This is the season of vegetable abundance and while it would be great if our most pressing concern involved harvest, instead we find vegetable pests are an ongoing problem.
Squash Bugs
In honor of National Potato Day, let’s pay homage to the spud. Here are some things to know about potatoes and potato plants:
•There are blue, white, and gold-fleshed potatoes, as well as round ones, oblong ones, lumpy ones, and fingerlings. Skin colors are red, russet, blue, and golden.
•Seed potatoes should be certified disease-free to prevent transfer of diseases to new crops and contaminating the soil. Late blight, Phytopthora infestans, will long live in infamy as the pathogen that set into motion the Irish potato famine. The fungal spores of late blight and other pathogens can persist in soil for many years, affecting the health of future potatoes planted there.
Kathleen Cue, Nebraska Extension Horticulture Educator in Dodge County (Week of August 9, 2021)
Nothing deepens the appreciation for rainfall like a gentle rain and a light wind. But this is the Midwest, lest we forget, and weather conditions rarely follow our druthers. Take, for instance, the most recent rainfall and wind event. The tomato cages, with plants weighted by many tomatoes, bent to the ground in our Growing Together Nebraska garden. Luckily, the heavy winds didn’t rip up roots, but the tomato plants’ fall caused damage to the nearby pepper plants, necessitating early harvest of some of the peppers.
Vegetable Plants
By Kathleen Cue, Nebraska Extension Horticulture Educator in Dodge County (Week of July 26, 2021)
The size of the cicada killer wasp is alarming to many people, prompting phone calls and emails to Nebraska Extension Offices with questions of how best to eradicate them. The female, at 2 inches long and with three bright yellow stripes on her abdomen, is one of the largest insects in our landscape. The male is large too, though smaller than the female at 1-½ inches long, and is stinger-less. Both males and females are pollinators, moving pollen as they feed on flower nectar.
Kathleen Cue, Nebraska Extension Horticulture Educator in Dodge County (Week of July 19, 2021)
From its name, it would be nice if Colorado potato beetles were only found in Colorado but unfortunately, that is not the case. The CPB, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, is a serious pest of potato and related crops in North America. Recently, the CPB was found at the Growing Together Nebraska garden here in Fremont, feeding on the foliage of both potatoes and eggplant. This insect has a voracious appetite, eating leaves down to almost nothing, which in turn decreases yields.
By Kathleen Cue, Nebraska Extension Horticulture Educator in Dodge County (Week of July 12, 2021)
As difficult as blights are to manage in tomatoes, viral diseases are far worse. This is because there are no effective products to stop their spread. To make matters even more challenging, virus infection is most often the work of sap sucking insects, such as aphids, thrips, and leafhoppers, that vector diseases. Insecticides to stop these insects provide limited results, often after insect feeding has already enabled virus spread to plants.
