Hi everyone! My offering will be a little shorter in length today. Since the prof gave his lecture in the dark with a lot of slides of insects and insect damage, I don’t have as many notes with words! I sought to write down what I could, and then in my notes for you, I did searches in some cases to see if I could find other pictures illustrating what the prof was explaining.
I hope all your gardens are doing well!
I actually planted something this week! We had a sack of potatoes that had sprouted, so I picked out a handful, cut them up and stuck em in the ground just to see if they would grow. I had had a volunteer potato plant and was pleased with myself that I could recognize sucking damage now when I see it! I had to pull up two of them but one was left. I treated it with insecticide soap, and so far, I think it is holding on.
Have a great week now that we are at the Summer Solstice time!
START INSTALLMENT THREE – BUGS
He showed us slides illustrating different kinds of insect injury.
Leaf miners’ “tracks” show a “serpentine” kind of damage, which actually is a sort of pretty kind of filigree-looking thing on a leaf. I did a quick check and found a link illustrating this:
http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/serpentine_mines_in_columbine_leaves_caused_by_a_leafminer
Fly larvae of the apple maggots show a sort of ookie area of squishiness and some dimpling where they are boring.
http://jenny.tfrec.wsu.edu/opm/displaySpecies.php?pn=140
He also showed gall insect damage. The feeding or egg laying activities cause the plant to make structures to protect the insect.
He also showed a picture of a cross section of what wood borer damage looks like, with the worm in it.
There was a leaf with a stippling pattern on it. Stippling damage is a common pattern left by insects who feed by sucking rather than chewing. When assessing damage, always remember to look for the SIGNS such as frass (bug poop) honeydew, and the insect itself. I found a link from Arizona illustrating this:
There was a picture with a leaf hopper. They are vectors for plant disease. Their mode of feeding is also sucking. Just looked up a link to these fascinating creatures that we never want to see!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafhopper
Sometimes when encountering sucking damage from any of the sucking feeders, you might see a leaf which has been stunted because the nitrogen has been cut off because of the feeding by the insect.
If you encounter a splotchy white area in the middle of a leaf you could at first think it is a bird dropping, but he showed us an instance where a concentrated pattern of stipple feeding points have coalesced into one large drained area. The leaf example he showed was, he stated, likely to have been done by thrips. Found this link:
http://www.naturescontrol.com/thrip.html
Then he showed us some pictures of spider mite damage. I did a quick search and found this link:
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Spider-Mites
END INSTALLMENT THREE BUGS
texokie’s garden ping for class notes! See above! Sorry...forgot to fill in the ping box.