants among you may be saying, “now wait a minute, you said live offspring, 12 a day. Well, how do they make it through the winter?” They've got that covered. Because that time of year, when it starts getting cold, there are aphids that will lay eggs, which can overwinter pretty good. And they will usually lay those eggs in fall or winter and put the eggs on foliage on deciduous plants. And sometimes they lay these eggs on an alternative host, usually a perennial plant, for winter survival.

Debbie Flower  6:52

Sometimes they'll go under bark on trees. I've only sprayed my apricot one year. I've lived in this house 11 years, year I’ve only sprayed one year during the dormant season. And it was because the previous summer I had so many aphids,  I couldn't touch the plant. I couldn't get near it. I couldn't get under it. So I waited for all the leaves to fall off. You do it at the correct time of year. And I did the dormant spray of horticultural refined oil and did the trunk as well and all the bark as much as possible. And I've never had a big problem after that.

Farmer Fred  7:30

You smothered the eggs.

Debbie Flower

Yes. With oil which is an organically acceptable spray to use.

Farmer Fred

Yes, it is.  In case those of you were worried about the spray.

Debbie Flower  7:38

look for that OMRI certification on the label.

Farmer Fred  7:41

Yeah, it's not like you were using a non-selective insecticide.

Debbie Flower  7:44

No. And that's what you don't want to do.  I worked at Cooperative Extension. I was the adviser to the nursery industry. And I got a call from a local retail nursery and they had a spider mite problem. A huge spider mite problem. Which is a bigger, worse, harder to control problem than aphids. Well, it turned out they'd had an aphid problem. So they went out with a broad spectrum insecticide and sprayed everything. And yeah, they got rid of the aphids, but they also got rid of the spider mite predators. And so the spider mites moved in and there was nobody around to get to control them.

Farmer Fred  8:21

Yes, spider mites are not controlled by an insecticide. They're controlled by a miticide.

Debbie Flower  8:27

Yes. So if you want to control your aphids, reduce the nitrogen you're using on the plants if possible, because you don't want lots of new growth. You want some, but you don't want plants with lots and lots of new leaves. That  is an aphid buffet, and they'll move in and all 12 of the new babies will live and they'll all have 12 new babies tomorrow, so the population will explode. So lessen the amount of nitrogen fertilizer. It is the first number on a fertilizer bag. Nitrogen causes grreen growth which we want, but not in excess. Don't use pesticides. Just spray water, a hard spray of water on the plant will knock them off and squash them, it'll reduce the population. It also gets rid of the honeydew, which can be an attractant for things like wasps, and then thin the plant so that the beneficial insects can get into the aphids. I was actually doing that yesterday on my apricot, which had some layered growth. That means it had branches over branches, and so the lower branches weren't getting a lot of airflow. They weren't getting a lot of sun. So it was difficult for a beneficial insect to get in there. So I was judiciously taking out certain branches so that it was opened up. That way,  the aphid population would be controlled naturally, and it does have aphids this year .

Farmer Fred  9:45

This is why it is so important to know your garden good guys. Know the beneficial insects. Not only what the adult looks like, but what the larval stage of the beneficial insects look like, because they're the ones that do a lot of the aphid munching. Ladybeetles, for example. You know what a full grown Ladybug looks like? Do you know what a teenage Ladybug looks like? It looks like an alligator with a San Francisco Giants warm up jacket. Lacewings too have interesting looking larvae.  You know what adult lacewings are, because you'll see them stick to the screen door on a warm evening when the lights are on. It looks like a kind of like a long yellow crawling bug when it is in the larval state. Yes, just very amazing. So you might think of it as a bad guy. It's not, you've got to know what these look like.

Debbie Flower  10:31

Same with Syrphid fly larva. You can see their body parts right through there, when they're in the larval stage, and they look like a caterpillar. So yeah, getting to know these, it's very important. There is a a poster available to familiarize yourself with those getting to know those is crucial.

Farmer Fred  10:48

What was the name of that poster? I’ll go out to the garage and see. (Walks to the garage).

