Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

From the earth to the dirt, come let we till up the soil, till up the soil, from the earth to the dirt, come let we keep planting on a while.

You see the homegrown I said it come from earth.

I say the good food come make me plant me we own.

I say the good food, good food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said I food, I food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, Your food, your food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

Hi, I'm Carlos Robles with the University of the Virgin Islands Cooperative Extension Service.

And welcome to Home Grown.

Today, we're on Saint Croix and we'll be looking at an interesting topic.

In fact, it's probably the topic that we had the Cooperative Extension Service get the most calls about, and it's pest, and I'll just leave it at this broad term.

Joining me today is my colleague, Dr. Jeff Goulart, who is our entomologist and our resident guy Pest and pest specialist, everything in between.

Jeff, welcome to Home Grown.

Thanks very much, Carlos.

I'm pleased to be here today.

And Jeff, entomologist is what's your call?

Well, one of the one of the many things yes.

An anthropologist a person who is specialized in bugs actually for here is anything that has more than four legs.

So it actually includes centipedes and that kind of thing for if you're interested in in the past.

But it's actually for here it includes diseases and mites and actually slugs and various other species that do potential damage from that.

Okay.

Interesting.

So it's a very, very wide view.

Is your specialty do you have a specialty or you just happened to be have a knowledge of of pests in general?

Well, actually, I started off with the specialty in vegetable, vegetable, vegetable bugs.

But in here you have to deal with everything else, just so you know.

Yeah.

And of course, you have to be a jack of all trades, guys with a smile.

Small.

Exactly.

Okay.

Many of the home grown participants have experienced some challenges with pests, and some of our viewers will also have challenges with pests.

Well, one of the things that at least you've taught us over the years and working along with you is that just looking at plants, just looking at them, you can't tell whether they have pest or not.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

And so at this garden with us, let's just start with okra, because that's one of the things that people have been doing.

And we'll look at a couple of the okra plants from here from a distance.

They look fine.

They look healthy.

Is that deceiving?

Could that be It can be deceiving, especially.

I mean, that's the most important part of approaching pest control is look at those plants early.

Okay.

And don't wait till you actually see the palms being eaten by something or discolored or whatever else may be wrong with them.

But if you look at those plants, the the okra that are growing here, they all look the same from a distance.

But if you look even if you look up close on the top of the plants, they look the same.

But once you do, the thing that you should do is turn the leaves over.

Then you will find out what the problem is, if there is one.

Okay.

If you want to have a look at them, let's go ahead and take a look at a couple of them and see because again, from our distance, they look normal.

If you look at these plants here at the beginning of the row, especially if you look at the first one in the second and the third, they all from a distance, even from where we are looking at them, look the same.

Right.

Look nice and green and no particular discoloration.

The only thing you notice here is occasionally an end walking on that first one.

Okay.

Yes.

And that's one.

In fact, if you look at the leaf close to the hole, all of ants on top of that one.

Okay.

And actually, that is one of the first indications for a lot of pest beginning pest problems.

If you don't see anything else but you see ants on the plants thing, there is something that attracts the ends and of several pest species that can do that.

And in this case, if you look at the leaves now in the lower surface of the leaves, you throw that over, Oh, okay, You see a very large number.

I don't even want to start estimating the number.

It's only a couple of hundred aphids.

So plant lice, they're called, I think some people and this is one group of insects that produce honeydew sweet stuff.

And that sweet stuff attracts the ants.

And therefore you get ants all those that as they go and go to those mealy excuse me, those aphids feed on the honey, do they produce and in exchange actually they provide protection.

So it actually is a bad thing to have ends on those plants.

Okay.

But if you look at some of the leaves, especially this one, you see a a number of other insects, in fact, are two very small beetles, which are both ladybugs.

So beneficial is actually one just flew off and that little yellow bug, that straw is feeding.

Actually, that's what is feeding all those aphids.

It's walking around at times.

It looks a bit like a small mealy bug and it's very often mistaken for really big, right?

Because I looked at it first and I thought, well, what that means if I'm doing that.

But it isn't it isn't a good it's a beneficial insect.

It's actually doing some form of natural control on those.

Okay.

Unfortunately, as you see, there's only actually there's one small one there and the larger one here, those ones don't get very much bigger than this because the adults are fairly small, but our species, they got much bigger.

