Winterizing Trees & Shrubs

Deer Tolerant Plants

Bulbs

Modern Landscape Design

Contemporary landscapes are known for having a clean, minimalist look with no clutter. In contrast to the naturalistic, wavy borders popular in many landscapes, this style emphasizes straight lines and geometric forms which better reflect and relate to the architecture.

David Wilson, the award-winning designer behind David Wilson Garden Design, says “One of the key ways I know my design is successful is when every element in the landscape is essential. If nothing can be removed without leaving a void, you’re left with the simple beauty of a modern design.” Here, Wilson shares his tips for designing in this style.

Dos:

• Do choose pale colors for your modern landscape. “There’s something honest and simple about a lack of strong color,” says Wilson. By using neutral, naturally-colored materials like ipe wood, limestone, weathered steel, concrete and pea gravel, you allow the sleek lines of the architecture and the landscaping to shine.
• Do choose plants with a distinct form. Japanese boxwood is a favorite because it can be clipped and manipulated into shapes, but spiky plants, soft-textured weeping plants, and anything with a strong visual punch can create the right effect when used skillfully.
• Do choose one type of plant or one color to take center stage in your design. “The minute you begin mixing plants or layering different colors in your borders, the landscape takes on a traditional design style rather than a contemporary one,” says Wilson. “Editing is key.”
• Do utilize straight lines and shapes such as rectangles and circles in your design. “I’ve always appreciated the effect of a long clean line or a beautifully-measured radius,” says Wilson. You can break up long lines of shrubbery by adding a parterre or geometrically-shaped bed at the end of them.

Don'ts:

• Don’t be lured by hot new color trends for any permanent element in the landscape. “Using a trendy color on tile or other long-lasting features is a quick route to a dated landscape,” says Wilson. “Instead, incorporate color trends by using cushions, towels, or annual flowers which can be switched out as tastes change.”
• Don’t use organic mulch in your garden beds. “The neutral color of pea gravel creates a contrast between the foliage and the ground, showcasing the minimal use of plant material,” explains Wilson.
• Don’t choose ornate furniture or decor in your modern landscape. Instead, go for a more streamlined look. Wilson recommends starting your search at Brown Jordan, an outdoor furniture retailer with a number of modern and mid-century modern pieces.
• Don’t use organic shapes in your pathways, borders or materials. Naturalistic curves do little to enhance the relationship of the landscape with the architecture. Even when choosing natural materials like stone, cut them into elongated rectangles or create a geometric pattern so they relate to the home and take on a contemporary look.

Above all, remember that when in doubt, it’s better to edit than to add new elements. While this goes contrary to our first instinct, minimalism is critical in the modern aesthetic. As Wilson points out, “If everything is a feature, nothing is a feature.”

Source: http://www.landscapingnetwork.com/garden-styles/modern/dos-donts.html

10 Garden Chores To Prep For Fall

By midsummer, our gardens have reached their zenith. We can almost watch our squash vining, tomatoes ripening and corn stretching for the sky. While we begin to enjoy the fruits and vegetables of our labors, plenty of work still needs our attention. Most of the chores during this part of the growing season are in maintaining the garden’s appearance and good health.

Weeding, Spacing, Pruning, Staking

Frequent and shallow cultivation is the best means of weed control, according to Bob Olen, University of Minnesota extension educator. Cultivating serves two purposes: It loosens the soil, allowing air and moisture to circulate around the crop’s roots, and it controls weeds. Beginning as soon as plants are recognizable, cultivate lightly, loosening the top 1/2 inch of soil. It’s best done early and often so the garden looks good and the plant can grow without competition. Weeds vie for water and nutrients.

My husband has fabricated a handy tool he calls “the weeder.” He simply attached a loop of 1- to 1½-inch steel banding to the end of a broom handle. Every few days, he walks through our vegetable garden wielding the weeder. It’s much easier on the back than bending to pull weeds, and it loosens the soil, easing the way for air and moisture to circulate around a crop’s roots.

