Invasion! Part 3 - June 19, 2012

(Continued from Part 2)

As day three of the striped blister beetle invasion began, I left for work with a new plan of action. We had achieved a small victory the night before, when I had found an old bag of Bug-B-Gone dust. Even though it was at least five years old, the dust had effectively put an end to the attack on our pepper plants.  So the plan was to buy another small bag of the dust (the active ingredient was permethrin) and treat the rest of the garden.

But even though I had decided on this course of action, it nagged at me throughout the day.  In general, I don't like pesticides, and try to avoid them if possible.  So what if there are a few worms in the corn?  I can spare a few kernels, right?.  Tomato worms?  Just keep an eye out for the signs of them, then pick them off and feed them to the pet oscar.  Squash bugs?  Spray some water on the base of the plants and pick them off as they crawl up the stems (squash bugs really can't swim, and seem to hate water!).

So the decision to use the permethrin on the garden triggered a case of guilty conscience. I remember swarms of June bugs (Cotinis nitida for those who are curious) on the corn tassels every summer when I was a kid.  This year I haven't seen a single one.  Nor have I seen more than a dozen honeybees this summer, although like the June bungs, the bees were always busy gathering working the corn tassels.  Where are the dozens and dozens of lightening bugs, which always punctuated the evening twilight with their flashing messages?  I found myself thinking "Do I really understand the broader impacts of using that pesticide?"  I was pretty sure the answer to that was "no."

Nevertheless, I found myself asking what choice do I have? On the way home that evening, I stopped at the Feed and Supply store and picked up a bag of "Garden, Pet, and Livestock Dust."  I took a plastic peanut butter jar out of the recycling and we drilled some holes in the lid.  I filled the jar with the white powder and walked around to the okra.  I started to gently sprinkle the dust on the leaves, covering the beetles.  Just as before, the beetles ran for the safety of the corn.   Only this time, I stood ready with the poison, and I spread it around the bases of the plants where they had taken refuge.  I then spread a 4" wide strip of the dust down the row between the corn and the beans, then lifted up the bean plants and sprinkled the dust on the ground and on the base of the bean plants.  The beetles ran for the corn, but had to cross the treacherous white line I had drawn in the dirt.  I emptied the jar, and left the dust to do its dirty work.

The carnage.

The next evening, I walked through my battered garden.  It seemed eerily quiet, but maybe that was just my conscience blocking out the sounds of everything around me.  The signs of the war were everywhere.  Dead and dying blister beetles lay in great piles.  The poison had done its job.  But here lay a dead tiger beetle, a beneficial and gorgeous predator Tetracha sp. (possibly Tetracha virginica).  Another dead predator, a spider, over there.  Numerous black Carabid beetles, also predators, also lay among the dead blister beetles.  


Sadly, I turned to leave the garden.  As I looked down, I saw a single solitary blister beetle walking across the ground at my feet.  I bent down and took a photo of the pest.  Then I stood up, raised my foot, and stomped on him.

Invasion! Part 2 - June 18, 2012

(Continued from Part 1)

Okra leaf, showing the damage caused by striped blister beetles in just a few hours. This leaf was about 10 inches across.

When daylight came on Day 2 of the striped blister beetle invasion of our garden, I walked outside to survey the damage.

Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as I had feared.  The only plants that showed any significant damage were the okra plants, and the worst of that was at the far end of the row, where I had not gone with my bucket and stick.  So I was somewhat hopeful as I left for work.  Perhaps the worst was over, and the situation was now under control.

However, around noon, I got an urgent message from home.  The invaders were back, and this time they weren't confined to the okra row.  Two of the Rutgers tomatoes were already being stripped.  They were munching the foliage on the potatoes and the corn.  They were starting to congregate on the pepper plants. "If we don't do something quick, we're not going to have a garden!" the message said.

