The bane of my gardening existence has been the armies of stinkbugs that chew and suck the life out of my lovely garden plants. However, this year they have been a no show. (pause) Instead, I have been visited with a plague of Cucumber Beetles. They are actually very pretty as beetles go. A cheerful bright yellow with polka dots of black or shiny yellow with black racing stripes along their little bodies seems harmless enough. Harmless as an evil clown!
After hitting the Google and learning all I could about these insidious insects I have discovered that they live in the soil all Winter and come back year after year in greater numbers! Horrors! I must now choose some method of defense against them to try and salvage my glorious pumpkin vine and tender tomato plants.
It has been a tough year already for the garden with the record heat. 102 degrees day after day has caused my tomato flowers to refuse to drop pollen. Tomato production is down to a mere 8 tomatoes from 2 otherwise healthy plants. So I shade the tomato plants and mist them in an effort to cool them down, as well as, hand pollinate.
Did I mention that this year the bees have given up on my neighbor hood? Even the bee keeper next door is short on hives to take out to the fields. Then there is the drought, the scorching winds and the punk rabbits that like to eat anything that isn't caged up.
Really, this garden is a labor of love and or torture depending on how bad the odds are stacked against it. Then there are the Cucumber Beetles. The hellish evil clowns of the insect world. Here are my organic choices to keep them at bay.
1. Catch them with my hands and squish them. (gross)
2. Place tangle foot sticky traps around the plants to try and catch them. (difficult with the high winds here )
3. Spray with organic insecticides like Neem, 3in 1, and multi insect spray. (wow, expensive)
4. Dust with special powder. (can cause plant to die)
5. Rip out plants, burn them and scorch the earth, never to plant again. ( I can buy organic produce at the market...)
At this point I have one viable pumpkin growing on the vine. I inspect it and faun over it daily. I will have to plant with broccoli and radish, perhaps nasturtiums next year to remove and repel the Beetles and their yucky bacteria.
Who knows what battles I will have to fight next year. (shudders at the thought)
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