Immature Spotted Lanterflies are black with white spots when they first hatch in mid-April to May. Photo: Lawrence Barringer, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Bugwood.org
Q: When will Spotted Lanternfly eggs hatch? We’ve had such warm spells this season that I worry it’ll be early.
A: Spotted Lanternfly (SLF) egg hatch, like the activity of many insects, is greatly dependent on temperature. Predictions for egg hatch in an average year begin around mid-April but can continue into May, so while it may not be early per se at this point, it still will be soon. As such, this is your last opportunity to be vigilant for egg masses to squish before the active, hopping, hard-to-catch juveniles appear.
Don’t panic – juveniles cause little plant damage to gardens when young – but eliminate any egg masses within reach if possible because this is a serious agricultural pest (vineyards, mainly) and it might help you avoid an inundation of nuisance lanternflies later. To be fair, many eggs are laid high in tree canopies, making them inaccessible, but others can be laid on piles of stone, fencing, car hubcaps, grills, outdoor furniture, honey bee hive boxes, and so on.
Spotted Lanternfly egg masses on wood. Photo: Emelie Swackhamer, Penn State University, Bugwood.org
Be advised that the quarantine zones in Maryland have recently been expanded, and records indicate that the abundance of this pest has grown in our central counties. Check our Spotted Lanternfly web page and information updated on the Maryland Department of Agriculture website for more details. An MDA entomologist presented a refresher webinar about SLF this past winter, which you can find on the UMDHGIC YouTube channel as “Spotted Lanternfly Update from MDA.”
Spotted Lanternfly webinar (1 hour, 11 minutes)
If you haven’t seen Spotted Lanternflies in your neighborhoods yet, be prepared to see them in the next year or two as the population expands. I don’t want to scare you, just make you aware this will probably be something you’ll have to experience sooner or later, and I definitely discourage the use of any pesticide to combat this insect if its use can be avoided. Pesticides used to kill SLF have impacts on other insects and organisms and we don’t want to contribute to ecosystem damage by using them when the SLF damage done to most garden plants will be minimal.
By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun and Washington Gardener Magazine. Read more by Miri.
Have a plant or insect question? The University of Maryland Extension has answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask Extension.Our horticulturists are available to answer your questions online, year-round. You can also connect with your local County/City Extension Office and Master Gardenerlocal programs.
Lone Star Tick “questing,” or trying to sense a host so it can climb aboard to bite. Photo: M. Talabac
Q: I like the style of more natural gardens, letting leaf litter be my mulch, etc. I’m concerned about this encouraging ticks, though. Do I have to change how I garden?
A: It’s a legitimate concern given the diseases ticks can harbor and transmit, but ticks can appear even in more manicured and minimally-vegetated landscapes, so I would rather reap the rewards of having a biodiverse and “wilder” garden than restrict myself and still wind up with hitchhikers when I go outside. Besides, some of that wildlife attracted by having a medley of native plants and leaf litter habitat may very well be killing some of those ticks. (Or doing the next best thing, eating their small-animal hosts that carry the pathogens we worry about.)
We at the Home and Garden Information Center (HGIC) are often asked about yard perimeter sprays and treatments for ticks, but pesticide use is not our suggested solution. Even when reasonably effective, these products are temporary measures and probably not substantially different in terms of efficacy than simply treating your own clothes or exposed skin with a tick repellent and/or doing a thorough body check once you’re back indoors.
Chemicals used to suppress tick populations (like for lawn applications) are non-selective and don’t impact only ticks. Their close relatives, spiders and any mites that aren’t plant pests (fun fact: some mites eat pests) are definitely worth having in our landscapes. They’re valued partners in natural pest management but can be equally vulnerable to the effects of sprays marketed for tick control. Some pesticide ingredients are even more broad-spectrum than this, potentially affecting ground-dwelling insects and other organisms. As with mosquito management, it’s more sustainable to use personal protection to avoid bites and to landscape in an eco-conscious way to make full use of any existing natural checks and balances that keep tick populations down.
