Bollworm Meets Wasp

Predators and parasites are one of the reasons that we do not have to spray many insecticides in Cotton.

I was in a cotton field with a fairly high number of bollworm larvae.  The size of the worms and where they were on the plant would make it almost impossible to kill them with insectidcides.  This wasp was doing a good job of reducing the pest populations for this cotton grower.

Nothing to Do with Agriculture

But I guarantee this would have scared my daughter out of her shoes.  I found this walkingstick hanging out on her cereal bowl this morning. 

I am glad I got there before she did.  Walkingsticks are herbivores (they eat leaves) and obviously their body helps them blend in with their surroundings.  Unless they are on a princess bowl.

Worms are Everywhere

We are seeing armyworms in grasses and soybeans, budworm/bollworm in cotton, and cutworms in sesame.  Yes I said sesame.  we are even being overrun in the landscape and garden.  Most of these larvae (caterpillars) are immature moths.  The moths fly to a suitable host and lay eggs.  These eggs hatch in about 3 days and the small caterpillars begin to feed. Feeding lasts about 2 weeks.  After the caterpillar has done the damage they usually pupate for about 10 days.  After this time the adult emerges and starts the cycle over again.

Here are some images to help you identify your pest.  You can also visit http://www.bugwood.org/ to view all sorts of insect images from across our area.

Peanut Maturity

We still have plenty of time before peanut harvest, but i had a request for the following chart so i thought i would go ahead and post it.  We know roughly the number of days to maturity for all of our recommended varieties so you shold be able to use this chart to at least determine when you need to start working on the inverter.

For example:  Georgia 06G has a mautirty range of 145 - 150 days.  So if you planted on may 31st you would be at 145 days on October 23rd.  This means that you would probabaly want to start scrapping peanuts the first of October. If you planted into June you can contact me and i will send you the remainder of this chart.

Unusual Yellowing in Soybeans

If you are seeing symptoms like the images below give me a call or post a comment.  We are seeing this yellowing in different areas of middle georgia and are trying to figure out if it is related to variety. 

In affected fields or areas of fields leaves tend to yellow around the edges and some cup upward as seen above.  The only thing that these fields have had in common so far is high numbers of potato leafhopper.  This is the same little insect (1/8" ) that causes hopper burn in peanuts and there are reportedly large migratory populations.

Let me know if you have anything resembling this injury or if you have a heathy population of the above insects.