Farmer Fred  11:11

(Walks back into the studio). We will have a link to that poster. You can download it and hang it over the freezer in your garage like I do. It's called “Meet the Beneficials” from the University of California. So we'll have a link to “Meet the Beneficials”, so you can see what the garden good guys look like because you do want to encourage that. But we should point out one more thing about aphid control, you're probably going to see ants moving up and down the plant.

Debbie Flower  11:33

So they want that honeydew, too. So we got to control the ants. And so baiting for those ants is an important step in the control the aphids.

Farmer Fred  11:46

We will have a link to information that talk about ant control, because there's a lot of tactics you can take. But aphids, they're going to be with us from here on out. So just keep a garden hose handy for one thing, and consider building the good bug hotel. Put in a lot of attractive plants for beneficial insects. And we'll have a link to that as well, in today's show notes.

Debbie Flower  12:06

And although that poster is from the University of California, it applies all over the country.

Farmer Fred  12:11

bugs are bugs.  All right, Debbie. Thanks for the word on aphids.

Debbie Flower  12:15

You're welcome Fred.

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Farmer Fred

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HARVEST DAY

Farmer Fred

Coming Saturday, August 5, It’s Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. Put on by the U.C. Master Gardeners of Sacramento County, Harvest Day features speakers, education tables, garden vendors, food trucks, and your chance to explore the one acre garden that is designed for you, the backyard gardener, to take home ideas that you can use in your own yard.

The Fair Oaks Horticulture Center was built and is maintained by Sacramento County Master Gardeners. It features areas dedicated to growing berries, herbs, fruit trees, vegetables, a vineyard, native plants, water efficient plants and a lot more. Plus there are sections dedicated to composting, including worm composting.

On Harvest Day, each area is staffed by Master Gardeners who are eager to answer your garden questions.

At the dozens of education tables, you’ll get information from professional nursery people, irrigation specialists, the Audubon Society, soil experts, the Master Food Preservers, local garden clubs, water experts, honeybee and native bee specialists.

Vendors will include Northern California nurseries, exotic plants, cactus and succulents, mushroom growing kits, and more.

The speakers include talks about landscape trees, attracting pollinators, and, oh yeah…Myself and America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture professor, Debbie Flower talking at 830 that morning about “Tips for Saving Time, Money and Water in the Garden.”

Someone once said, “It’s the best garden event in Northern California!”

Oh wait, I said that. And it’s true. And it’s free!

Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, Saturday, August fifth, 8am to 2pm. In Fair Oaks Park in Sacramento County. put on by the UC Master Gardeners of Sacramento County. Check today’s show notes for a link with more details and maps of Harvest Day! Hope to see you there!

Q&A, Pt. 2 Gnats, Drain Flies, Moth Flies

Farmer Fred

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. Joining me in the studio today, here at Barking Dogs Studio, watching the recently trimmed abutilons growing back to their full size, it's Debbie Flower, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor. Debbie, the regrowth this time of year is always amazing in the garden and how things look fresh and green. But it also brings out the latest crop of pests as well.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it does.

Farmer Fred

So I was at the eye doctor the other day. They did some touch up Cataract surgery. Cataract surgery, twice.

Debbie Flower  16:46

Now my husband just had it once for each eye.

Farmer Fred  16:49

Apparently they did need to do some touch-up surgery. And for like two or three days afterwards, I was seeing what I thought were flies or gnats going by my face, or something like that. So I was always waving in front of my face, seeing if I could catch them. And the doctor reassured me no, that's just an optical illusion, that will go away. And then she went on to say how she's having actual bugs, gnats, flying around the outside of her house. And I said, Well, what color is your lightbulb outside the house? She said white. I said, put in a yellow light, right? And she looked at me funny. And I said this is what I do for a living. And she goes, “I know what you do for a living”. So, we have a question. Another question about gnats.

Debbie Flower 17:38

Yeah, Lynne in Citrus Heights. She says she has tiny gnats coming in her windows. Oh, you're gonna play it. Go for it.

