Backyard Bandits: The Bad Guys

You may have noticed some uninvited guests crawling around your garden lately. Don’t panic! Harmful insects can be eliminated to keep your plants thriving!

Aphids

Have you noticed a lot of ants in your garden? If you have, you probably have an aphid problem as well. Ants and aphids form a symbiotic relationship: the ants protect the aphids from predators and the aphids provide the ants with their secretions, known as “honeydew,” to eat. Although ants are not particularly harmful to your plants, aphids suck the sap out of plants, act as vectors for disease, and cause disfigurement. They breed rapidly, making them difficult to eradicate.

How to Spot:

• Look for green, black, brown, or yellow soft-bodied bugs clustered around areas of “new growth” at the tips of your stems and branches

How to Treat:

• Insecticides
• Soap sprays
• Neem oil (organic option)

Common Targets:

• Burning bush

• Hibiscus

• Calibrachoa  

Japanese Beetles

Adult Japanese beetles emerge from the ground beginning in late June and early July. By now, they have already started to feed on flowers, trees, etc. The Japanese beetle is known to eat over 300 different species of plants. They were accidentally introduced into the US in 1916 and are now considered an invasive species due to a lack of natural predators. They skeletonize leaves and can cause total defoliation if left untreated.

How to Spot:

• Look for the beetles themselves or skeletonized leaves

How to Treat:

• Insecticides such as Eight
• Neem oil (organic option/better for vegetable gardens)

Common Targets:

• Roses

• Linden Trees

• Purple Plum Bush

Spider Mites

The spider mite is technically not an insect; instead, it is classified as an arachnid like spiders, scorpions, and ticks. Adult spider mites are very small, oval-shaped, and reddish brown in color. They usually form colonies on the underside of leaves. They feed by piercing the leaf and sucking out its fluids, causing the eventual death of the leaf. Their breeding habits allow for easy infestation: a female spider mite can lay approximately 300 eggs within just a few weeks! Chemical insecticides kill the predators of spider mites and can cause the issue to worsen.

How to Spot:

• Use the “White Paper Test” – Gently tap leaves against a white sheet of paper. Look for black, red, yellow, and brown moving dots

How to Treat:

• Miticide
• Neem oil (organic option)
• Regular pruning

Common Targets:

• Dwarf Alberta Spruce

• Verbena 

• Tropicals

• Burning Bush

Scale

There are over 1,000 different species of scale insects in the United States. These insects appear to be shell-like bumps that gather on plants both inside and outside of your home. They are oval-shaped, flat, and brown, gray, or white in color.  Their odd appearance and immobility make them hard to identify until they begin to infest and damage your plants. Scale insects suck the sap from plants and rob them of their essential nutrients. Plants affected by scale begin to look withered and sickly with leaves turning yellow and falling off.

How to Spot:

• Look for small, mostly immobile shell-like bumps on twigs, leaves, branches, and fruit of plants

How to Treat:

• Insecticides – Bayer Tree and Shrub
  • Treatment is systemic and takes time to work.
  • Insecticide should be sprayed during springtime – scale is difficult to treat in the summer.

Common Targets:

• Euonymus

• Magnolia

• Hornbeam Trees

Next Steps

Do you think you may have one of these insects in your garden? We can help! Give us a call or stop by and we can assist you in eradicating any insect problem that you may have.