By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun and Washington Gardener Magazine. Read more by Miri.
Have a plant or insect question? The University of Maryland Extension has answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask Extension.Our horticulturists are available to answer your questions online, year-round. You can also connect with your local County/City Extension Office and Master Gardenerlocal programs.
With spring coming up, many of us are already starting to get our yards and gardens ready for the growing season. Among the activities we may take on, there can be the managing of branches, sticks, and wood that may have been trimmed from trees and shrubs in the fall, over the winter, or just recently. In today’s post, I want to talk about how to integrate these resources into our green spaces, to support wildlife and the natural services they provide.
Wood and stick piles can provide welcoming habitat to beneficial organisms. Photo: A. Espíndola
Increasing the diversity of our green spaces
In several of the posts that we publish on this blog, we recommend different actions that can be taken to increase biodiversity in our green spaces (see local ecotype plants, helping pollinators in small green spaces, and conserving parasitoids for some ideas). We know that increasing biodiversity improves the ability to control and restrain pests, increases wild and crop plant pollination, and in many cases leads to better soil quality. Among these practices, there is one that increases the physical complexity of our green spaces, providing nesting, shelter, and food resources to beneficial organisms. The practice I’m talking about consists of building wood and stick piles that can be established in our green spaces. The idea behind this practice is to create a space where birds, small mammals, insects, and even pest predators can find their preferred resources, and thus be attracted and present in our environments (learn more about the landscaping rationale for using dead wood).
What organisms are attracted by these piles?
Depending on the size of the pile and its composition (e.g., large logs, smaller sticks, a mix of them), different organisms will be attracted and may establish themselves in our green spaces. The presence of a mix of logs and sticks usually attracts birds, which may nest within the pile or may just spend time within the pile searching for food or finding shelter at different points during the day. These birds will certainly contribute to increasing the diversity of animals present in our green spaces and can also in some cases participate in the control of insect pests that we may not want in our gardens and yards.
Carolina wrens are very attracted to shrubby habitats, meaning that piles of wood and brush represent a great way to provide resources to these little cute birds who in turn can help us keep herbivore populations in line. Photo: Shenandoah NP.
Other animals we can observe in these piles are a variety of insects then may be associated with the decomposition of wood or that may use wood as a nesting or overwintering resource (e.g., bees, solitary wasps). While the former can help recycle the wood material and reintegrate it into the habitat, the latter may participate in the pollination of plants and crops that we may grow in that area or predate on unwanted pests.
Similarly, ground-dwelling invertebrates like millipedes and ground beetles can also find shelter under these piles, while the brush can also contribute to the nesting of pollinators such as (ground-nesting) bees, the overwintering of some butterflies and moths, and help improve the quality of the soil in that part of our yard.
Larger organisms may also be attracted to these piles, such as small mammals, amphibians, and even reptiles. Although we may tend to dislike these groups of animals, many of them feed on unwanted soil organisms and may help with soil quality, while others can actually control vermin through their predatory abilities. This is particularly the case of snakes that may find shelter in these spaces, which, while harmless to humans (the vast majority of snakes in Maryland are non-venomous, readily feed on rats and mice that may be present around the house.
A mix of thick and thin pieces of wood can provide a diverse habitat to many different organisms. Photo: A. Espíndola.
How to build these piles?
These piles can take many different shapes and sizes, which depend in part on the materials and space available. When very large spaces are available (e.g., in the woods), it is recommended for these piles to be relatively large – at least 10 to 20 feet in length, and up to 8 feet in height (read more about these larger brush piles). In smaller spaces such as in urban or suburban gardens, these piles can be much smaller, occupying areas that may not be regularly used for other purposes. In all cases, it is ideal to build these piles using a combination of different types of materials, such as twigs and branches of different thicknesses, some logs, and even some branches that may still have dead leaves attached to them…always using healthy materials.