Lynne in Citrus Heights  17:44

Hi, Farmer Fred. My name is Lynne and I live in Citrus Heights, and  I am having problems with these little teeny tiny gnats. They do not go for food. They seem to only go for water. But they also go into my cupboards and just die on the bottom of my cupboards. Seems like I've seen them come in the windows. So possibly they're living in the dirt below. I'm not sure, I live in an apartment. But I am hoping for a solution to these creepy crawlies. They go and die around light bulbs, both light bulbs and water. Any ideas? Thanks much. Bye.

Farmer Fred  18:25

Well, good luck to all of us. What do you think?

Debbie Flower  18:27

Three things came to mind for me. One is fungus gnats, which lay their eggs and then they're larva also spend time in organic matter. The time that I've seen them it's been in a container plant in the organic matter in a container that the plant is growing in. The next one is fruit flies. Fruit flies hanging out around fermenting fruit. So she didn't mentioned anything about fermenting fruit outside her window. And the third one is called a drain fly or a moth fly. I'm leaning towards that one. I have seen them in greenhouses, drain flies or moth flies breed and develop in standing water. And we've had a very wet year here in this part of California. And that's where Lynne is. And I don't know what's outside her window. But if there's a wet spot with some organic slime, maybe it's where the downspout on her apartment building dumps the water. We've had water up until very recently, we've just continued to have rain. So there are some wet places that keeps getting wet like that. They would live right there. And they do come in through windows and they are attracted to light. And they need their water. And when they're stuck in the house, they don't get water, so they die.

Farmer Fred  19:48

So I imagine the cure for all this would be to clean the swampy areas?

Debbie Flower  19:54

It's suggested by the University of Kentucky entomology site that if you think  you're trying to identify where they're coming from to go into the house, they do occur in houses where there's  standing water, let's say in a sink or the pipes below the sink. It's called a P trap, where water settles, and if you don't use that sink for a long time, they could live in there. But if you take a  plastic cup and line the inside with something sticky, like Vaseline, petroleum jelly, or Tanglefoot, (the sticky trap stuff) and put it over the location where you think they are breeding, they'll get stuck inside the cup. This isn't going to work to control them, it's just going to help you find out where they're coming from.

Farmer Fred  20:41

I would hate to remove a P trap under a sink on my back, crawling under the sink, and opening up the P trap. All of a sudden,  there's flying insects everywhere.

Debbie Flower  20:52

If they are right in the sink, it's pretty easy to get rid of them. you just add boiling water to do it. And so if  this place of breeding is right outside of Lynn's window, she could potentially go out there and pour boiling water over it hoping to get the whole thing. And that would kill the larva and the eggs. If they're near the surface, she could ask the powers that be to improve the drainage there. I don't know if putting a lot of  bark mulch on top of that site might help. It would absorb some of the water and it would bury the flies, and I suspect they'd have a harder time getting out.

Farmer Fred  21:30

Maybe if you spot that slow draining area outdoors, you could throw some chlorine bleach on it.

Debbie Flower  21:37

I don't know if bleach would kill them. Bleach does kill a lot of things. And bleach can be very harmful to our skin and our clothing. So that would be something to be very careful about trying.

Farmer Fred  21:49

Okay, the good news in all of this is the fact this is a seasonal thing.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it's going to go away.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. So if you just be patient, move in with your sister or something else, take a vacation. Come back, they'll probably be gone. Right.

Debbie Flower  22:04

I don't think it's the fruit flies. Fruit flies have little reddish bodies. The  fungus gnat has, of the three, has the longer, thinner body and longer, thinner wings. And the drain fly is like the shape of a moth but it's much much much much much much smaller. And it is hairy like a moth and it's sort of a brown color, but it can have some black in it. Of the three, it's still lighter in color. It's fat, chubby, the chubbiest wings of all three, but you'd have to see pictures of them to know the comparison.

Farmer Fred  22:40

I do would take a quick look around your openings, like your screens or your windows or cracks.  Repair those, too. And then going back to the outdoor lights, I think sodium vapor lights or yellow lights would also dissuade them from coming closer to the house.

Debbie Flower  23:02

Sodium vapor lights work as well?

