Leaf-Footed Bug: Protect Your Garden From These Menacing Pests!!

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Hey everybody. It’s Carrie with seed to spoon. I am out here next to one of our tomato plants that has been just getting attacked with the leaf footed bugs. So I thought today, if anybody else was going through what I’ve been going through, that I would make a quick video to share some tips and tricks.

So, first of all, it’s important to note that there are well first the nymph types, which are like the little version of the leaffooted bugs. And then as they start to get older, they start to look a little bit different. So I just wanted to make sure to show both of what they looked like. So that way you can know for sure exactly what you’re looking for.

Cuz they look pretty menacing whenever you go out there and find them on your tomatoes. and if these guys aren’t handled, they can cause a lot of issues for your tomatoes and make it so you don’t get great looking tomatoes, great tasting tomatoes, and maybe not even edible ones at all. So it’s really important to make sure that you control these in your garden.

So, first of all, the best thing to do is once you see an issue is to go about hand picking them. Now, what I did was grab a bucket of soapy water. So I had something handy to put them into once I grabbed them, I put a glove on just because they are very menacing looking, but, um, I put a glove on, I went through and started.

Grabbing as many as I could and dumping them into the soapy water and it, they are pretty fast. So it was a little difficult. So in this step, you can also take like painter’s tape or some sort of thicker tape to try and see if you can get them in as well. Diatomaceous earth is another thing that you can use to help repel these.

So if you lay this down, wherever you’re having issues with leaf footed bugs, it’ll really help, especially when they’re in that nymph stage spraying. Neem can also help too, but you want to use this with caution, especially in the summer, which for us, it’s been approaching a hundred degrees most, every day.

So we can’t use Neem right now. So you wanna make sure to. Be watching the temperatures. And if your temperatures are above 90 degrees, you do not wanna be using any neem oil because it could suffocate your plants. So if you are somewhere though, that it is not that temperature neem oil is a very good option for you.

And then once you go about getting them off, you wanna make sure they stay off. So some things you can do, companion plant. So they really enjoy sunflowers. So you can plant some sunflowers as a trap plant to try and get them over there instead of your tomatoes. So they’ll leave your tomatoes alone and only go to the sunflowers.

So that can be a useful trick for you as well. And then it’s also really important to make sure that you keep your area. Free of weeds and debris, things like that because they can really hide well, too. They can hide and get into those cracks and it’ll help attract them because it gives ’em cover and places to hide.

So by keeping your garden area free of weeds, I know it’s easier said than done, right. But by doing that, you’ll be helping out yourself in the long run by making sure these bugs can’t get to. And if you don’t already have our app, make sure that you download that and check it out because it has a section all for pests, including leaf footed bugs.

So it’ll go over all the things we talked about today, all organic methods, ways to go about helping with different pests and things like that. And it’ll also help you with just basic growing food, too. Everything you need to know. Well, let me know if you guys have any questions at all. I’ll see. You’all next time.

Bye.