Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Still Bugged
I was going to write a nice cheery note about how it seems we've finally turned the corner with the Japanese beetles. I had only seen one today, and assumed that they'd started to die off. Then I found where they had gone. My Passiflora vine, on which I noticed flower buds several days ago, is now blooming - sort of. There were open flowers. But on those open flowers were a few dozen Japanese beetles.
Well, OK, there's no rescuing the Passiflora blooms, so might as well pick some cherry tomatoes for dinner. That's when I found this. Another bad news/good news sort of thing. Yes, it's a tomato hornworm (or is it tobacco hornworm?), and yes, it chewed off quite a lot of the tomato foliage (bad news), but it's covered in Braconid wasp parasites (good news). So it's going to die soon, but I didn't want it to keep eating the tomato plant until it does - I relocated it.
And we do still have some nice bugs around - this afternoon I got a good picture of a somewhat tattered tiger swallowtail.
5 Comments:
Having just got back from vacation and being very distressed from still finding lots of Japanese beetles (at least a couple hundred today alone and probably more) I thought I'd stop by your site and see if you are still dealing with them. Is it just me or the J. beetle season getting longer?
I'm a hornworm fan. Most the foilage on my tomatoes eventually turns yellow anyhow, so I figure the hornworms might as well eat it first. I should've been more ruthless earlier in the year pulling the tomato volunteers. Now I am absolutely swimming in them and can't pull myself to pull the vines loaded with ripe fruit.
On the plus side, there've been a lot of butterflies in the yard lately. Several monarchs today, tiger swallowtails, a black swallow tail, zebra swallow tails, some skippers, a fritallary (they love passion vines in FL) and a few smaller ones I didn't identify.
I think (hope) the Japanese Beetles are finally declining. I could only find one today, and I looked in all their favorite spots. It does seem like they've been here a long time this year. And it must seem even longer with hundreds of them.
The hornworms do look kind of cool, and I just realized that they're related to the hummingbird moths, which are really cool. But. This one started eating the tomato plant from the top, and I only have 3 tomato plants, so it had to go.
I'm not having much luck with the butterflies this year, other than a few gazillion skippers. And I can't (won't) identify most of those. I had many more of the big colorful kinds of butterflies in past years - don't know why they're so scarce this year.
They (the JBs) really are the worst
I can remember. Relentless!
This week theyve chewed all the
silks off my late crop sweetcorn,
despite my 2-a-day beetle patrol.
There really must be a little bit
of masochist in every longtime gar
dener. Onward...
Theo in Charlottesville
I think the worst is over here. I've seen a total of 3 Japanese Beetles in the last few days.
Next year will be better (thinking positively) :-)
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