If every seed sown in the vegetable garden were guaranteed to germinate, we could sow single seeds at predetermined intervals along a row and thinning would be unnecessary. Because no such guarantee exists, it’s common to sow many more seeds than needed and then thin the row after germination. Yanking healthy seedlings out of the ground goes against the grain for most gardeners, but it must be done, because crowded seedlings grow into miserable, leggy, unproductive plants. Thinning is easier after a rain when the soil is still moist and the unwanted plants slip from the soil with a minimum of disturbance. If there hasn’t been a recent rain, water your garden the day before you plan to thin your crops.

Vince Fritz, director of operations at the University of Minnesota North Central Research and Outreach Center, thinks that putting things too close together is one of the biggest mistakes gardeners make.

“It looks great in June, and in August, it’s a jungle,” he says. “Radishes, for example, you can control based on just putting in so many seeds per linear foot.” Most seed packets spell out this information for you.

Although it goes against my conservative nature to uproot healthy seedlings, carrots should stand 1 inch apart in the row to do their best. Beets and parsnips should be thinned to 2- or 3-inch intervals, and kohlrabi plants should be 4 to 6 inches apart. Another way to eliminate having to thin thickly planted rows is using pelleted seed or seed tapes.

Fritz also emphasizes the importance of pruning tomato plants regularly.

“A lot of gardeners will forget to pinch off the suckers—those shoots that grow out from the axil between the main stalk (leader) and leaves,” he says. “So now you’ve got this beautiful tomato bush trapping a lot of nutrients and moisture, and it delays flowering. Those suckers should be pinched off just as they’re starting to grow. One of the ways we can encourage timely fruit set is by pruning the tomato plant down to one or two main leaders.”

Caging or staking tomato plants does two important things: It keeps them from rotting because they are vertical rather than in contact with the soil horizontally, and it helps prevent or minimize foliar disease because the foliage won’t be wet.

Harvesting, Watering, Mulching, Fertilizing

PanAmerican Seed vegetable business and product manager Josh Kirschenbaum describes midsummer as when crops start to become harvestable.

“Keeping on top of the harvest is really important as well as exciting because that means all the work you’ve done prior to midsummer is starting to pay off,” he says. He side-dresses with somenatural fertilizer to give the plants an extra boost in midsummer. “If you regularly harvest fruiting vegetables, such as tomatoes, squash, peppers, the plants will continue to produce.” Olen harvests spinach, lettuce and radishes early and on a timely basis but stops harvesting rhubarb and asparagus by the Fourth of July.

Watering is critical.

“Typically a vegetable garden at full throttle needs a good 1½ to 2 inches of water a week, especially when crops go from a vegetative to a reproductive state—plants going from green leaf tissue to flowering and fruiting, like peppers, squash and broccoli,” Fritz says. “Good continuous moisture supply is really important, especially on sandy soils.” He uses soaker hoses rather than overhead watering to minimize foliar wetness and prevent foliar disease. Trickle irrigation uses less water than most other forms of irrigation.

Water early in the morning on a sunny day to allow the foliage to dry and minimize the amount of water lost to evaporation. If you wait till midday when the sun is hot, you lose much of the water. If you irrigate late in the day, you run the risk of the plants going into the evening with wet foliage, which invites disease. Whenever you water, do so for fairly long periods so the soil is well-soaked occasionally rather than lightly moistened frequently.

Watering is never more important than during a plant’s first days in the ground. If newly sown seeds dry out, they will not germinate; if newly emerging plants, which lack the root structure to delve deeply for moisture, dry out, they die. It’s especially critical that carrot seeds be kept moist until they germinate. Vegetables planted in containers need to be watered every day in summer.

Mulches keep the soil moist and cool, conserve water, present a neat appearance and cut down on weeds. Wood chips, shredded pine bark, pine needles, grass clippings or shredded leaves are possible choices. Try to keep mulch about 2 inches from plant stems, and remember that mulch depletes nitrogen from the soil as it decays, so some additional fertilizer will be required.