Farmer Fred  23:05

According to the University of California's Integrated Pest Management site, it's important to consider the role of light attraction to these flies. They're often attracted to structures during the evening hours by external building lights. Light should be placed away from doors or other building openings to reduce fly access to the interior of the building. And lights near the structure should use sodium vapor lamps or insect lights which are less attractive to moth flies. I would add, too, that under no circumstances do you want to put one of those ultraviolet insect killer lights next to your door.

Debbie Flower  23:39

That just brings insects from afar. They’ll say, “Oh, look, let's go there. Yeah, call up the family and bring them along.”

Farmer Fred  23:47

Alright. So the good news is: this issue will go away and you can soon worry about something else.

Debbie Flower

Yes.

Farmer Fred

All right. Debbie Flower, we helped somebody out here today. Thanks so much.

Debbie Flower 23:59

Yeah, my pleasure, Fred.

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred  24:03

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BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER/PODCAST

Farmer Fred

In the current Garden Basics newsletter and podcast, we tell you the best ways to choose and care for your garden hand tools. We talk with a rather sharp master gardener about keeping those cutting blades in top shape. And if Trying to decipher the basics on how to sharp garden hand tools can be a bit daunting to understand in an audio format, the newsletter also has a video, about garden tool sharpening.

And the wise gardener can help ensure that their garden tools can last a lifetime by first purchasing well-made tools. We talk with a couple of tool heads who say, instead of purchasing several inexpensive tools, pick the one garden tool that you will use the most, and then buy the highest quality one you can find.

So, What makes for a quality garden hand tool?

It’s all in the current Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and mini-podcast, “Selecting and Caring for Garden Hand Tools”.

If you are already a Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter subscriber, it’s probably in your email, waiting for you right now. Or, you can start a subscription, it’s free! Find the link to the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast in today’s show notes, or at Substack. Or, you can sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, gardenbasics dot net.

Q&A, Pt. 3: MUMS, BEES, WASPS

Farmer Fred

Let's go to the garden email bag here on the Garden Basics podcast. Our chief question answerer is here, America's favorite retired college horticultural Professor, Debbie Flower. And we get a question from Julie in Cedar Rapids, Iowa who says, “I would love a podcast episode on mums. Chrysanthemums. It is related to flowers that no bug wants to visit. I have some Belgium mums for the late fall color but I wondered if they are good for any pollinators or any bug.” So, Julie did an internet search and she found that a lot of bugs like them. But she says she found internet sites that say no bugs like them, because, after all, mums are used to make bug poison. So what is the truth?

Debbie Flower  27:20

Yeah, that's that's it that is confusing.

Farmer Fred  27:21

Well, that's the internet for you. If you stick around long enough, you’ll hear every angle. But there's a germ of truth to both.

Debbie Flower 27:30

There is. There is  an insecticide made from chrysanthemums, called pyrethrin, that has several chemicals in it that come from the plant, but it is made only from a particular chrysanthemum that has a White daisy type flower, which most of us don't grow, and it's certainly not one of the Belgium mums, I had to look up the Belgian mums. They are a recent development in the chrysanthemum world. They make a very tidy mound of flowers and they are not brittle. The stems of many chrysanthemums are brittle. And these are not. And they have hundreds and hundreds of blooms on this nice tiny mound. So that is not the chrysanthemum that makes the insecticide. So, her chrysanthemums will not kill bugs. She also asked whether if there are flowering plants that don't attract bees or wasps, and that stumped me. I couldn't even think of a good way to research it. What would your terms be? So every time I looked it up, I would get lists of pollinator plants, because I talked about plants and bees and wasps. And there are many, many, many lists for that. But the only place I could find a list of plants that do not attract lots of insects, and it wasn't specific to bees and wasps, was from some publications by the University of Georgia, which has a good horticulture program. They're the first one I came across that said it had a list of plants. But  then said we need to do more research. I did not find the research paper, but I found a later publication that basically listed the same plants. It's called newswire, and it has  a list of plants that are the “wrong stuff”, as they put it, for bees. This includes cultivars of Dianthus, which are commonly called Pinks. But  they did not list the specific cultivars. They also had on that list geraniums, chrysanthemums - so they're saying they don't attract bees -, marigolds, straw flowers, daffodils, coreopsis, dayl