They look similar.

Right.

If you're one really have biological controlled by those insects, you really need a lot of those ladybugs on there.

And if you have some like on this leafy showed first the number of the number of aphids all those plants is really getting excessive or you may have to do some additional control and you can all depend on the natural enemies and okay.

Because at least when we looked at this one, I mean he can barely handle the amount of aphids that I've had in self, so much less trying to eat the rest of these.

He probably will get sick, trying to manage.

He will manage, and the aphids just will reproduce faster than the ladybugs.

Unless you get more ladybugs, come in.

Okay.

And that's usually the problem with even releasing ladybugs in the field.

You usually release adults and the adults need a large amount of food and if you have a small amount, they go somewhere else.

Okay, so you really wasted your money.

But the other insects that you can release in immature form or in egg form, and they will stay there until they are adults and then may fly off.

So you get better control like Las Vegas or something like that.

So then you would discourage people looking and see catalogs and ordering yes, beetles or beneficios because you see some of the delay may not all about it, but the ladybugs would be very weary of unless you really have a very large number of pests like that happen to number of years ago.

And with the mini bug, right, because there were so many of them that they had no incentive to go somewhere else because all the food was there.

And this kind of case, because there's only one plan actually that has the problem here, I don't think any one of the other ones that you would spend money getting ladybugs here.

And they also have would go to your neighbors or your neighbor's neighbor.

And they always find some food somewhere and they may some stay behind, but it doesn't necessarily mean you won't have to do something.

In addition to releasing to these bugs.

Yes.

So even though there are natural predators, there are times that we have to come in and assist with because we have different demands.

The nature as a whole have because we want healthy plants in a nature.

Those plants, even that are eaten right by those efforts, they will survive and reproduce.

Okay.

Plan to help you.

But we are not.

Every day you grow those plans for all purposes and that what we want.

Okay.

So the point here is not to just assume that by looking at the top of it.

Right.

It's healthy.

Turn the leaves over, see what you find, and do that regularly.

Okay.

If possible, twice a week, but certainly at least once a week, because some of these bugs, if you check on Monday, you check again next Monday.

Leaves are even.

You might you might have to do it.

Actually, the best one is really do it twice a week.

Okay.

And what I heard at least about if is that their life cycle is pretty short and they breed rather rapidly.

Yes.

So as you pointed out, if you don't take care of them today, yes, they could multiply.

And if you don't show up again for another two weeks, they could have a whole generation, several generations of aphids on one leaf and and aphids you find on any crop.

Okay.

But it's okra, tomatoes, cucumbers.

You go to tree fruit trees.

There are always aphids or maybe different species, but aphids, for all practical purposes, do the same kind of damage and require the same kind of control if it's needed.

Okay.

If it's needed.

If it's needed.

Okay.

And why would you say if it's needed?

Because plant plants can survive insect attacks even without yield losses.

Okay.

So if you see a few insects on or don't know a thing or don't import natural enemies, buys softest sprayed and don't get your spray regs out.

Okay.

If you just see a couple of bugs, in fact, I show you a couple of cases, you just your finger will do a much better job.

And then during the baseball.

So yeah.

Okay.

And even where they whether they go on now it's about whatever.

You can take care of it.

So there's a point for you list viewers that you don't always have to spray, even if it's using natural materials.

You can use your fingers and you automatically become the pest control for your plant.

All right.

Is there another one that we could take a look at?

I know that we've been growing some peppers and some peppers and some eggs and some eggplant.

Let's see what we find on the eggplant.

Now we're going to take a look at these eggplants from a closer perspective.

As you rightfully said, part of of of observing or inspecting your plants is not just looking from a distance, but getting up close, not away.

A little bit closer, Jeff.

Something is is is becoming clear.

I'm seeing it looks like holes or is it rough spots a number of places on the leaves where a certain insect has scraped the top tissue off the leaves and they cause a discoloration, very small spots.

And in some places, actually the aid all the way through the leaves.

You got holes.

And in fact, in some of those locations, you actually see the insects sort of actually flip through this damage, which is a very common occurrence on eggplants of all all vegetables.

Actually, the eggplant is the most common host of over three bees.

Okay.

But you really need a very large number of those to do any significant yield reduction damage.

