Problem Solving

Garden Fundamentals

Keeping Squirrels Out of the Garden

With their acrobatic maneuvers and feisty chattering, squirrels often inspire smiles and laughter. But for gardeners who find beds dug up and tomatoes chewed, these bushy tailed critters aren’t a source of anything except frustration and a fervent desire to figure out ways of keeping squirrels out of the garden.

Garden Fundamentals

Keeping Voles Out of the Garden

When a deer or rabbit visits your garden, it’s tough to miss the nibbled leaves, chewed shoots, and missing plants. Voles, on the other hand, can be harder to identify — but just as destructive. Before you begin laying plans for keeping voles out of the garden, you want be sure that voles are the culprits.

Garden Fundamentals

Keeping Rabbits Out of the Garden

Forget the fact that rabbits are soft, fuzzy, and cute. These critters can be one of a gardener’s most despised pests, wiping out entire crops overnight. Rabbits prefer young, tender shoots and are particularly fond of lettuce, beans, and broccoli.

Garden Fundamentals

Keeping Deer Out of the Garden

In spring and summer, deer tend to feed heaviest, because pregnant and nursing does and antler-growing bucks must fuel their seasonal life stages — and those seasons, of course, are when you most need a plan for keeping deer out of the garden.

Garden Fundamentals

Spinach Leafminer

Damage begins as small trails on leaves and expands to larger blotches as miners feed on the leaf tissue. The damage from leafminers may be unsightly, but they do minimal harm to the plant.

Garden Fundamentals

Corn Rootworm

These beetles start in the root system of the corn and quickly destroy the entire plant. They can carry and transfer bacterial diseases, too.

Garden Fundamentals

Nematodes

Slightly stunted plants seem chronically thirsty, even when well-watered. Knotted roots are the tell-tale sign.

Garden Fundamentals

Stink Bugs

These insects suck sap from plants, including fruit, blooms, and shoots. Most often, they’re usually present in small numbers.

Garden Fundamentals

Leafrollers on Strawberries

Green to grayish brown, half-inch long caterpillars that roll up in the leaves in silk webbing and feed on leaves. A clean garden is the best prevention.

Garden Fundamentals

Squash Vine Borer

An entire plant or a single runner may wilt in as little as a day when borers are present. Look for a hole in the stem with sawdust-like waste. Cut open the stem, and you may find a grub-like insect inside. Once the squash vine borer creates the tunnel-like wound, bacteria and other microbes can invade the plant and cause rotting.

Garden Fundamentals

Squash Bugs

These insects emerge in spring after wintering under plant debris. They feed on leaves, vines, and fruit.

Garden Fundamentals

Squash Beetles

Often found on squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, and melons, these pests typically don’t cause enough damage to hurt plants. These are often confused with Mexican Bean Beetle.

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Spider Mites

Leaves turn yellow and dry up. Tiny webbing stretches from one leaf to another, appearing first on undersides but in severe cases across leaf surfaces, too.

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Pickleworms

These caterpillars burrow into fruit, where they feed.

Garden Fundamentals

Mexican Bean Beetles

With beans, the most likely cause of leaf blemishes is Mexican bean beetles. The larvae eat the tender tissue between leaf veins, creating brown spots and eventually skeletonized leaves.

Garden Fundamentals

Japanese Beetles

You may be familiar with Japanese beetles as a problem for roses and lawns, but these beetles can also feed on your vegetable plants. Corn, asparagus, and rhubarb are especially at risk.

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Hornworms

These large, green caterpillars have a horn on their backside. They can devour an entire tomato plant in a day or two.

Garden Fundamentals

Flea Beetles

These tiny beetles jump like a flea. They typically create shot hole-like damage on leaves.

Garden Fundamentals

European Corn Borer

When these borers are present, you’ll see broken stalks, sawdust castings at entry holes, or broken tassels. They also burrow into the base of ears.

Garden Fundamentals

How to Prevent and Get Rid of Cucumber Beetles

Cucumber beetles feed directly on plants, causing visible damage, and they may carry a bacterium that causes leaves to wilt. Infection typically occurs when plants are half-grown.

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Corn Earworms

These caterpillars bore into fruit, especially corn. Damage to beans is usually minimal.

Garden Fundamentals

Colorado Potato Beetle

These voracious beetles strip the foliage of potato, tomato, pepper, and eggplant crops. Adults have bright yellow wings with black stripes.

Garden Fundamentals

Cabbageworms, Cabbage Loopers, and Cross-Striped Cabbageworms

Cabbageworms are velvety green caterpillars that are 1 to 2 inches long.. White butterflies fluttering around your cole crops are the first sign of these munchers -- they are laying eggs that hatch into tiny cabbageworms that do more damage as they grow. Cabbage loopers are thin, green, inchworm-like caterpillars, also about 1 to 2 inches long. They often appear at the same time as the cabbageworm. The cross-striped cabbageworm is easy to identify by the blue-gray and black stripes across its back. All three pests chew holes in the leaves.

Garden Fundamentals

Army Worms

Tiny larvae crawl like inchworms, eating leaves to fuel growth. They vary in shades of yellow, green, gray, and brown.