Yuck! What is this?!
Gabriel found a few of these itty-bitty 1.5 mm bugs crawling in the dirt among my arugula seedlings. I don't know much about vegetable garden pests so I don't know if this is a problem or not. After looking in the blogosphere for information about this, I came up with nothing more than general talk about pests that already have names and what to do about them. If I knew what this was, I'd be set. Does anybody have an idea about what this is or about who I could ask to find out?
posted by Susan in Italy @ 1:22 PM
5 Comments:
Could they be aphids?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid
Ladybugs love them... In the US you can buy ladybugs on the internet and in gardening stores (maybe in Italy too?). It's a nice and organic way to get rid of the pest!
If there are still some aphids on the aragula when you pick it up to eat it, rinse it with a few drops of vinegar in the water.
Good luck :-)
Oh, no! Estelle, I think you're right. I was hoping these were too small to be aphids but wikipedia says otherwise. Thanks for the vinegar idea. I can't use ladybugs since all I have are big pots out on my balcony. They'd fly away.
Hi Susan! Glad I could help.
You know, if the ladybugs find good food, they'll have a feast and then they'll go away. That's what happend for me (and my orange tree). They cleaned up the whole tree and only disappeared afterwards. You should give it a try!
Another way you can get rid of aphids is put a small amount of dishwashing liquid in a spray bottle, fill the bottle with water, and spray the plant. It will usually kill the aphids and doesn't hurt other things in the environment.
That is a "Tick" they are like leaches they won't hurt you unless they bite into you and they will continue to bite into you until they become somewhat immerged into your skin and they will stay there sucking on your blood like a vampire. They will get bigger and bigger. There used to not be a big concern for them but when you pull them off of you if you don't get the entire thing including the little head if can become very infected there are several different ways to get them to back out on their own and then just pick them off of your skin. You can lite a match or heat them up on their "butt" and they will back out and there are other ways to be sure to get them to come out so you won't have to worry about the head. But when you do get them out be sure to kill them the only way to do this is to "make'em pop" you can accomplish this by pressing down on them in the middle with your finger nail or smashing them with an item but just be sure they pop and that you didn't just flatten them. They are stubborn and strong little bugers. The concern about them in america these days is a thing called Lime Diesease. Some smaller "seed ticks" are more likely to carry this diesease which can be very harmful and in some cases deadly. If you have any other questions you can email me at tech-788@kc.rr.com.
Joe
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