Even as January warms up, I’ve started preparing my garden beds. But I know I’m not the only one who’s doing this. I’m sure most of you have gone through and started getting your compost and natural fertilizers ready. And I also bet you’re getting worried about potential pests. With worry about pests, comes worry about how to control them without damaging your own garden with harmful chemicals. That’s why today’s discussion is regarding natural caterpillar control, and how to keep this squirmy bug off your plants! Read on to find out more.
Natural Caterpillar Control: Overview
To start off with, let’s go over some of the usual suspects you’ll find in your garden. These are the caterpillars you’ll usually find munching on your plants.
Cutworms:
Maybe the most notorious of your garden variety caterpillars, these are voracious pests that will eat your seedlings down to their base. Coming in different colors and adapt at hiding towards the day, their damage is usually the first sign of their existence. Some of them even feast on the trees around your yard. But, tender and delicious seedlings are the most at-risk plants in your gardens. When they molt, their adult moths are harmless.
Armyworms:
The next target of your natural caterpillar control will likely be the Armyworm. Armyworms are related to the cutworms mentioned above and are either green or dark brown. They usually have a yellow stripe running down their bodies, and the grass is their favorite food- making them a prime enemy of your lawn!
Cabbage Loopers
This may not be as familiar of a name when it comes to garden pests, but you’ve almost certainly seen them before. These are the pale green worms with stripes down their backs. If you’ve seen them, it’s probably been on your garden greens. Plants such as chard, kale, and lettuce are a few of their favorites. And they do not just start in appearance because of their color. They’re big too. Each of them can reach up to an inch and a half long! They turn into moths that have wings with bright silver spots on them.
Corn Earworm
And finally, we have the ugliest target of our natural caterpillar control. The corn earworm. These guys are unsightly, to say the least. They vary in color from brown to pink, to black, and have dark stripes on their back and a yellow head. Corn earworms can grow even larger than cabbage loopers- up to two inches in length. They can and will feed on your corn crop’s leaves, and even bore down into the tips of your corn cobs.
Natural Caterpillar Control: What Can I Do?
Caterpillars aren’t usually the pests that become a massive infestation problem. They have many natural predators, including parasitic flies and wasps that lay their eggs in the worms for their young to feast on when they hatch. Outside of that, you also have birds, assassin bugs, lacewings, ground beetles, and spiders that all simply eat the crawling pest. But, if you do manage to find yourself with an infestation problem, there are a few things you can do.
The simplest solution is quite obviously a quick hand and a sharp eye. If you’re walking through your garden and see one of these bugs on your plants, pluck them off and dispose of them. And when you do so, look for the eggs as well as caterpillars. Some of these eggs can be removed with a simple blast of water from a squirt bottle. Otherwise, you can treat your plants with things like neem oil to kill them off.
Also, consider mulching around the base of your plants. One of the better natural pest control methods is just to put things like a natural mulch or even cardboard around your plants, keeping them free of normal decaying plant litter that moths may lay their eggs in.
Beneficial Garden Insects
As a quick aside, there’s a two-fold way to help your garden stay pest-free and flourish in general. Introducing beneficial insects! That’s right, a much better option than dousing your plants in pesticides and making them inedible to anyone is to get some good bugs in there to fight the bad bugs.
And the most well known of these good bugs is the ever-helpful ladybugs.
Ladybugs are probably the most well-known of all the beneficial bugs in the garden. Part of the reason they are beneficial is that they eat quite a few of the bad bugs. Each ladybug can eat fifty to sixty aphids per day and over five thousand in a lifetime. In addition, they also like to munch on mealy worms, leafhoppers, and mites.
Their larvae don’t harm your plants while being born and will eventually eat more bugs too. If you have enough of the items that attract them and enough food, you can have many generations in one season. You don’t have to worry about them being eaten by predators because they secrete an odor that most other bugs do not like.
You may also consider introducing spindled soldier bugs into your garden. They’re a variety of stink bug, but they only really stink if you kill them. They eat tons of caterpillars and beetle larvae and have spines and brighter patterns than your common variety stink-bug.
Natural Caterpillar Control: What To Do
Honestly, as I said, it’s tough to get an infestation of these guys in a regular back garden. But if you’re a grower with a large garden or have some sort of commercial operation, it’s still a possibility. If so, then it becomes near impossible for the layman to control, and you should consider hiring a pest control specialist that uses natural methods of control that won’t harm you, your property, or your plants. Chemical pesticides have long been known to cause a wide range of problems from eating plants that have been grown with massive exposure. Even getting too much of that stuff on your skin can be deadly for you! Stick to what you know, and hire a natural specialist.
