Spring is a very busy time on the farm. We are simultaneously harvesting spring crops while starting all the summer crops in the propagation house on heat mats.
As I'm sure you have heard, our weather this year has been unusually warm. The fruit trees started blooming about a month earlier than last year and the pest bugs weren't killed off by any solid freeze over the winter. We've seen black aphids taking over the chard, beet, and fava bean plants, but also spotting ladybugs gives us hope. As we do every year, we have imported beneficial insects to the property to help in the good fight.
We imported these about a month ago, and they have found the aphids! This one is actively sucking the aphid dry.
These are tiny parasitic wasps that hone in on the egg stage of moths. They inject their own eggs into the moth egg, which will then devour the host egg and emerge as an adult ready to lay more of its eggs.
Some of our favorite helpers are microscopic. These live in the soil seeking out those soil dwelling pests that are hard to eradicate otherwise, especially overwintering grubs.
It is always a delight to find these hiding around the farm. We didn't buy any mantis this year because we hope the natural population is established enough. We found four sacks last year!
These are great monitoring tools to see exactly what is in your garden. They are super sticky and catch anything that lands it, even the "good guys". Once we have all our beneficials deployed we will remove these so as not to counteract our progress.
These beneficial insects will be hunting down the "bad" insects that feed on our plants. This is part of our integrated pest management plan for the farm. We figure if we boost the natural predators of the pest insects, keep the plants healthy so they can defend themselves, and do some preventative measures early in the season, then we should be good to grow!
