Home Grown: Pesky pests or important insects?

The last time you were in your garden, you may have seen munch marks on your rose bush’s leaves.

Your first thought may be “those pesky caterpillars are at it again,” but don’t be fooled.

Some bugs aren’t in your garden to bug your plants, but to help them grow!

Though you may not realize it, you as a gardener have helpful allies among your plants.

In this edition of Home Grown, we’ll learn how to recognize good bugs, so you can help them do their part in consuming other pests.

Dr. John Palumbo , research entomologist with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, studies insects and how to prevent them from damaging agricultural fields.

So how can you tell the difference between a good and a bad bug?

“Insects basically fall into two categories beneficial insects or good bugs and pests or what you would refer to you as a bad bug,” said Dr. Palumbo .

Pests are things that cause damage to your landscape or crops or is an inconvenience.

In contrast, a beneficial bug, such as bees or certain spiders, will eat or kill bad bugs.

“We look at a lot of our predators and parasites, parasitic insects that actually do that, so they’re friendly, and they help us get rid of the pests, we’ll use honeybees in our cantaloupe production, we use honeybees in the seed production, and we use leaf cutter bees in alfalfa seed production here locally,” said Dr. Palumbo .

Farmers often decipher which bugs are going to be native to certain plants and if they will help or damage the crop.

This can be difficult to an untrained eye, but the internet allows growers at home to know their bugs.

” It really takes a trained eye. You have to know what you’re looking at. Fortunately for the average person, the Internet is a huge resource. Typically, you can go to university-type websites that show numerous images of what would be considered a good past such as a lady beetle, a lacewing, big eye bugs, praying mantis. Those would be typical beneficial or good insects that you would find around the house and you find those in the crops as well, ” said Dr. Palumbo .

There are certain ways that you can tell if there is a good or bad bug around your plants.

” It helps at distinguishing whether you have good bags or bad bugs typically if you see damage to the plant holes, circular holes, where something has been feeding or the plant is starting to wilt down where an insect has been sucking the juices out of the plants. You can often times see a cause-and-effect of insects and you’re seeing that plant damage. Often times, you can associate with that and you can get a better idea, a lot of times with the beneficial insects like the Lady Beatle and lacewings they are around the plants but you’re not seeing any plant damage, ” said Dr. Palumbo .

If you have more bad pests than good, there are eco-friendly ways to get rid of them.

Pesticides may seem like a scary option, but these chemicals have come a long way when it comes to safety.

” We use pesticides, but we use selective pesticides. We have very user-friendly IPM friendly insecticides. It’s equivalent to a lot of the medicine people take that only goes for a certain targeted antibiotic would easily target the bad bug if you will. In our organic production, we use bio-pesticides. These are plant-derived pesticides, they aren’t nearly as effective, but they will help in controlling these insects, ” said Dr. Palumbo .

The other time-proven bug hack can simply be picking them off or using soapy water.

Though Dr. Palumbo said it may be an everyday task, it’s something you can feel good about.

Insects such as flies and mosquitoes can be big human pests, especially in the summer.

So how can you keep these pests at bay?

” Mosquitoes are a little more difficult. I think repellents are probably pretty good, and some citronella candles are probably too, there’s no easy fix for those nuisance type pests, ” said Dr. Palumbo .

Since insects are cold-blooded meaning, the warmer it is, the more active bugs are.

Thus, why many bugs become more prevalent when the temperature rises.

Not many people can say they love bugs, not even someone who spends every day studying them.

“Personally I don’t like bugs,” said Dr. Palumbo .

But for Dr. Palumbo , it’s not about liking the bugs, but appreciating what they do for us.

” I think they are so different from us in so many respects that I like to watch their behavior. It’s different for every person some people if they open up a bag of salad and see a grasshopper they freak out, I just pick it out and throw it away. If you go into my backyard, you’ll see spiders crickets they don’t bug me, ” said Dr. Palumbo .