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July 22, 2014

Kate's Korner: August 2014

Bugs. There are good ones and there are bad ones – and then there are really bad ones. The Harlequin beetle falls into the latter category as it is a pest in every sense of the word. Unfortunately, we have become familiar enemies in the Demonstration Garden. I first noticed them a couple months ago milling about on the perennial tree collards. They are easily identified by their black shield-shaped bodies with orange and white markings. The young beetles are a rounded shape and the eggs are generally white with black stripes. 


  
Although they eat anything, they’re particularly fond of plants in the Brassica Family, including cabbage, collards, broccoli, mustard, kale and more. I had a handle on it at first...or so I thought. Every weekday a volunteer or I would spend some time picking them off the plants. At the week’s end I would be impressed by how few adults I could find but come Monday, the beetles would be back in force. I began looking for the eggs in an attempt to eradicate the next generation. I found so many eggs it was scary, there were one to two clumps of eggs (with about 10 eggs per clump) on each leaf. At a certain point I realized it was an inefficient use of time to hand pick for an hour each morning. I then graduated to spraying NEEM on the plants every day hoping to kill off all the beetles. By this time, the tree kale was looking awful since the harlequin beetles had been sucking the juices out of their leaves and stems for a few weeks. The leaves were also covered with uneven white spots where the bugs were munching them.  



After about a week and a half of spraying I could tell my efforts were futile. The last resort was to pull the plants out and hopefully remove the bugs with them. In the few days after this tree kale problem, I noticed some beetles on the hops and lovage nearby. My hopes were that they had fled to these plants but wouldn’t find them to their liking. They found a flower variety they favored, cleome, which I promptly removed.

Unfortunately, I have been starting winter crops the last few weeks and a few beetles found their way into the greenhouse and began enjoying a nice Brassica lunch. I've resorted back to hand picking those because the scale is much easier to manage. In a pleasant twist, the fish in the greenhouse aquaponics system love a harlequin beetle snack!

Fingers crossed I can eradicate them before our winter planting. Stay tuned for future installments of Kate the Gardener vs. The Harlequin Beetle Hordes!

Submitted by Kate Wilkins, AmeriCorps VISTA at Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services.

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