Excited about identifying Garden Insects!

Last weekend I bought a new book called "Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs".

It is by Whitney Cranshaw and has 656 pages of useful pictures and descriptions of the insects you are likely to encounter in your gardens. It shows every stage of the bugs as well as what kind of damage the cause to plants so you can figure out what insect you are dealing with even without seeing the insect. It also tells which ones are beneficial insects in the garden. That is something I have always been interested in. One of my posts last year on this blog was called Garden Insects: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly where my daughter and I set out one August afternoon to find and photograph every kind of bug we could find in the tomato garden. It was astonishing how many we found and how many of them were actually good for the garden!

The coolest insect we found was the Tomato Hornworm. It is bad for the garden, but attached to it was hundreds of Braconid Wasps, which are good for the garden because they kill the Tomato Hornworm and many other harmful worms and caterpillars. I wrote a whole post entitled Tomato Hornworm or Space Alien which described this and also showed it in a photo montage. The Tomato Hornworm does look like a space alien to me. So does the Caterpillar on the cover of my new book! It is a Cecropia moth Caterpillar feeding on an Ohio Buckeye leaf. That isn't very far from where I live! I hope to have some photos like that in the near future to show you. With the help of this book, I will also be able to identify the bugs we find and be able to tell you things about them.

Until then, If you are interested in learning more about garden insects or about Entomology, I recommend a blog called Bugs For Thugs. It is written by a professional Entomologist and is full of great photos and information. Kelley even has an "Ask an Entomologist" section with Q&As about insects that gardeners have encountered. The whole site is filled with great bug photos if you are in to that like I am.

Speaking of bug photos, I have one more site to recommend. Mark Plonsky has a photo blog with a great section on Insect Photos. I don't know how he does it, but his bugs actually look beautiful - not creepy. His use of color and macro lenses is amazing

If I can take insect photos half as good as Mark and know how to identify garden insects 10% as good as Kelley, I will be happy. I guess I better get reading my new Garden Insects of North America book!

Garden Insects: The Good The Bad and The Ugly

When it comes to insects in the garden, some are good, some are bad, and they're all ugly! Even still, I find them fascinating. My research last week about the tomato hornworm and braconid wasps got me very interested in how some insects are beneficial to the garden. Finding the Hornworm made me want to explore the garden to find out what other creatures I could find, so my daughter and I set out on a Bug Photo Safari! I knew we would find a lot of insects since we use no insecticides on the garden. Even still, I was surprised at how many different ones we discovered in just one day. We carefully photographed each one and then went inside to research what they are. Here are the ones we found only in tomatoes!

Bad!

The Western Yellowstriped Army Worm. Look how much of that leaf he already ate.

Bad!

Blister Beetle. These guys are doing more damage to my tomatoes than any other bug. They eat a lot of leaves, and deposit nasty droppings all over the place. I plan to post later about them only.

Bad!

Field Cricket and Grasshopper. Both have chewing mouthparts but the Grasshopper is much worse.

Bad!

Aphids! I think. They are very small and are found on the underside of the tomato leaves like aphids but they seem to have longer legs than aphids. I really don't know. I only found a few of them.

Bad and Good!

Tomato Hornworm and Braconid Wasps. The Hornworm can eat ALL of the leaves off of a tomato branch. It would probably be the worst garden pest of all if it weren't for the parasitic Braconid Wasps that kill them. See my recent post Tomato Hornworm or Space Alien? for more details.

Good!

Spined Soldier Bug. The Soldier is beneficial because it eats armyworms, beetles and cabbage loopers (which were in my garden too). The Soldier Beetle is said to be so beneficial that there was a big article in Organic Gardening Magazine about how to trap them in the wild in order to release them in your garden. Read the article HERE. Notice there is another little bug on his back. I don't know his story.

Good!

A small spider. Spiders eat many insects.

Good!

I know what you're thinking, a toad is not an insect. You are right, but we found him on our safari and he is very beneficial to the garden since he also eats insects.

There is one more insect to show you, and I can not figure out what it is. I don't know if it is good or bad. I have seen these bugs sitting on tomatoes all season long. They don't seem to do anything or hurt anything. It is shaped like a very small stink bug, but is the wrong color. Look at the bright red color on part of its back. Also notice how small they are compared to my daughter's thumb. There are usually several together and they move pretty fast when disturbed - very difficult to photograph.

If you know what this is, please comment or email me.

Well there you have it. All of these were found in one evening in the tomato portion of the garden. It took a bit of searching to find them, but they were all there hiding amongst the many leaves, happily living their lives to the fullest. Some are bad but some are good. Overall things are balanced out and I still get much production from the garden. That’s why I believe in complete organic gardening. I say we should leave things as natural as possible.