New Enemies in the Garden!

Say hello to our newest enemies…the green stink bug! These bugs weren’t on our pepper plants yesterday but I have been fooled before, and today, we are infested! I have a whole row of pepper plants that never had any fruit, and I just assumed that they were late bloomers. Nope! No fruit because of these bugs.
I’m sick to my stomach thinking about them eating all our food! If they were a harmless bug just hanging out on our leaves, no biggie, but this is not a harmless bug! This thing will eat all the fruits and veggies you have and then make its way to your fruit trees. GRRR! These bugs don’t know their enemy…Farmer Jane, and they are in for a rude awakening if they think they are going to mess with me.

I’ve been researching how to get rid of the stink bug, and so far the best way to get rid of them is to hand pick (with gloves on), do not crush them or you will get stink on you, and drown them in a solution of dawn soap and water. We are doing that today as a temporary fix, but here is what is in our arsenal for tomorrow and the upcoming weeks…

1. Dom is going to make a garlic, hot pepper and mineral oil spray which we will put on the plants tomorrow. It takes 24 hours for the solution to be ready to spray. He’ll be going to the store shortly for the supplies. If we get a solution made that is really affective, we’ll post the recipe.

2. Tomorrow we’ll be ordering four egg casings of praying mantis. Praying mantis LOVE stink bug nymphs and lots of other bugs! Two egg cases contain between 100-400 baby mantis…we’re going all out for four egg cases since there is no control over whether they decide to stay in our garden or not.

3. Hyper-vigilance in the garden and hand picking stink bugs every morning!