Suggestions on how to control destructive insects in your garden.
If you have a garden, by now you have discovered you also have some house guests in the garden, known as insects. These insects are always plentiful where plants are growing and they can be very destructive. Fortunately, most insect pects can be controlled without great cost to your wallet.
We need first to understand that insects can vary greatly in size: while some are so tiny you would need a microscope to see them, others are in full view. Generally most any insects will hatch from eggs. Sometimes when hatched the young are similar to the adult stage but in other species the young may not be the adult's size.
The young ones who look like adults are known as nymphs, and they continue to grow by moulting, but still look similar to the adult insect. There are actually three stages in the life cycle of this group of insects: the egg, nymph and the adult stage.
There is another group of insects that hatch into small worms or larvae and feed on plants and molt or shed their skins several times as they grown to adulthood.
They then enter a resting stage known as the chrysalis or pupa, after which the mature adult insect emerges. There are four stages to the life of these insects: the eggs, larvae, pupae, and the adult stage. This is known as metamorphosis. The first group of insects with three stages in the life cycle has incomplete metamorphosis, while the group with four stages in the life cycle has complete metamorphosis.
Now that we have a knowledge of the insects, how do they feed? Knowing this, you can determine what kind of insecticide to use to combat them. Insects can get their food in two principal ways: one is by chewing and another is by biting. In biting the insect bites off, chews and swallows solid particles of food and devours the plant stem or foliage. In chewing the insect sucks sap from the plant tissues, in which case the insect pierces the plant tissue with its beak and sucks out the juices, causing the plant to wilt or die.
Now in the biting or chewing insects these include the worm or catpillar and adult stages of many insects such as Cankerworms, Cutworms, Tent Caterpillars, Rose Chafers, Blister Beetles, Japanese Beetles, Grasshoppers, etc. Usually you can control these insects by stomach poisons applied on the plant.
In the sucking insect group included are the Aphis, Scales, Leafhoppers, Squash Bugs, Thrips and many plant bugs. The Spider Mites are also included in this method of feeding, but they are mites, not insects. These insects have to be controlled by a poison that kills them upon contact. These are called contact poisons.
I would suggest that you purchase a book that shows pictures and descriptions of insects, thereby you will be able to detect the varities of insects in your garden and then determine how to get rid of them. It isn't as hard as you might think.