Mean damage, obviously.

That's very obvious.

Right.

But I mean, just because they do damage doesn't necessarily mean you get fewer fruits on the plants.

Right.

Okay.

I mean, this is a fairly large number, but still, there's plenty of green leaves that are useful for photosynthesis as you make food for the plants.

But this plant, in addition to those flea beetles, has a number of caterpillars which have folded the leaves together.

And I just noted that one big one.

There are a couple of things along the margin.

Open this one and see now you mentioned the other insects.

The aphids are sucking insects, right?

But you said these things are chewing.

Chewing is doing these.

There are two types of insects that could attack your plants.

Okay.

One, your opening up.

But actually what you have there is actually the droppings as if it's still there and maybe even further forward, some of those already have their culprit that's left.

I think this one already has.

This one might still be in on the other side or in on this part of the leaf.

If I if you open that one up, I'll see if I can open this one up and see if there's anything in here.

But what you most likely will find if you haven't looked at the plants in a while, is see those leaves tied.

And the only thing you'll find either an empty cocoon.

Actually a pupil case of the moth that has come out, or you certainly will see all the droppings they produce that.

Okay.

But there are so most of those are fairly old have the damage has already been done.

The adult has already emerged there.

Initially, those caterpillars, the small caterpillars of both feet on the leaves without falling off together.

But once they get to a certain age, right, they tie the least together, they withers the silk they produce.

Oh, that's why that's a so I thought initially you may think it's a spider, but yes, those insects produce the same.

So the spiders do and as well as some other insects we will see in the bits, I think that one has also left, but they will tie those leaves together and they actually provide protection.

If you at that time would think, oh, let's spray those things because they have a lot of caterpillars.

You use something that's very common to use the dipole and or any product or dipole has to be actually consumed by the caterpillars.

And if you only put it on the outside of, of the for the leaves, you don't get to the caterpillars.

You will have no control whatsoever as a result of that application.

So if you want to go dipole, you have to do that early where you don't want one with a with the caterpillar in it is a nice well I mean sorry to say nice green caterpillar.

The thing that predicts very nice but they can do quite a bit of damage though unfortunately on all this feed on both tomatoes and eggplants and very limited external pepper, chemicals are usually much more immune to those.

But in the early stages when you have seedlings, they can do more damage than than adult plants because you don't have a very high population, usually on an adult eggplant.

Okay.

So most of the time what you should do if you have this to squeeze the think, put your fingers about it, squeeze it, you kill the caterpillar and it's no CO2 expenditure except for that little the few calories you use to squeeze your fingers together.

All right, So that's what I just did with him.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Those are actually the most common problems on eggplant.

The flea beetles, The flea beetles and those those bamboo, those caterpillars are totally together.

Okay, so we got two for one on this particular plant.

And again, in terms of control for the flea beetles zone, you can live with it.

And there's another point.

Again, you don't always have to spray.

There are some things that you could just live with because you're going to get your fruit, your vegetable off of it.

There are leaves that there don't feed on the fruit.

They only feed on the leaves.

And even if you see obvious damage, like on this plant, you don't need to do anything.

Those are your saves, your time.

If you put something on, you will kill some of those plants, whatever.

Even if you put soap on those fancy responsible killed some of those beetles.

Okay.

But it's as far as I'm concerned, it's really a waste of time because gardening takes a lot of time.

If you have to do all the reading, you should economize as much as possible and don't do things that you don't actually have to do to do quite.

Okay.

Let's take a look at the peppers, because there was something about peppers that we had noted several times, and you can see it on this one here in particular.

It's beginning to show as if it's singed, as if it was near a fire and I think I've heard it called Gemini Virus.

Yes, it's a virus disease caused by your Gemini virus.

That's the name of the group of viruses that caused this kind of problem.

And those kind of problems of all of different plants.

You probably have seen it on papaya also.

That's a different species.

But this kind of this kind of misshapen leaves you get its release, it stops growing.

It doesn't elongate the way it's supposed to.

And if this happens when the plant is very small, you might be better off putting the plant out entirely because it may not do anything at all.

You're wasting your time, but once it reaches the stage, usually the plants can live with this problem and still produces.

It may not grow as well as it would without the disease problem, but it would still produce normally a relatively normally.

