>> Alysha Punnett, Site Manager & Community Education Coordinator, Compost Education Centre

Gardening season is here!  And so are all the things that eat your garden!  Here we discuss The Big 3: aphids, slugs and cutworms.

Aphids

There are green, brown, black and dusty grey aphids, all active at various times of the growing season (lucky us!).  They produce a sticky honeydew that ants enjoy farming.  If you think you have an ant problem, look closer to see if it’s actually an aphid problem.

Prevention: Don’t over-fertilize with nitrogen, this causes plants to grow excess tender material which aphids love.  Make sure plants are hydrated – aphids are attracted to plants that are drought-stressed.

Treatment: Spray the aphids off with a high pressure stream of water.  Repeat this every day for at least three days, more often for a bad outbreak.  It’s non-toxic, easy to do and effective.

Slugs/snails

Slime trails.  Large, ragged holes in leaves.  Entire seedlings gone and just a sad little stem tip left behind.  Ah, the signs of a nocturnal gastropod feeding.

Prevention: Rotate your crops to prevent a predictable food source.  Provide habitat for gastropod predators like toads, lizards, and snakes by edging your beds with rocks or building a toad abode in your garden.  Wasps and hornets are other natural predators.

Treatment:  Choose your own adventure until one works for you: Put a log in your garden bed, turn it over early in the morning and you should find some specimens to squish. Set up beer traps.  Crush eggshells and scatter around plants.  Grab a headlamp and go on a hunting mission at night with scissors (just kidding…kind of).

Cutworm

You take a look at your seedlings one morning and they’ve been chopped off! This is the work of a cutworm, so named because it cuts plants off at soil level.

Prevention: Lightly turn your soil in early spring to expose them to birds and other grubbing animals.  They are usually just under the soil surface and curl up when exposed, making them easy to spot and pick out by hand as well. Plant seedlings with cardboard collars sunk at least 2 inches into the soil.

Treatment: In the morning, inspect around the base of the damaged plant to find the worm to squish.

Fun Fact:  Cutworm pupae look like dark brown, shiny seed husks in the soil, remove if you come across them.

Give us a ring with your garden pest queries! compost.bc.ca