Rise of the striped cucumber beetle

Every year a new pest invades my garden, I thought by now I'd seen them all.

I was wrong, see these cute little guys fornicating away in my pumpkin patch. Harmless right? Wrong. These striped cucumber beetles showed up over night and by the time I figured out what was going on, they had a solid foothold in the garden. The adults feed on the foliage of cucurbits (squash, pumpkin, cucumber, gourd, watermelon, and cantaloupe). The larvae feed on the roots of cucurbits, and they are known spreaders of bacterial wilt. All around nasties, I've been handpicking and vacuuming them off the plants and I think I'm getting the upper hand, but the damage has been done. Sometimes I wish I hag a big ole barrel of DDT.

Beetle damage to armenian cucumber.

One of the reasons I don't use pesticides, that's an assassin bug eating a striped cucumber beetle. The beetles do have some natural predators. The main problem is for every assassin bug there's a 100 beetles. That's how the pest survive, sheer numbers. It's an easy way to tell between beneficial insects and pests. If you don't know if a bug is good for your garden or bad just take a head count, if there's a bunch of them they're probably bad if there are only a few they're probably beneficial.

Now some good news, it's the beginning of August and I'm still harvesting tomatoes. There not huge, but I'm still getting fresh tomatoes in the middle of summer.

That's the tomatillo, black eyed pea, and tepary bean patch bustin out

black eyed pea

Pumpkin patch with volunteer tomatillos and bisbee red black eyed peas.

Monsoon garden planted with corn, sunflowers, beans(climbing and bush), and squash. The 4 sisters, the corn and sunflowers will grow tall to shade the garden. The climbing beans will use the corn and sunflowers as a trellis. The squash and bush beans will crawl along the ground cooling the earth and naturally mulching the soil. All the seeds I planted are native to the southwest and can tolerate the high heat and dry conditions. I bought them at native seed search they sell seeds native to the southwest. Very cool, all their seeds have performed excellent and I'm giving them a shout out. 

BOOYAH NATIVE SEED SEARCH!!!