Okay, but you don't really know about it right now.

I think there's nothing you can do spraying.

So no soap?

No.

No.

Organic?

No.

Not even a synthetic product you can use to solve that problem.

It exists once the virus is in place, you only can deal with the symptoms, but you're actually just like, oh one infections.

If you have a virus problem, you just deal with the symptoms and affecting the organism itself.

Take care of it.

Okay.

So again, you just look at it.

If it's small and you start seeing the symptoms, you might as well get rid of it.

But if it gets to a point where it's about this high and most of these are at least a foot, foot and a half feet high, the plan will be okay.

I know you'll get your tomatoes here.

You'll get your peppers off of it.

All right.

We have a nice crop of tomatoes, actually, fortunately, not very badly.

But on this particular spot of of these tomatoes, there is a very common problem, especially at the moment, because it's dry spider mites.

And if you look at these particular sections of leaves and compared with the auto positive plants you see there is stippling.

It's getting whites, right.

Whiteness, a lot of white spots along them.

And if you turn the leaves over and I have some nice ones here where you actually can see it, well, you would have to go in very close because those bugs don't know.

The insects are mites.

They have eight legs.

They are in very large numbers.

But you really have to be very close to see them.

But what you will see on this leave is already because the infestation is fairly severe, Right.

As you see rubbing because know mites because like spiders, appearance webbing only not not as organized.

It's like the orb spiders do, but you see webbing all over the plants and once you get webbing on the plants, it means your infestation is so severe that most of the time you will not be able to have any adequate control, even if you spray those glands right from the bottom as you're supposed to, the webbing will interfere with the pesticide itself or or any of the other products you want to use to get to the the mites.

So in fact, if you have that, you might actually have to, you know, prune those parts of the plans off or get rid of that plant in the garden over again.

Okay.

But that's why it's so important to look at those transfers once you see a little of that whitening, stippling, appearing on the leaves, check whether you have mites and if you have a beginning infestation, that's the time you apply the control, whatever you want to apply, and a lot of things you can apply to control it.

But soap is one of them.

So if there's one, okay, and you wouldn't want to use diaper for this.

Oh, that's a diaper only kills caterpillars.

Okay, so if you don't have caterpillars, don't use dye pilled because that would be a waste of time.

So one of the good things then, Jeff, and you've often reminded us as colleagues when you do workshops with us, is that you should read the label to see what's on the label.

Right.

And some of the sprays are just for certain insects, right?

And then there are some broad spectrum pesticides that can work on just about all things.

Right, Right.

Okay.

So then let's look at some of the things that people could use if they were going to be using some sort of organic means to control the pest.

What do we have?

Well, we have only, but unfortunately, we have only a fairly small selection available of all the products you can get on the mainland.

We don't have them all available, but there are quite a few products which have actually also a fairly white label.

But you'll because your organic farmer or organic grower, you may use these products, but that doesn't preclude anyone else from using them.

Okay.

In fact, this is a product like this particular product.

Scroll through a site.

Concentrate is a natural occurring, the product of a natural occurring bacterium, which is used for killing caterpillars and caterpillars only.

It's a very selective pesticide.

Therefore it's very strongly recommended in any integrated pest management treatment.

But you are organic or synthetic grower because it doesn't kill beneficial.

It's very good product to use and it's labeled for use on a lot of different things and better beneficial to me, other beneficial insects that aren't a problem for you, but these are the ones that actually feeding on your pest species like ladybugs, that people are familiar with.

Okay.

Even the small wasp that not many people are familiar with, they always think of jack spaniels, but are quite a few sizes smaller than that.

Okay.

But what I want to point out too, this happens to be called thermos are the whole lot of different products that have the same active ingredient, the same bacterial derived product in them that does the same thing.

Okay.

So don't necessarily look for the label, the name of the product.

Actually, you look at the ingredient statement, but don't forget to look at what is on the rest of the label that you can use.

What kills it.

If you want to kill beetles, for example, you can put this on and nothing will happen.

Okay.

Wasting your money.

If you do that, read the label.

And if you do a product like this, which is a derivative of name, you're one of the trees that are grown quite extensively on more and more extensively in the Virgin Islands.