How were we going to stop them?  Of course - ask The Google!  So I did.  The Google had heard of the striped blister beetles before, and had lots of suggestions about how to control them.  The year before we had used a spray, but I've tried very hard to avoid dusts and sprays.  The most promising solution seemed to be diatomaceous earth.  DE, as it is called, is really not "earth."  It is the fossilized remains of trillions of tiny creatures called diatoms.  The theory behind using it for insect control is that the sharp edges of the silica particles puncture the exoskeleton of the insects who come in contact with it.  This, in turn, causes the insect to become dehydrated and to eventually die.

While DE is a non-selective method of control (any insect that comes in contact with it could be killed), it doesn't last in the environment like some of the garden pesticides.  I decided it was worth a try, and made a last-minute stop at Blossomberry Nursery on my way home to purchase a bag of it.  Luckily, the nursery had one small bag left.

When I got home I went on the offensive.  I sprinkled the DE on top of the beetles hanging from the pepper plants and watched to see how they reacted.  Would they clutch their front legs to their abdomen and cry out "This is the big one!  You hear that, Elizabeth?  I'm coming to join ya, honey!"

If that was my expectation, I was to be sorely disappointed.  The DE seemed to have no effect on the beetles, other than causing them to run for cover.  I could almost see them looking up at me, laughing, and saying to each other, "Look!  It's snowing!  Wheeeeeee!" as they ran down the stems and over into the green beans.  Well, perhaps it just takes a while for them to succumb to the dehydration.  I walked around the entire garden and spread the stuff on and around as many plants as I could.  I emptied the entire 4 lb bag, and lamented that the nursery hadn't had a bigger one.  Then I went inside to leave the DE to its dirty work.

The sun set, and it was soon pitch dark out.  I took the flashlight out to look at the carnage - I wanted to see their hateful destructive little bodies littering the ground where the DE had sucked the life out of them.  Click. I shined the light on the ground.  Where were the carcasses?  I shined the light up on the pepper plants.  NO!!!!  It couldn't be true!  The beetles were back, and the leaves were no longer smooth and oblong.  They looked more like the leaves on a pin oak, with deep lobes all around them.  The beetles didn't appear to be the least bit ill.

I think it was at that moment that I had my epiphany.  While DE may be an effective method of insect control, it simply isn't the answer to an acute attack like the blister beetles were carrying out on our garden.  "It is like putting a band aid on a severed artery," I thought.  "Yes, you might stop bleeding, but it might be because you ran out of blood."  A control method that takes five days to work, I thought, is also going to give the invaders five days to eat.   By that time, everything in the garden would be decimated.

Sadly, I went back inside and picked up the ShopVac to once again fight the beetles who had found their way into the house.  As I vacuumed over the washing machine, I saw, sitting at the very end of the shelf, an old, old bag of Bug-B-Gone dust.  I turned off the vacuum and reached up to get the bag.  It was almost empty, and the seal had come unsealed.  There was no telling how long it had set there open.  But I supposed it was worth a try anyway.  If it didn't work, well, we were no worse off than we were right now.  If it did, the peppers might be saved.

Back at the garden, I shined the flashlight on the first pepper plant.  I took at scoop of the dust and scattered it over the beetles.  This wasn't like the other snow.  This wasn't fun.  The beetles were angry.  They began to swarm frantically around on the plant and began dropping off onto the ground.  I worked my way down the row, sprinkling the poison snow onto and around each plant.  That was all the bag had - just enough to treat the peppers.

What a wonderful sight I saw when I shined the light on that first plant.  The beetles were staggering around the base of the plant.  They were not well, not well at all.  I watched for a while, as their legs gave out and they fell onto their sides, legs twitching convulsively.

It had worked.

Invasion! Part 1 - June 17, 2012

It has been a miserably hot and dry spring, with almost no rain during the entire month of May nor so far in June.  The fields are dry and brown, parched from day after day of sun, wind, and heat.  Many of the trees have already started to shed their leaves, and the cattle are already eating the one cutting of spring hay that the farmers were able to put up before the rains stopped.  The sign at Farm Bureau says "Pray for Rain."