Midsummer is a good time to do a soil test and fertilize as recommended.

“Whatever the nitrogen recommendations for a crop are, do a split application,” Fritz says. “Apply 50 percent of the total nitrogen needs to the crop at transplanting time, and the other half about four to five weeks after that so you are not losing the nitrogen from rainfall.”

Many plants benefit from the addition of some type of fertilizer to give them a boost in midsummer. For instance, I side-dress all brassicas every three to four weeks during the growing season with a balanced fertilizer, such as 19-19-19, at the rate of about 1/2 pound to a 10-foot row. I scratch fertilizer into the soil on either side of the row and water to dissolve it and make it available to the plants. Cucurbits also need side-dressing, as do tomatoes and peppers.

Plant More

After harvesting early-maturing vegetables, such as salad greens, radishes, peas and spinach, gardeners can plant other crops in midsummer for a fall harvest. It’s important to know the average first frost date in your area in order to calculate when to plant late vegetables so they’ll mature before being killed by cold weather.

“Lettuce you can plant later in the summer because it will have less danger of bolting, and you will still get a fair amount of yield out of it,” Fritz says. “Plant it in a partially shaded area.”

He says all brassicas are less bitter and tend to be sweeter when planted to mature in the fall.

Olen plants romaine lettuces in midsummer since they are more heat-tolerant than leaf or buttercrunch types. He harvests the main heads of broccoli to encourage development of the side shoots. Iowa gardener David Cavagnaro plants fall-heading Chinese cabbage and other mustards, a late crop of cucumbers and summer squash in early July. He plants fall lettuce and cilantro at various intervals through the summer.

Steve Bellavia, who works on crop production at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, does succession planting of beans, lettuce, beets, Swiss chard and radishes in midsummer.

“Too many gardeners only plant a crop once or twice rather than multiple times,” he says.

Pest Patrol

Cavagnaro increases policing for mice and voles in midsummer.

“They love the lush midsummer cover and developing root crops, such as sweet potatoes, beets, carrots and winter squash,” he says. “Voles must be killed with rat traps, not mouse traps, set with chunks of carrot and covered from above.”

Cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli all face the threat of the cabbageworm caterpillar, a green worm that riddles the leaves with holes and hides in the broccoli heads. To protect against this pest, Fritz uses plant protectants rather than pesticides and insecticides.

“Physical barriers such as Reemay or floating row covers work well on the brassicas,” he says. “They are semipermeable to wind and water gets through. They’re expensive, but home gardeners can rinse them off, sterilize them and reuse for several years. Use a row cover like that if you really want to have an organic garden. However, if you’re seeing butterflies, there are probably eggs already, so if you put a row cover over it, those eggs will hatch and those caterpillars will have a wonderful party.”

University of Minnesota Extension horticulturist Cindy Tong uses low tunnels with sparkly netting for insect and rabbit deterrence. “The sparkly part is probably acting like reflective mulch that can repel some aphids,” she says.

Fritz adds that there are organic products you can use. “Bacillus thuringiensis comes in different applications, and it works,” he says. “If you have a rain, you have to reapply because it doesn’t have long-term residual effect.” He also suggests peeling off the outer leaves of cabbage. “It depends on what you’re after,” Fritz says. “Do you want an absolutely gorgeous garden you can showcase, or are you really after the productivity of the garden?”

Source: http://www.hobbyfarms.com/the-seasons-not-over-10-garden-chores-to-prep-for-fall/

Getting Your Grass Green After A Drought

Summer droughts can be brutal. Often referred to as a "creeping phenomenon," droughts are a hazard of nature and are inevitable in various parts of the country. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, a drought originates from a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector. In other words, it hasn’t rained in a while.

Droughts can cause major strains economically, environmentally, and socially. Economic impacts can include wildfires from such dry condition. Environmental impacts include poor soil quality, migration of wildlife, and loss of wetlands. Social impacts include health problems related to dust & poor water quality.