An important consideration when putting together these piles is that they should not be built leaning on or very close to wood-based structures or the foundations of our buildings. This is because of the potential risk of termite infestations of buildings if the piles are not physically separated from them. However, it is important to stress that establishing these piles has not been shown to be associated with higher termite infestations if the pile is not in contact or very close to the built structure. (You can read a very good discussion about mulch and termites from Iowa State Extension).
So, as you work on your spring garden, I encourage you to think about plant stems, logs, and branches not as waste that needs to be cleaned up, but as beneficial resources that you can incorporate into your available space.
By Anahí Espíndola, Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park. See more posts by Anahí.
Anahí also writes an Extension Blog in Spanish! Check it out here, extensionesp.umd.edu, and please share and spread the word to your Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues in Maryland. ¡Bienvenidos a Extensión en Español!
With the huge losses of biodiversity that we are seeing across the world, a prominent example that became very close to people’s hearts is that of the large pollinator losses and the very important consequences that they could have on the well-being of our ecosystems and ourselves. In this context, a very large movement started seeking to “save the bees,” which has had a number of expected and unexpected consequences. One of the latter is the very significant increase in the adoption of honeybee hives by homeowners with little to no experience in honeybee husbandry, especially with the goal to “help bees” so they won’t go extinct. Although the goal of doing this is very genuine and well-intentioned, there are a number of complexities that come with this decision, which I would like to talk about in this post.
Are the bees dying?
The short answer is yes… kind of. Let me explain. As we mentioned in previous posts, there exists a very large diversity of bees (for example, only in Maryland there are about 400 native bee species!), and it is very clear that trends in biodiversity are negative for bees, as for many other groups of insects, plants and other animals. From that respect, we can say that many native bees are indeed dying, and it is key that actions are taken to provide more healthy habitat for them to survive.
That said, it is important to understand that honeybees are actually non-native livestock in our region (the group of bees that honeybees belong to are native to Eurasia and Africa, not to North America). Honeybees are managed and non-native insects that are reared by beekeepers to produce honey and other materials (e.g., wax, propolis). In places where honeybees are native, local peoples have been using their materials for generations, and in those regions, honeybees have not only been important from a production perspective, but also from a cultural one (read here to learn a bit more about some of these traditional systems).
As for all livestock, honeybees have health issues that need to be treated if they occur. For example, honeybees suffer from serious parasite and viral infections, appear to be negatively affected by certain pesticides applied to the plants they collect pollen and nectar from, and seem to also be affected by environmental stressors such as changes in the diversity of the landscape and the quality of the plants they feed on. All of this increases the real potential to reduce the health of colonies and, if left untreated, decimate them.
Again, the short answer is probably not. As I was saying above, honeybees are non-native to our region, so increasing their populations (for example, by increasing the number of hives) in our region is not likely to positively affect our suffering native species. For example, it has been shown in some studies that honeybees can be pretty competitive in the way they visit plants, displacing native species. Further, and especially if the honeybees are not properly managed (which is, unfortunately, the case for many new unexperienced beekeepers), they can become sick and spread diseases to native bees and other insects, also leading to increasing the pressures on these already-struggling native organisms.
Brown marmorated stink bug, one of the little stinkers that try to get into the house in autumn. Photo: Kristie Graham, USDA ARS, Bugwood.org
Q: The bugs trying to spend the winter in my home aren’t a hazard, right? I’m going to try to seal up where they may be getting in, but there are already some that have managed to appear inside that would be hard to track down.
A: They don’t bite, aren’t attracted to indoor plants (though they might be drawn to grow lights, as they are to any light source), and are generally just a nuisance. If not easy to find, you can let them wander around until they expire, then dispose of them. Live bugs can be vacuumed or caught and released outside to meet their fate. Boxelder bugs, brown marmorated stink bugs, and multicolored Asian lady beetles are the trio of common culprits here in Maryland. Crickets, pillbugs, and millipedes come inside too, but at least they don’t fly.
