Garden Pests

I was gone out of town from Friday mid-day until Sunday night. In that time, it rained almost non-stop at Palazzo Rospo. When I came back, I had two lovely broccoli florets beginning to flower (waaahhh! - we cooked them and ate them for dinner anyway). I had tomatoes beaten down by the rain, which I tied up. I have peas ready to pick, and I have PESTS. So much can happen in just under three days.
These are the larva of Colorado Potato Beetles. They were all over a few plants on one end of my potato bed. I pulled them off (yes, I touched them - a little sticky but not too gross) and dumped them in a bucket of soapy water. They're colorful and interesting, it's a shame they do so much damage. The above photo is worth a click to view large. The ones that follow are already pretty much full sized already.


I'm pretty sure this is an imported cabbage worm. I think I had some cabbage loopers too, which are very similar. I will pay better attention next time. These guys were on the underside of my broccoli leaves. It's easy to miss them because they match the color of the plant so well. Plus they're small, about half an inch long. They went into the soapy water bucket, too.


This attractive guy is some type of webworm. He looks a lot like a garden webworm but he doesn't have a stripe down the middle of his back. He was also on the back side of my broccoli plants. The larger ones did have some kind of webby substance on them that wasn't very noticable until I pulled the worm off of the leaf. These guys took a bubble bath, too. It's a shame, because they're quite pretty. They were quite small, from .25" to .75" I'd guess.

I'm very proud of myself for touching icky things with my bare hands.