Our lawns are our gateway to our homes. Its normally the first thing you notice driving through a neighborhood and pulling into someone's driveway. Having a beautiful, green, luscious lawn is our way of showing our attention to detail, our nurturing instincts, and our creativity.

With that being said, during a drought, our lawns are the ones that suffer. All of the hard work to get your lawn looking perfect can be ruined after a few weeks of no rain. So what GreenPal did was gather the best tips for what do during and after a drought to get your lawn looking healthy again.

We asked Chad with Florida Green Works in Pinellas Park, FL to help lend us a hand on exactly what to do during a drought. Due to city regulations and water shortages, there may be a ban on using your sprinkler system so watering your lawn during this drought may not be an option so follow the steps below to ensure you are protecting your "grasset."

De-thatch

This helps to absorb any moisture that is available. Removing thatch is important any time of year but especially during a drought.

Aerate

Punching holes in the ground is what this means. Those holes will deliver any moisture directly to the roots of your lawn.

Keep Mowing

Your grass will eventually stop growing but mow when it's necessary but don’t bag the clippings as those will provide moisture. Also, keep your lawn mower blades sharp so they cut the grass not rip it.

Stay Off My Lawn

There is no better time to blow up your "Stay Off My Grass Sign." During a drought, even foot traffic will compact the soil and not allow your lawn to absorb moisture.

Now after all this is said and done and your lawn has barely survived the drought and has a horrible brownish tint to it, it could be weeks before you can get it back into shape. We asked Thomas Workman of Workman Lawn Services in Nashville, Tn what he tells his customers to do after a drought.

Water thoroughly

This one is a no-brainer once water restrictions are lifted. Soaking your lawn will help restore the moisture and help with new root growth. Don’t forget to water on grass that’s growing on any hills where the wind can dry out the lawn and also on any sloped areas where water may run off.Water early in the morning between the hours of 4am to 8am so that you are not fighting evaporation from the hot summer son.

Fertilize

After a two good week watering cycle, apply balanced fertilizer like Scotts Turf Builder with proportions as close to 4-1-2 for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium. High nitrogen ferts could hurt the lawn if the hot, dry weather returns.

Kill Weeds

Once the grass is back alive and kicking, treat the individual weeds, not the entire lawn with an herbacide like Roundups Concentrate Weed and Grass Killer. Treating these individually will not force your lawn to fight with those weeds for moisture and nutrients.

Return to Regular Maintenance

Resume your schedule with your GreenPal vendor. Mowing regularly at around 3 inches will ensure that your lawn will not be scalped and expose the brown areas at the base of your grass causing ugly patches. 

Source: http://www.yourgreenpal.com/blog/getting-your-grass-green-after-a-drought

Growing Garlic

GARLIC is one of the easiest crops you can grow. The only tricky part is that in most regions of the country, garlic is planted in the fall for harvest the following summer. Planting should occur about four to six weeks before the ground freezes. By that time, many summer crops have already been harvested, leaving behind some free garden space. Just remember that the space where you plant garlic won't be available for another type of crop until late next summer.

Planting Garlic

In most parts of the country, late fall is the best time of year to plant garlic. The cloves establish roots before the ground freezes and when spring comes the plants are ready to charge out of the ground. Bulbs usually mature by late July.

If you're replanting garlic from your own stock, choose the biggest and best heads from last summer's harvest.

Here in Vermont it's easy to tell when the garlic should be planted. Look up at the hillsides. If they're a blaze of red, orange and yellow, it's time. Planting is fast and easy. I can plant enough garlic to last 12 months in about an hour. I might put in a few minutes weeding in early June, and I usually spend about 10 minutes cutting off the flower heads when they appear in early July. But, other than that, there's nothing to do until the heads are ready to harvest

Harvesting Garlic

DETERMINING when garlic is ready to harvest is one of the trickiest parts about growing it. If you harvest too soon the cloves will be small and underdeveloped (certainly usable but not as big and plump as possible). If you wait too long, as the heads dry the cloves will begin to separate and the head won't be tight and firm (also not a disaster, but the cloves will be more vulnerable to decay and drying out so they won't store as long).