Our homes must look like giant boulders to them, basking in the waning sunlight and retaining relative warmth, riddled with inviting crevices in which they can wait out the winter. Our abodes might be especially attractive since our groomed landscapes don’t have as many natural tree cavities, fallen logs, brush piles, or layers of leaf litter to tempt them instead.
If anyone is still puzzled by how they’re getting in, check your door and window weather-stripping for degradation or gaps, look for torn window screening, and inspect vent covers and conduit or pipe entry points on the exterior of the home. Seal any gaps and cracks that you can. If you use a window air conditioner, take it out for the season or plug up any access points around it.
By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun and Washington Gardener Magazine. Read more by Miri.
Have a plant or insect question? The University of Maryland Extension has answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask Extension. Our horticulturists are available to answer your questions online, year-round.
Even when they look dry and “dead,” our green spaces are full of life. When we think about plants, for example, we can see that herbaceous perennials seem dry but they are actually just retreating underground, while annuals continue their life cycle by spending the winter as seeds in the ground. The same is true for other organisms that live in our green spaces: squirrels become less active, snakes retreat to sheltered spaces, and insects may overwinter as adults underground or in crevasses or as juveniles in their nests or chrysalises. Among these insects, there is a particular group that we seem to take a lot of effort to protect in season, but that we may then forget about in the fall and winter: our pollinators. In today’s post, I would like to talk about some specific ways that allow us to take care of our green spaces in the fall, all while continuing to support these organisms we worked so hard to support throughout the growing season.
Where are our pollinators in the winter?
As we mentioned in a previous post, pollinators don’t disappear in the winter. Instead, they either migrate to warmer conditions (like monarchs do; check out this website to know where they are now!) or stick around and overwinter right here in protected spaces such as crevasses, underground nests, and within plant stems. If we have been enjoying supporting them throughout the season, it may be a good idea to continue to do so also throughout the winter. Let’s see some ways to do this.
Carolina mantis adult female in early autumn. Notice how her wings don’t reach the end of her abdomen, as they would with our other local mantids. Photo: M. Talabac
Q: I’ve heard that not all of our praying mantis types are native. They’re all good for garden pest control though, right, or are some bad instead?
A: Maryland is currently home to five species of praying mantis, but only one is native, which is the Carolina mantis. The others are the European, Chinese, Narrow-winged, and Asian jumping mantids, with the latter being the most recent introduction. While non-native, the other mantids have more-or-less been integrated into our ecosystem for some time now, so they don’t necessarily need management or removal. Evidence of this includes the fact that insect-eating birds and other predators will readily consume them, and their eggs can also be parasitized by the tiny wasps that presumably evolved to have a relationship with our native mantis. In the grand scheme of things, other invasive species deserve more attention. Plus, at least they also eat various other non-native insect pests.
If you prefer to support native mantids found in your yard, make sure you’ve identified them correctly. Maryland Biodiversity Project has image galleries for each mantis species and provides a few ID tips for telling the difference between them, at least for adults and egg cases (called ootheca). Put “mantids” in the search box to see the species list.
Photo: Pawel Pieluszynski
Mantids are generalist predators, so can consume pest insects and beneficials like pollinators alike. They’re opportunists, nabbing anything they can subdue (including each other), so are neither universally good nor bad. Gardeners generally consider them helpers since they do consume pests, though we don’t know to what extent the non-native species may be depriving the native species of a food source due to competition. (Given how many other non-native insects exist in our area, I imagine this impact isn’t that significant, especially when compared to the greater problem of habitat loss and degradation.)
By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun and Washington Gardener Magazine. Read more by Miri.
Have a plant or insect question? The University of Maryland Extension has answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask Extension. Our horticulturists are available to answer your questions online, year-round.
