How to Identify Garden Pest Bugs
Garden pest bugs, such as scales and leafminers, cause damage to your growing fruits and vegetables, produce discoloration in flowers and foliage and, in severe infestations, bring about stunted growth or even death of the plant. If these harmful insects are discovered early on, you have the ability to take measures to stop the damage. Know how to identify the garden pest bugs that come in contact with your plants so that you understand how to get rid of them. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
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Check the bases of emerging plants for cuts near the soil line. The army cutworm, for instance, is a grayish-brown caterpillar that is less than 1/4 inch long and lives in lawns and garden debris during the day and feeds on an assortment of plants at night.
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Look at the bottoms of leaves and check the stems of plants. Pests, such as aphids, are less than 1/10 inch long, come in shades including black, yellow or green and are soft-bodied bugs that may or may not have wings, depending on its life-cycle stage. Aphids pierce plant parts to suck out the nutrients, causing leaf distortion and curling.
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Shake your plants over a white piece of paper and use a magnifying glass to spot the small bugs that fall out. Thrips, as an example, are approximately 1/20 inch long, are yellowish black, have wings depending on their maturity and reside in the hidden plant areas such as flower buds and curled leaves. These garden pests make their presence known by leaving behind glossy, black excrement on plant parts and producing brown spots on flowers, fruit and leaves as they feed.
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Watch for flying insects that land on plants, such as your vegetables and flowers, as well as your trees and bushes. For instance, the whitefly is a tiny white insect that sucks out plant nutrients and leaves behind a substance that ends up as a sooty, black mold on garden foliage.
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Inspect your edible plants for pests that camouflage themselves within the stems and leaves. Hornworms, such as the tomato hornworm and tobacco hornworm, for example, are green caterpillars that reach up to 4 inches long and display a horn at the end of the body. Tomato hornworms have eight white "v" shapes on the sides of their bodies, while the tobacco hornworm bears seven white diagonal lines. Both caterpillars feed on plants such as tomatoes and peppers, boring holes in green fruit and causing plants to lose their foliage.
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References
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