Though it depends somewhat on the growing season and where you live, garlic is usually ready to harvest in late July. The slideshow below, with photos from my own garden, shows what to watch for. Properly curing the heads is also important and you'll see that as well.

Source: http://www.gardeners.com/link-page?cid=7168

k

I select and replant the biggest and best cloves each year. At this point, the cloves are almost as big as elephant garlic. When following recipes, I figure one of these cloves is equal to three regular size cloves.

A nice, dry head after 4 weeks of curing.

Attracting Beneficial Insects

Backyard Ponds

Gardening in the Shade

Grasses

Why are my Hydrangeas not blooming?

What is Your Oxygen Footprint?

18 Reasons to Plant a Tree

Tips For Selecting The Best Plant Nurseries

New and experienced gardeners rely upon a well-run and informative nursery for all their plant and landscaping needs. Picking a plant nursery that is reputable and has healthy zone appropriate plants can be the key to a successful gardening project. Online plant nurseries can be part of the process and cementing a relationship with bonafide electronic sources can be difficult since the product isn’t right before you. For both online and home-based businesses, it is crucial to know how to choose a reputable nursery for the best selection, knowledge and pricing.

How to Choose a Reputable Nursery

Those first trips as a novice gardener can be overwhelming and the guidance and suggestions of a professional nursery team can make all the difference in the world between a healthy garden and one planned to fail. Choosing the best plant nurseries depends upon more than simply healthy looking plants. Staff should have excellent customer service skills, garden knowledge, reliable information about gardening in your zone, and the availability to help you choose the right plants and products for the way you garden.

One of the first steps in picking a plant nursery is to check out their products. This means investigating the health of the plants but also what other items you might need in the garden. Are they good quality, durable, readily available consistently? Is staff knowledgeable and willing to help even if it means directing you to a competitor who has a better line of products in a specific range?

The hallmark of any good business is good customer service and the ability to fully satisfy customer needs. Think of your personal nursery as a font of information and a tool to use in your gardening adventures. In combination with your local Extension office ^[1], your nursery can help you transform dreams into realities and be part of the maintenance and future planning processes.

Gathering Plant Nursery Information

As you assess your nursery options, it is important to gather any pertinent plant nursery information. This includes looking into their Better Business Bureau ^[2] rating, talking to other plant enthusiasts about their opinion of the business and watching sale sheets when they come out to get the best buys on the products that you need.

A personal visit to the location will further determine which are the best plant nurseries for you. This is when you get to experience the service level but also touch and feel all the specimens to determine fitness, adaptability and selection.

Don’t be afraid to touch and investigate plant specimens to ensure that there are no disease, pest issues, stress, or weeds. Remember, what you bring home can infect your garden and a reputable nursery will only carry healthy plants with a good chance at thriving in your garden and no chance of starting an infestation or rampant disease.

Online Plant Nurseries

Who can resist those plant catalogues that come in winter? They bear the promises of spring and summer, warm weather, sun and flowering beauty in the landscape. However, be wary of wild sales and promises from electronic retailers. There are good deals to be had but not every online source is dependable. Again, ask around to plant friends to find their opinions on the business but also do some homework.

Some of the most trustworthy online nurseries will offer plants suitable for your zone with excellent shipping practices, including the timing of delivery. They will know what plants cannot be delivered to your region and should have an online chat available to help inform you of the best options for your landscape.

There are many consumer websites which can help rate the best nurseries for you. Angie’s List ^[3],Garden Watchdog ^[4] are excellent resources to help you determine which nursery can meet your needs.

