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             The Gardener Guy of Tulsa, Oklahoma

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Garden Pests

The best solution to any pest is to hand-pick - early and often. I have 5 patches of lilies, and they have attracted that little red devil that finds them yummy, the lily leaf beetle. I work at home, and go down to the garden several times in the course of a day, so I visit the lilies and pick the pests regularly. They are slow moving, and relatively easy to catch. Most lilies have a series of whorls of leaves, so even if one escapes, it doesn't usually hit the ground, but lands on the next whorl below. Drop them in soapy water, and they'll die. So far I've seen none of their larvae, which means I'm winning. There are tiny parasitic wasps that have been imported from Europe that will attack the lily leaf beetle and reduce their numbers considerably - but it might be 10 years or so before the problem is licked. In the meantime, I pick the beetles.

Tent caterpillars go in cycles, and I think we're over the hump and looking towards fewer problems with them this year. I've knocked a few nests out of trees with a stick, and squished the mass of caterpillars, or put them in soapy water. The caterpillars hide out in their sticky nests during the day, and then feed at night when predators are asleep. Even if they defoliate your tree, that shouldn't kill it - most will grow new leaves from dormant buds later in the summer after the caterpillars are gone.

There is a safe product, Dipel, that will do in tent caterpillars. It contains a bacterium (BT variety kurstaki) that, if eaten, will cause them to stop eating, sicken and die. It will not affect other insects, and is not toxic to humans or pets. If you spray the leaves where they are feeding, it should work for you. It works best on the caterpillars when they are young, and lasts only a few days after spraying, so it may need to be re-applied. This BT is similar to the one used for Colorado potato beetle.

Last fall in an article about hostas I reported that a hosta grower got rid of slugs by mixing up a 10% solution of household ammonia and spraying the pests. I tried it recently, and it really does work. I put 2 ounces of ammonia in a quart spray bottle and added 20 ounces of water. Zap a slug, and it seems dissolve almost immediately, and I've seen no ill effects on the plants. An internet search only cautioned me not to get the spray in my eyes (duh!) or breathe it.

That solution doesn't do so well on the thousands of tiny snails that have taken up residence in my garden, even eating things like young marigolds. Snails and slugs feed mainly on decaying organic matter, but love to munch on young plants, too. Hundreds of little snails showed up in the rotting hay that I used to mulch the area next to my squash hills where I plan to let my vines frolic.

My squash plants are up, but the snails haven't yet found them. Here's my plan: create a no-man's land (or no-snail zone). Instead of mulching around the hills, I am keeping the zone free of anything good to eat, even weeds, and have put down a thick band of coarse sand that will, I hope, act like broken glass at the beach - they'll avoid it. I've used sand as a snail deterrent around broccoli in past years with moderate success. I'll hoe down weeds as they appear, and handpick any snails that head for my squash. Once the squash are big enough to reach the mulched area, snail damage should be less of a life-threatening problem than for small plants.

Spraying powerful toxins on the snails might be satisfying, but would be counterproductive. Snails and slugs lay eggs in the soil, where they are eaten by ground beetles and fireflies -of which we have many. I've never seen ground beetles or fireflies working for me in the soil, but, truth be known, I had no idea that fireflies eat the eggs of slugs and snails (or not until I read Rodale's Pest and Disease Problem Solver: A Chemical-Free Guide to Keeping you Garden Healthy (by Gilkeson, Pierce and Smith.) But if we spray toxins on pests, it is easy to kill the good things along with the bad. (The few squirts of ammonia I use on slugs seems innocuous enough - ammonia is a natural byproduct of decomposition, and is taken up by plants as a fertilizer.)

So resist your impulses to spray toxic chemicals - even when the Japanese beetles arrive on your roses, which they will soon. Think about paying a child to pick them - nowadays a penny apiece won't attract even little kids - but a nickel might. And that is cheaper than the chemical alternatives in many ways.

Henry Homeyer is the VT/NH associate editor of People, Places and Plants magazine. His website is www.gardening-guy.com. He may be contacted at gardening.guy@valley.net, or P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.