Scout's Honor

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." - Benjamin Franklin 

This week has treated us to some delightful weather. While it looks like we may see an end to the dry conditions next week, do not hesitate to pick up the hose and protect your investments before then.

Many of us are towards the end of the planting season. While we wait for the joy of harvest, let’s remember what you can do in the interim to ensure your future bounty.

Are you familiar with scouting? I’m not talking about the kind with box car derbies or cookies, but the practice of intentionally surveying your garden for unwelcome visitors in the form of pests and diseases. Depending on the size of your garden, you can either inspect each plant individually or, if you have too many to feasibly inspect one-by-one, work in a Z formation. Weekly or biweekly, check the plant for good airflow, inspecting both the interior of the plant and the underside of the leaves. Keeping tools like baggies, markers, and a form of magnification on hand is always a good idea.

So, you found a bug — now what? It’s incredibly important to know your friends from your foes in the garden. There are two key types of beneficial insects: predators and parasitoids. Predators like lacewings, ladybugs, spiders, and assassin bugs eat troublesome pests in the garden. Parasitoids control pests by laying their eggs inside of their bodies, incapacitating and eventually killing them. If you find a hornworm covered in white eggs on your tomato plants, you have been visited by parasitic wasps.

To encourage these beneficial bugs in your garden, plant a variety of flowers and crops that have a wide bloom period, provide them shelter in the form of brush piles or leaf litter, scout often, and be very mindful about your pesticide usage. Use pesticides only when pest populations reach damaging levels. We strongly recommend exclusively using pesticides that are a lower risk to pollinators (like Arber) and limiting your applications to dusk and dawn.

That’s all for this week, my friends. Tune into Gardening Inside Out every Saturday morning at 8 am. Follow our Instagram for the Know Down — questions answered with a side of hilarity. Queue up the podcast for your next adventure. We can’t wait to see you soon!

Happy Gardening,

Sara Bates