Darned bugs, they start out on the wild oenothera, then after they eat them to the ground they eat my fuchsias and cupheas. They are green, metallic, can hop fast and are smaller than a B-B.
Pyrethrum kills them but more come back. DE doesn't phase them.
What are the green metallic bugs that eat everything?
Have you caught one? About a week ago, our grasshoppers were about the size of B-Bs. They're bigger now. My Brugmansia leaves have lots of missing parts.
I took out my copy of Texas Bug Book. Leafhoppers fit the description, but they are suckers not chewers. Grasshoppers seem the most like candidates. You need to catch one to be sure.
Not grasshoppers, I'm positive.
Found it. I happened to think, it eats the oenothera every year and I searched for it that way. It's a leaf beetle. http://cedarcreek.umn.edu/insects/album/024107052ap.html
Thanks for the info, Calalily. Foolish of me to think a small book the size of Texas Bug Book could possibly show all the insects in Texas. I should have remembered that Texas alone has more than 150 different species of cockroach. Enough to fill a book on that genus.
Oh my goodness! I think I've seen the grandaddy of cockroaches in some of the houses I go in. Doesn't matter how fancy the house, palmetto bugs will get in there and they look like giant cockroaches laying there dead in the floor! I had no idea there were even 150 species in the world, let alone Texas!
I caught a weird grasshopper(yeah, ours were itty bitty a few weeks ago, but they're pretty big now). It had super long legs and was tan.
I think this is going to be the year for lots of bugs. I have had more problems than I have had in years.
My sister who lives in Bastrop said the grasshoppers are so bad and there are so many that every day she kills at least 100. . . and by the way, my sister is one who relocates spiders from her house to outside and also relocates snakes, so I know the grasshoppers must be horrible at her place. She says that they are are all over her house and of course, the plants.
I have only seen a few grasshoppers here, but the ones i saw were huge with long legs.
I'm having a horrible time with BUGS!!! I have spider mites, baby grasshoppers, cucumber beetles, black aphids, and some other thing that sucks the juice out of everything! The "other" thing I thought was a mealy bug, but upon close inspection, it is not. It has 6 legs, antennae, wings, and little stripes across it. I've never seen them fly tho, just crawl very slowly. It's very small so without a magnifying glass it looks like a gray blob. I've been spraying with insecticidal soap for 2 days now. I gave up on using soapy water or just water. I am ready for the big guns if this doesn't work.
I've seen those things but can't remember what they are called. They look like walking pieces of fluff.
Besides the grasshoppers, I've seem more katydids than usual. They start out almost tranparent, go through a tan phase then change to green. I've also spotted sharpshooters on my Brugmansias. I hope they stay away from my grapevines. I don't have the ones that are resistant to Pierce's Disease.
What are sharpshooters? We only have the one muscadine(poor thing, I thought it was dead but it came back even after I forgot to water it for weeks)
I have seen a few small katydid's. I will have to Google them and see if maybe my baby grasshoppers are those.
Apparently I didn't really know what a katydid was! lol My babies are definitely grasshoppers. yuck!
This message was edited May 26, 2005 10:29 PM
Sharpshooters are sucking insects. The enclosed link shows photos of the insect, about 1/2 long. They pass on a bacterium that kills susceptible grapevine varieties. The disease is called Pierce's Disease and is lethal to grapevines once they get it. You can google Pierce's Disease and the variety of grapevine you have to find out if your muscadine is susceptible.
http://news.ucanr.org/mediakits/gwsskit/gwssphotos.shtml
we always called the gren metalic bugs June Bugs. I don't know if that is their real name. They look like a scarab beatle.
Jester,
Are these the beetles you're talking about? So far, I have'nt seen any. What are called June Bugs (or June Beetles ) here, have been around since early April. Can open a door at night without have them fly in. They attracted to light, fly into the halogen lamps and get fried. The smell they produce is awful. My main munchers are grasshoppers. Every time I ask for grasshopper bait I get a sympathetic look that says, "Good Luck."
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/housing/japanese-beetle/jbeetle.html
In TN we called the green metallic ones June Bugs, down here they call the brown ones June Bugs(the insect book calls them both June bugs). These bugs are teeny, not even a fourth as big as a June bug.
Calalily, last summer those small green metallic bugs attacked our area here in East Texas. They would just flock in, cover an area and in a day the plants would be leafless. I tried water, soapy water, and finally used five per cent Sevin dust. So far (knock on wood) I haven't seen any this year. If I do I will definitely powder everything with Sevin. That I really hate to do with our bees so active, but the result of doing nothing is losing all foliage in your yard. Jenny
They came in here and ate every oenothera leaf in sight then they went after the fuchsia and cuphea plants. My fuchsia looks sad right now. I might have to break down and get sevin, but only as a last resort. I've been spraying them with pyrethrins, but more hatch out every day.
I kept putting it off last year and wound up with bare stalks especially on all my Mexican Heather which is all along my driveway. Believe me dust with Sevin now or you'll keep seeing their numbers increase by the hour. I just couldn't find anything else to cover the large area which was effective. At least with Sevin you can wash it off after they are gone. Jenny
I was born in Texas and my mom used to tell me about the cockroaches there. She said she always felt bad about having them until one time she and my dad were invited to a big fancy gathering at the Governor's mansion. They were just sitting down to dinner when a bunch of palmetto bugs scuttled across the floor. The Governor's wife was really calm and said they got them all the time, couldn't get rid of em- it was just part of living in Texas!
I've seen increased activity in the leaf miners (?) around my place...
Ivy, there was a big palmetto bug in the front office yesterday. I told DH that's what it was, but he said it still looked like a cockroach to him!
Leafminers were bad this year, but appear to be diminishing now.
We have swarms of Katydids coming out of the trees down onto our screens and front door. Must be the lack of water and the heat. At first it was cool, but now it's kinda scary- they are huge! THER ARE TONS OF THEM and they crawl around on the windows; I was hoping they were Praying Mantises, but no such luck!
We have cicadas right now, big huge ones! My poor poochie Bleu(some of y'all have followed the exploits of Bleu) learned this morning NOT to steal a cicada away from a cicada killer! He got stung on the eyebrow, the cheek and the foot! His eyebrow is still swollen, looks like he got punched.
Oh my gosh, I remember those cicada killers from my childhood in Okla.! They were so big they made me run in the house every time I saw one. Like little aicraft really. I hope Bleu is O.K.!