heirloomgal
Garden Addicted
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2021
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- Location
- Northern Ontario, Canada
Well, the time has come to spill some beans so to speak, lol.
I'm a believer in the adage 'where your attention goes, grows' so I really make an effort in life to focus on the positive. Thus, I didn't want to be on the thread here hashing out my challenges this year, and sinking energy into it. However, I feel like I've now turned a corner and can allow myself to share some of the struggle of the last month or so since I think it's finally all over. I can honestly say the last 5 weeks have been the greatest struggle for my beans that I've ever had in my life, bar none. Let me preface my ordeal by saying I don't know if I had a hand in my problem or not, but I probably did to some degree because last year I did 2 things I don't normally do. I suspect these things played a large part. 1) I had a bunch of solar lights placed around the edges of the garden last year, about 16. 2) I decided not to till in the fall.
About a week after I planted out all my beans, I started finding cut down plants in the morning. Not the nipped at ground level damage I've seen cutworms do before. This climbed. At first I thought this was a passing thing, and I had the crazy luck to have significantly overplanted. (Crazy luck I tell you.) But within 3 days, I was finding up to 8 dead plants each morning, cut many inches up from the ground. I only planted about 6 of each variety or less. So I started buying bottles of diatomaceous earth, which were costly. I bought some online in bulk for a better price, but had to keep buying bottles retail until it arrived at the doorstep. It cost nearly $250 between the emergency bottles and the 25 pound bag, but it seemed to end my struggles. Or so I thought. I guess this bug had a lifecycle wherein it had a vulnerable phase to the powder... and then it didn't. A week or so after the nightly powder applications (so much work!) they were able to crawl across it no problem, and I started losing bean plants again. Lots of them.
They were chopping other plants too now - with big stems. If they couldn't kill the plant by wrapping around a too thick middle, the worm climbed even higher to chop branches and leaves or even the top growth of the plant. Tomatoes, sunchokes, ground cherries, prickly zucchini stems. They killed a lot of large marigolds, which is ironic, because those are often employed in pest control.
I tried making aluminum foil collars for the bean stems. They climbed right across them. I bought BBQ skewers, the really hard wooden ones, and stuck those beside the stems of the bean plants and tied them with yarn. There was no way I cold do all of them, but I did the plants in the spots where the worm/s had been active. I also sifted large amounts of soil around the plants - desperate to sift the bugs out. Nothing. Tying the wooden sticks to the stems seemed to work very well. Until it didn't. I guess the worm life cycle changed yet again. I couldn't believe my eyes, but they started to chew right through the hard wood along with the bean stems.
So I bought 3 foot long, very large BBQ skewers, much larger and thicker than the last but just as rock hard. To my utter astonishment, they climbed those too, up to 2 feet high, and chewed right through like a razor. The fava bean below had the XL skewer beside, and still the worm chewed right through. Piece is on the ground.
The whole thing was beyond terrible. But!!! I am thrilled to report that while I lost a lot of plants, I lost only 1 variety totally this year (Perle von Marbach) but I still have more seed. A variety called 'Stripey Snap' was hit hard, and there may be only 1 or 2 plants left but it's enough to try again for sure if the plant matures. There may be a few poles with only 2 or 3 plants around it now, but I'm happy for what remains. It's nothing short of a miracle that the main garden, which was affected the worst, is still going to be fine!
What a month it's been!!
I'm a believer in the adage 'where your attention goes, grows' so I really make an effort in life to focus on the positive. Thus, I didn't want to be on the thread here hashing out my challenges this year, and sinking energy into it. However, I feel like I've now turned a corner and can allow myself to share some of the struggle of the last month or so since I think it's finally all over. I can honestly say the last 5 weeks have been the greatest struggle for my beans that I've ever had in my life, bar none. Let me preface my ordeal by saying I don't know if I had a hand in my problem or not, but I probably did to some degree because last year I did 2 things I don't normally do. I suspect these things played a large part. 1) I had a bunch of solar lights placed around the edges of the garden last year, about 16. 2) I decided not to till in the fall.
About a week after I planted out all my beans, I started finding cut down plants in the morning. Not the nipped at ground level damage I've seen cutworms do before. This climbed. At first I thought this was a passing thing, and I had the crazy luck to have significantly overplanted. (Crazy luck I tell you.) But within 3 days, I was finding up to 8 dead plants each morning, cut many inches up from the ground. I only planted about 6 of each variety or less. So I started buying bottles of diatomaceous earth, which were costly. I bought some online in bulk for a better price, but had to keep buying bottles retail until it arrived at the doorstep. It cost nearly $250 between the emergency bottles and the 25 pound bag, but it seemed to end my struggles. Or so I thought. I guess this bug had a lifecycle wherein it had a vulnerable phase to the powder... and then it didn't. A week or so after the nightly powder applications (so much work!) they were able to crawl across it no problem, and I started losing bean plants again. Lots of them.
They were chopping other plants too now - with big stems. If they couldn't kill the plant by wrapping around a too thick middle, the worm climbed even higher to chop branches and leaves or even the top growth of the plant. Tomatoes, sunchokes, ground cherries, prickly zucchini stems. They killed a lot of large marigolds, which is ironic, because those are often employed in pest control.
I tried making aluminum foil collars for the bean stems. They climbed right across them. I bought BBQ skewers, the really hard wooden ones, and stuck those beside the stems of the bean plants and tied them with yarn. There was no way I cold do all of them, but I did the plants in the spots where the worm/s had been active. I also sifted large amounts of soil around the plants - desperate to sift the bugs out. Nothing. Tying the wooden sticks to the stems seemed to work very well. Until it didn't. I guess the worm life cycle changed yet again. I couldn't believe my eyes, but they started to chew right through the hard wood along with the bean stems.
So I bought 3 foot long, very large BBQ skewers, much larger and thicker than the last but just as rock hard. To my utter astonishment, they climbed those too, up to 2 feet high, and chewed right through like a razor. The fava bean below had the XL skewer beside, and still the worm chewed right through. Piece is on the ground.
The whole thing was beyond terrible. But!!! I am thrilled to report that while I lost a lot of plants, I lost only 1 variety totally this year (Perle von Marbach) but I still have more seed. A variety called 'Stripey Snap' was hit hard, and there may be only 1 or 2 plants left but it's enough to try again for sure if the plant matures. There may be a few poles with only 2 or 3 plants around it now, but I'm happy for what remains. It's nothing short of a miracle that the main garden, which was affected the worst, is still going to be fine!
What a month it's been!!