Source: http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/plant-nursery-information.htm

5 Beetles You Don’t Want Around Your Vegetables

There are more than 350,000 identified species of beetles in the order Coleoptera. These insects constitute one-half of all the known animals on the planet. That’s a lot of beetles! There are also predatory beetles that consume other insects as part of their diet. But the beetle species that have become most infamous in the garden are herbivores, consuming plant foliage, roots or woody tissue as a food source. While species that munch on plant roots as larvae (including white grubs, iris borers, wireworms and the like) are certainly problematic, those species that feed on foliage are more frequently encountered in the vegetable patch.

The beetle family is host to an enormous range of life cycles and feeding habits. Some beetle species are decomposers, feeding on animal and plant wastes, while others feed on fungus, pollen or nectar. All members of the beetle order have two pairs of wings. The outer wings constitute a pair of hardened elytra that create a shell-like covering over the membranous wings used for flight. All ­beetle species go through complete metamorphosis, passing through life first as an egg, then a larva, a pupa and finally an adult. Here’s the lowdown on some of the most common pest garden beetles and what you can do to keep their population in check.

1. Colorado Potato Beetles (Leptinotarsa decemlineata)

Adult Colorado potato beetles are 1/3 inch long with hard, rounded wing covers that are black-and-tan striped. The fat, reddish-pink larvae are 1/2 inch long, have rows of black dots on their sides and a small black head. Colorado potato beetles are very common across the U.S., except in the Pacific Northwest and the Deep South. They feed on all members of the tomato family, though potatoes are by far their favorite.

Adult Colorado potato beetles overwinter in the soil, emerging in spring to feed and breed, producing up to three generations each year. Both adult and larval Colorado potato beetles skeletonize the leaves of host plants very quickly. To manage them, cover newly planted seed potatoes with floating row cover and leave it in place until the potatoes are ready for harvest—pollination doesn’t need to occur for potatoes to be produced. Handpicking both adults and larvae is also very effective. Because Colorado potato beetles have developed resistance to many synthetic pesticides, use biological pesticides based on Bacillus thuringiensis var. San Diego or var. tenebrionis (commonly called Bt—just be sure to select the right variety). Other effective biopesticides include those based on spinosad.

2. Mexican Bean Beetles (Epilachna varivestis)

Adult Mexican bean beetles look a lot like ladybugs on steroids, though the absence of white markings between the head and body easily distinguish them from their friendly cousins. Their wing covers are copper-colored with 16 black spots. Mexican bean beetle larvae measure about 1/3 inch long, are light yellow and are covered in bristly spines. They’re found in almost every state east of the Rocky Mountains.

Mexican bean beetles spend the winter as adults nestled under garden debris. Eggs are laid in late spring on the undersides of leaves of host plants, including nearly every species of bean, with each female laying hundreds of eggs. The spikey larvae and adults feed on leaf backs, leaving only the leaf veins intact. They’ll also feed on the beans themselves. Damage is most severe in July and August.

To prevent an onslaught of these beetles, choose early bean varieties that mature before the pest becomes problematic. Handpick adults and squash larvae—their spines are very soft. Cover susceptible plants with floating row cover immediately after planting, but remove the covers when the plants begin to flower to allow pollination. Mexican bean beetles fall prey to numerous species of beneficial insects, including parasitic wasps, pirate bugs, assassin bugs, ladybugs and many others. Plant a lot of flowers in the veggie patch to provide nectar for these predators. Effective product controls include Bt var. San Diego or var tenebrionsis, and anything with the active ingredients of spinosad, neem and citrus oil—all three can be effective.

3. Cucumber Beetles (striped: Acalymma vittata; spotted:Diabrotica undecimpunctata howardi)

Both common species of cucumber beetle, striped and spotted, measure about 1/4 inch long. The adult striped beetles are bright yellow and bear three broad, black stripes running the length of their wing covers. Spotted beetles are greenish-yellow with 11 (Eastern species) or 12 (Western species) black spots on the wing covers. Both species overwinter as adults in weedy areas. Beetles emerge in spring to mate and lay eggs in the soil or on plants. Larvae burrow into the ground and feed on roots for several weeks.

