June Veggie Gardening Tips Sacramento
June Veggie Gardening Tips Sacramento (Check for Insects)
Zone 9b Sacramento, CA – Check for Insects on your crops: Tobacco hornworm, Consperse stink bug adult, Stink bug damage, Squash bug eggs, Squash bug nymphs, Squash bug adults
In June in Zone 9b (Sacramento, CA), it is mostly maintenance time. It’s not time to plant anymore, and it’s not really time to harvest yet. This month, you need to be looking for bugs when you go out every day. Stink bugs, squash bugs, and hornworms will eat up your crops before you have a chance to.
Here are some of the bugs to keep an eye out for:
- Tobacco hornworm
- Conspires stink bug
- Squash bug
Prevent bug infestations
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes. Some natural pest prevention methods include companion planting and making nests for predatory wasps (make a small stack of cinder blocks and fill the holes with narrow PVC pipes segment). Bring in beneficial bugs and they will spend all their time eating the nasty bugs for you.
Protect your tomatoes from cutworms by placing a ring of cardboard around the plants. This simple trick will keep the cutworms from being able to crawl to the plants.
Manage bug infestations
Go out every day and check for bugs. Look for squash bug eggs on the bottoms of leaves, and squish all you find. You can also squish squash bug nymphs and adult squash bugs and stink bugs. Beware, though: both squash bugs and stink bugs will bite, and stink bugs release a very unpleasant odor if you squish their abdomen.
Another way to kill nymphs and adult bugs is to take out a bucket of soapy water and drown them. Some people swear by spraying the underside of the leaves with a solution of Dawn dish soap to kill bugs and keep them from coming back.
