It is the waiting time. The cool crops are gone. The tomatoes, zukes, and cucumbers are still at least a week away. If it weren't for the Swiss Chard, which continues to produce despite being cut back as much as two times a week, there would be little harvest in these oddly cool early July weeks.
But it isn't the lack of current production that has me worried. In fact, I'm quite comfortable that in just a few weeks time, I'll be so loaded down that I'll be sending gift packs off to friends and neighbors. That is, of course, unless something tragic happens. The white flies have arrived.
White flies represent a particularly heinous segment of Creation, at least from the gardener's point of view. They are tiny, snow white, insect that feasts on the pulmonary system of plants, having a particular taste for tomatoes. They are destructive in two stages of their lives. Both the nymphs and the adult flies delight in sucking the life out of tomato vines. Their population can also seemingly explode over night, allowing them to sweep over previously vigorous plants like a chalk scourge, and leaving them twisted, dessicated, and crippled.
Making white fly an even a greater annoyance is that no one pesticide can kill both stages of the insect, at least not without posing an immediate and significant threat to other larger creatures, such as young bipedal hominids. So, when I noticed white fly attacking my dill this spring, I immediately feared their next target would be my tomatoes. I had to make a plan. I had to discover a non-poisonous way to control white fly.
I had already ordered three praying mantis egg sacs to spread around my yard. My idea in ordering these guys was that they would have a chance to mature with my plants. I also hoped that having a few mantises around to stand guard over my zukes and squash plants, I'd be less likely to lose these plants to the hated squash borer. But in the weeks that had followed my placement of the egg sacs around my yard I had yet to see any mantises. And while I figured a young mantis may eat a few white flies, I also knew a larger one would prefer larger prey. So, I needed to find something else to help me with my white fly problem.
By taking a close look at my dill, I got my answer. Well, I should say, by taking a close look at my dill and listening to my two-year-old, I got my answer. Because one afternoon when we were checking on the black swallowtail caterpillars that were living among our dill, he spotted something else. "Lady bug, daddy, ladybug!" At first I didn't see it, but upon getting on my knees to give myself his perspective, I spotted it, a lady bug and it was devouring the white fly.
Now, because of my praying mantis order, I knew that the Montana-based Planet Natural also sold lady bugs. It was then that my father-in-law mentioned to me that his tomato plants were also being ravaged. I knew it was time. I logged on to the site and placed an order for 2,000 lady bugs to split between the two gardens.
Well, yesterday they arrived, and after a quick summer storm that soaked our garden, the three of us went out to eradicate some white flies. Almost immediately our mission had an unexpected bonus. As Bridget began placing a few lady bugs on the zukes, she spotted our first praying mantis. It was tiny, only about an inch and a half long. But it was as still as a statue, and it was waiting for something, anything (maybe even a lady bug) to creep within its grasp.
Confident that my zuccini were safe, I shifted my focus to the tomatoes and started shaking my bag of bugs all over my six-foot plants. Amazingly as they fell from the bag they were able to latch on to the leaves of my plants. Immediately they began their work of consuming white flies. Their technique it appeared is quite similar to that of the white fly, but instead of sucking the life from my plants, there were sucking the essense from the flies that were killing my plants. It may seem wicked, but this delighted me.
We made the short drive to my in-laws and released hundreds more lady bugs there as well. There, too, they went straight to work. According to Planet Natural, each lady bug will be able to eat a couple hundred soft bodied insects each day. If I'm right, there are hundreds of thousands of white flies on my tomatoes. But my goal isn't truly to eradicate them all, for if all of them disappeared, so too would my ladybugs. My real goal is to restore some balance to my garden. The white flies can stay, but only in numbers that allow my tomatoes to grow, bloom and give fruit. The lady bugs will also add an interest for my young one, without the prospect of posioning him, which is also a plus. So, in this little garden the cavalry has arrived. Hopefully, the BLTs will be next.
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