Adults chew ragged holes in plant leaves and can consume entire blossoms of favorite plants, including all members of the Cucurbitaceae family. Newly planted seedlings can be consumed quickly. Most importantly, cucumber beetles can transmit deadly bacterial wilt and cucumber mosaic virus, so controlling the beetles is key to preventing the spread of these pathogens. You should only plant varieties with a known resistance to these pathogens.

To control cucumber beetles, trap adults on yellow sticky cards placed just above plant tops. To attract more beetles, attach cotton balls soaked in allspice, clove or bay oil to the cards. These oils contain eugenol, a pheromone that attracts female cucumber beetles. For added protection, delay planting cucumbers by a few weeks to help break the beetle’s feeding cycle and prevent major damage from the initial early spring feeding period.

A species of beneficial nematode (Heterorhabditis bacteriophora) is particularly effective at attacking the soil-bound larvae and killing them before they reach adulthood. These nematodes can be mixed with water and sprayed throughout the planting area any time during the growing season, as long as the soil temperature is above 65 degrees F. Spinosad-based products are also effective against adults.

4. Japanese Beetles (Popillia japonica)

Introduced to North America from Asia in the early 1990s, Japanese beetles have become a notorious pest. Adults are metallic green with copper-colored wing covers. They measure about 1/2 inch in length and are half as wide. Their ground-dwelling larvae are C-shaped, grayish-white grubs with light-brown heads. The larvae grow up to 1 inch long and spend the winter several inches beneath the soil.

As adults, Japanese beetles consume more than 300 different ornamentals, beginning in midsummer. They release aggregation pheromones as they feed, resulting in large numbers of adults coming together to “feed and breed” on the same host plant. As larvae, Japanese beetle grubs attack the roots of turf grass and many ornamentals. When serious infestations are present—10 or more grubs per square foot of soil—the turf might peel back in a carpet-like fashion. Grub damage is most evident in spring and fall when the grubs are actively feeding in the upper layer of soil.

Hand-pick the adults as early as possible. Product controls for adults include spinosad- and neem-based products. Their larvae tend to cause the biggest problems in lawns that are fed excessive amounts of chemical fertilzer and are frequently, but shallowly, irrigated. Stop watering and allow your lawn to go naturally dormant in summer’s heat. Effective, chemical-free grub control comes from Heterorhabditis bacteriophora, a species of beneficial nematode, applied to the soil each spring. The nematodes are mixed with water and sprayed over the lawn.

5. Blister Beetles (Meloidae family)

North America hosts some 300 species of blister beetles, but only a handful are harmful to gardens. Common food sources include legumes, Japanese anemones, potatoes, phlox, members of the Asteraceae family, amaranth, zinnias, and many other garden vegetables and ornamentals. Adults of pest species consume plant tissue while their larvae are seldom seen. All blister beetle larvae are predators, often using only one species of wild bees or grasshoppers as hosts. As small, newly hatched larvae, some blister beetle species piggyback on adult bees, who carry them back to the nest where the beetle larvae consume the larval bees.

Blister beetles acquired their common name because of their ability to produce a defensive compound that can cause the skin to blister when exposed (largely through accidental crushing). Adults are black, gray, orange or bronze, with various patterns of stripes and solids, and can measure 3/4 to 1 inch long. Their elytra are leathery, rather than rigid. Blister beetles can poison cattle and horses if they ingest infested alfalfa or hay.

Blister beetle adults can be controlled with careful hand-picking (do not squash them!), or with spinosad-based organic pesticides.

Pest beetles can become problematic in even the most well-maintained organic garden. Regular trips between crop rows to scout for them enables effective management and keeps their numbers at a tolerable level. Arm yourself with a little beetle know-how and have your best garden ever.

Source: http://www.hobbyfarms.com/5-beetles-you-dont-want-around-your-vegetables/