It's not a native three, but the tree itself, the leaves as well as the fruit, and especially the fruit is very rich in that product called a Cabinet record as a directive which is a, among others, an insecticide, insecticide, insect repellent.

And it is labeled for use on a lot of different crops.

Also as repellents as well as of plain killing pests.

Okay.

All right.

Well, now that you have those, including you have another type of product here, how do you apply those products to your plants?

I see we have a couple of different kinds of sprayers.

We have just two out of very many different products.

So this probably resembles a Windex bottle to many people.

Well, it's probably a derivative of that is a hand operated pump.

So you can actually use you don't have to buy the thing specially, but you can use empty bottles as long as they're clearly rinsed from the product that was in them before and use the appropriate products according to the label.

If you read the whole label, you're supposed to do that.

Make sure you have the right concentration, put it in this product and you can just by hand operations, mist your surfaces and make sure you apply it to the surfaces where the pests are okay, And this is usually on the underside of the leaves.

Here is another one I have which has a fairly new active ingredient.

Is that right?

From the source, the board bacterium?

It's called the active ingredient called Spinoza's.

It's been a set, okay.

And obviously it has also enjoyed ingredients which not always are organic ones, but this is a more broad spectrum insecticide.

It kills more than just a few groups of insects, although it's fairly it's more limited than most of the other parts.

The synthetic product.

Right as I see this has on it 4x4 caterpillar.

I believe minus three.

And I got the nice thing of this is it has, among others, tomatoes herbs on the label and the one of the most important herbs that we have here with leave minor problems is basil.

So this probably will be one of the few products that will be actually effective for use on the part of the plant, which has few other products labeled for use.

So this is you side of the business that is a natural occurring product product.

Okay.

Whether this particular one actually is organic, it would be certified like Omri, right?

They actually don't approved by Omri.

They do certified approved, right by Omri.

I do not know for sure.

I would have to check on that one.

But it's spinach that definitely is approved for use in organic gardening and organic food.

And as you pointed out one time, to read the label and to see what plants this particular product can be used on, you would have to really open the label right?

Make sure you open and read what is on there.

If you're not allowed to do that, make sure you get the label by all means okay.

And most labels are available online and if necessary, the extension service can provide this, but most of the time, most pieces that sell those products for our home gardens, nurseries, hardware stores, or any of those will most likely allow doing that.

One of the most important thing to look at at the label is better.

Your plan that you want to spray it on is on the label because sometimes you may find that those peppers and tomatoes and eggplant on the label, but not for example, cucumbers.

And then you are not allowed, even though the insect that you're have on your plan may be on the label for on chew on tomatoes.

But if the cucumber is not on that label doesn't say you are allowed to spray on cucumbers.

Do not put it on cucumbers.

Okay, So that's a point to make it take the bottle or whatever container it is and look and see what it is supposed to be sprayed and do that before you buy it.

Oh, good.

All right.

Because then you'll be with all of us.

You can give or maybe your neighbor can use it or maybe you can use it later.

But I don't know about it.

Sell any good later, okay?

Yes.

Okay.

And so we've we've looked at some of the mites on the tomatoes and again, with with scouting you've use you've taught us to use a what's called starting is generally what you said to just go in and look at plants.

Yes.

Turn the leaves over.

Yes.

See what you can find in advance.

Yes.

Actually as soon as you put your seedlings in the ground, start doing that within a couple of days on a regular basis, every twice a week, the whole season long and especially early in the season, because you want to get them when they're very small, but you have very small population and especially when your plants are small because they're the most vulnerable.

Okay.

And just like I guess in humans, the children are the most vulnerable.

And at that young stage the plants are most vulnerable as well.

And so folks, there's this there's lots to learn.

We've only covered a little bit of our past, but we just wanted you to get a sampling of of some of the pests that you have to encounter in your garden.

For other questions regarding Pest, you can always call the Cooperative Extension Service at 6931080 in Saint Thomas or Dr. Arts at 6924052 on Saint Croix.

Or you can check with the folks at the Department of Agriculture because we all work together in helping to to control the pest that are in the territory and ensure that your garden is the way that you want it.

Thank you again for joining us on Home Grown.

We know that you learned something today and until next time, continued good gardening and we'll see you on home grown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

From the earth to the dirt, come let we till up the soil, till up the soil, from the earth to the dirt, come let we keep planting on a while