My first shipment of corn worm parasitic wasps arrived 3 weeks ago. They need to go out to the field within 24 hours, so I ran over to the community gardens and distributed the four cards. Each card has pin head size wasp eggs glued to it. I searched through the plots and found about 10or 12 patches of corn. In four of them, I hung a card of eggs.
I am receiving more eggs about once a week and each time I place the cards in different patches.
The wasps parasitize the eggs of the European Corn Borer. Its an experiment to see if this helps with our worms. From looking back to my old photos (below), the worms I had two years ago were Corn Ear Worms, not Borers. My understanding is that the Ear Worm lays its eggs singly so its hard for a wasp to be effective against them because it has to find every egg. On the other hand the European Corn Borer lays eggs in a cluster, so the wasps can effectively parasitize all of them. It seem like a fantastic, organic method of pest control, so I am trying the experiment anyway.
7 comments:
I'm thinking your post didn't post.
I like them. We like to see these tiny things in our garden. And, I also think your post didn't go. Can't see it.
Maybe she did post them, but the particular species she photographed is SO TINY, we can't see it. =)
The wasp ate the post.
Ha! Its fun to read the comments. I hope to get the post up soon....
Fantastic! We have courgettes coming out of our ears! we though of your Mum's Post them through doors It may come to that, we going to do a courgette and apple cake tonight, if it's Goodall make a few and give them away! Our cucumbers are really slow this year, by this time last year we had loads, oh well that's how it goes.
There is no denying that mother nature blessed us this summer. I've seen it in my peach daylilies @ http://www.birchwoodfarmsnh.com
Post a Comment