The garden is exploding with growth.... Time for pest control!

Several days of rain followed by the heat and sunshine led to an explosion of growth in the garden. We harvested all of the radishes, spinach, and more lettuce. Then, we noticed several new bugs. Since we are growing without any pesticides, we want to identify these bugs as pests or beneficial bugs before we squash anything. After doing a little research, we found that we have a a nice balance of both pests and beneficials. It is like a little bug war out there between the good and the bad. Besides planting marigolds around the garden, we haven't done much to attract the beneficial bugs; however, we are thankful they arrived to feed off of the pests.

Here are the bugs we have found in our garden:

Ladybug larvae - ladybugs are beneficial insects because they eat aphids

Lacewing eggs - Lacewings are also beneficial bugs that feed on aphids

Yellow aphid eggs - aphids are the pests that eat holes in the leafy green. Grey aphid "mummies" next to the aphid eggs indicate that there are aphidius wasps in the garden. Aphidius wasps kill the aphids and mummify them.

 Cabbage worm - these are evil pests that eat huge holes in our cabbages. We noticed that our cabbages had dark green excrements on top of one of our cabbage and then we saw the worm.

Slugs - slugs are pests and voracious eaters that can destroy garden plants.