But in spite of the weather, we've tried to grow a garden. We are blessed to have a rich, productive garden spot that was nurtured obsessively by John Carey, the man who lived on this place when I was a child.  We planted, fertilized, and with an almost continuous rotation of drip watering, the garden began to grow and thrive.  By mid-May, we were starting to enjoy the results of our efforts. Crisp cucumbers, bell peppers, banana peppers, and jalapeno peppers; tender broccoli, squash and green beans; crunchy cabbage...even some delicious, juicy tomatoes.  You just can't buy stuff like this in the store.

Even though it was a bit of a nuisance to drag my PVC watering pipe from row to row, it was nice to see the  results.  I especially enjoyed walking outside in the evenings after the heat of the day eased, looking at the progress of each row.  But all that changed on June 17.

Epicauta vittata, the striped blister beetle.

I had seen a few striped blister beetles, Epicauta vittata (Fabricius) (Coleoptera: Meloidae), in the garden in the days before, but only one or two, here or there.  Nothing to worry about - not like the year before when we found two giant masses of them hiding under some buckets by the well house.  I didn't think much of it.  I didn't even bother to step on them as they scurried past my feet.  So it was a great shock to walk outside that Sunday night to find great clusters of them lined up around the leaves of the okra plants.

Now when I say "clusters" I don't mean a few beetles on each plant.  I mean dozens on each plant. Where earlier that evening I had seen the okra's dark green umbrella-like leaves, I now saw umbrellas that looked like they had been through a hurricane and lost all the fabric.  Nothing was left where the beetles had been, except for the skeletal veins.  I was aghast!  The invaders were back, and it looked like this attack was worse than the one of the previous year.  Much worse.

What could I do?  I didn't remember having anything to put on the plants, and this late on Sunday night all the stores were closed.  But I did have some dish washing detergent.  So armed with a bucket of hot soapy water, a short stick and a flashlight, I began the first battle in what was to turn into an all-out war.  Carefully, I positioned the bucked under the first leaf, then gave the stem a sharp WHACK.  The water frothed as two dozen beetles frantically tried to swim to safety.  I moved the bucket to the second leaf.  WHACK!  A dozen more fell into the water, scrambling onto the lifeless bodies of their fellow intruders, my enemies. Three times, four times, five times - slowly and methodically I moved from leaf to leaf trying to dislodge the beetles.  But now they sensed my presence, and began a hasty retreat.  They clambered down from the okra plants and scurried across the dirt.  They climbed up my legs, and I turned from side to side trying to knock them down with my stick.  I tried to stomp them as they ran.  It was to no avail.  There were just too many.  I couldn't stop them.  They reached the safety of the corn, and I was forced to accept that I had lost this battle.  I knew that the beetles that floated in the bucket were outnumbered 10 to 1 - heaven forbid, I thought, maybe even 100 to 1 - by their comrades that had escaped.

However, what I didn't realize was that the invaders weren't just lurking in my garden.  They were trying to take the house!  Now understand that people who live in new houses probably wouldn't have this problem, but when a house has been standing since 1880, there are cracks and openings where all kinds of "things" can, and often do, sneak through.  Drawn by the light over the washing machine, the beetles found every crack and every opening.  They hung from the bathroom ceiling, they crawled up the edge of the door, and they crowded around the light switch and electrical outlets.  Even worse some had managed to find their way into the bedrooms.  There was one on the pillow, another crawling up the sheet, another hanging on the wall over the bed - how would we ever be able to sleep without crushing one against our skin?

Thankfully, the home invasion was easier to fight.  I traded the bucket and the stick for my faithful "three-legged" ShopVac.  One by one, the beetles lost their grip and whooshed! through the hose into the canister.   After about 30 minutes of vacuuming the bathroom, the porch, the bedrooms, and the outside of the window, there was a lull in the battle.  Weary, I put down my weapons, and tried to get some rest.

The real battles were yet to come.