I was reading LTCetme's thread on "Something is eating my bean plants" and I realised we have a lot of knowledge spread around a bunch of different threads on what to do for which pests.  I decided I would start a new thread where we can gather our tips and tricks for dealing with various garden problems.

Here is my contribution:

Slugs:  Small holes in plants - you can check by going out either at night or early morning and just looking -should be able to see the slugs.
1.  Sprinkle diotomacious earth around the plants - expensive and needs to be re-applied after rain, but it works.  The tiny particles are sharp enough to cut up the slugs, but won't hurt people.
2.  Sprinke broken eggshells around your plants - free and provides calcium to your soil - I have found it slightly less effective, but hey, it's free.  It works like the D.E by cutting up the slugs.
3.  Copper tape - this is expensive and only works if you have a pot or your raised bed has a smooth continuous edge you can apply it to.  It works by shocking the slugs and the real benefit is you only have to do it once.
4.  Put a board on the ground for them to hide under then in the morning flip it over and kill, kill, kill.
5.  Bury a bowl to the rim and fill it with beer, aka a "beer trap" - slugs smell the beer, crawl in and drown.  (thanks kitties-with-sigs for reminding me of this one - I usually forget because I don't want to lose the beer!)

Japanese beetles:  small iridescent beetles with white spots along the abdomen.  You can tell you have them because they are rolling around in piles all over your plants, fornicating like mad while eating everything in sight.  They can strip a plant in a day or two so don't wait until the weekend to handle this one.
1.  Sevin - works like a charm, but you have to re-spray if it rains.
2.  Chickens.  Enough said.
3.  Go out in early morning when they are still somewhat groggy and knock them into a bucket of soapy water.  I have no chickens to try this with, but you might want to try then washing them, and feeding them to the chickens as a protien supplement.  According to chicken owners they do get bored with this as a constant diet, so maybe freeze the extra and feed over time?  If you have an aquaponics bed you may also be able to feed them to the fish (not positive)
4.  Neem does NOT work.
note: They supposedly can bite, though I never have had one bite me.  I wouldn't suggest picking one up and playing with it.

Stink bugs: Greyish, shield-shaped bugs that stink if you crush them.  Adolescents are white.  Eggs are small, shield-shaped, copper-colored and usually layed several at a time on the underside of leaves.
1.  According to TRG fabreeze new zealand scent works although I haven't tried it.  (thanks TRG).
2.  A bit of dishwashing soap in water works, but if you make it too strong you will burn your plants.  I usually make some up and test it on a small area before spraying the whole garden.
3.  Sevin and neem do NOT seem to work.
4.  Crushing them works but smells.  A LOT.  Not recommended.
5.  You can pull the eggs off the leaves with duct tape.
6.  Yellow bowl mostly buried with soapy water in it.  Yellow attracts them, and they drown in the soapy water.

Squash vine borers:  Small black wasps with a red v stripe that lay their eggs on the stem of vining plants.  They eggs hatch, burrow in, and eat the stem out.  You can tell you have them when A.  Your lovely vibrant squash plants wilts and dies overnight and/or B. You see what looks like sawdust (called frass) at the base of the plants.  Both symptoms show usually way too late to save the plant.  
1.  Inject the stem with bt once a week at 1cc (trying this this year, not sure if it will work.)
2.  Yellow bowl mostly buried with soapy water in it.  Yellow attracts them, and they drown in the soapy water.
3.  Bury the stems at intervals for things like pumpkins.  They will root where they are buried, adding resiliency.
4.  Plant things like butternut squash instead, that they don't like as much.
5.  Slit the stem where you see the frass, cut  out the grubs, re-bury the stem and hope.
6.  Spray the stem with sevin once a week and hope you catch the grubs before they burrow into the stem.


Please respond and add your tips/trick for dealing with garden pests.

Thanks Kitties.  Hopefully we can get some of the garden experts in here to share their knowledge.  

Squash vine borers: I gave up. Tried most everything. Now I wait till they destroy the first plantings and come right back behind with new plantings. Once the lady lays her first eggs she doesn't lay anymore so the second planting usually will survive. I do split the dead and dying stems and kill the grubs.

Stinkers: A spray mist bottle with alcohol works if you have the time. Squirt once and they die.

Japs: Like said above knock them into a bucket of soap or lysol. Or have fun with a rubber bank between your fingers.....

Flea beetles:   dust with sevin every few days until you don't see anymore.  Little bastards will destroy a garden crop in a day or two be merciless on them

Gophers:  traps that kill, don't waste your time with gum, smoke bombs, or poison (poison works but I don't want that shit in my ground and don't want to kill other animals)

Save your beer!

Recipe for slug traps:

1 cup water
1 teaspoon flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon yeast

Mix ingredients and pour into traps. If you place them on a level spot on the ground, shallow lids like those on sour cream containers work well as traps. Put a small rock in the middle to keep it from blowing away, though.

Tomato Hornworms

When you see giant green caterpillars (pick these off) on your tomato plants or just small black droppings around your tomato plant, dust or spray with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis). Supposed to work on other leaf-eating caterpillars, too, like cabbage worms.

I just killed and removed stink bugs (squash bugs) and their eggs off of my squash plants this weekend.  I haven't been paying close attention to them.  I noticed the leaves starting to brown and yellow.  Bugs and eggs are just as you described OP.

I have started using scrap copper wire to make loops that I place around the plants for slugs.  They may not sit perfectly flat on the ground but any barrier is a barrier.

I have also found this product: Ortho Bug-Geta2  Ortho has two products with the same name other than the 2 at the end.  The other product is nasty and has an extensive warning label so I never used it.

If you are dealing with chipmunks or red squirrels then this is your answer: Kill em all
I had four in my garden last year baited with peanut butter and I am sure I killed 30 or more chipmunks and a couple of red squirrels.

I was actually targeting the chipmunks because they will dig up seeds and just randomly taking bites out of the tomatoes.  The red squirrels have caused issues for me by getting into my attic and for a neighbor by doing similar to his garage.  They don't bother with the garden but they are generally a pest.

tag

Not necessarily a pest but a problem that a lot of us will encounter is Downey/ Powdery Mildew.
My remedy that has been very successful is to add a tablespoon full of yogurt to a spray bottle of milk and spray the plants. It works wonders.

What are you doing taking pictures in my garden?

If the devil had children, they'd be it!

We've been using pyretherin too which works well but about every 5 days or so they're back.  The morning after a rain or watering we notice more activity.  How about you?

 

Tag.

I was visiting some family this last weekend and they had the best looking cucumbers, pepper, and tomatoes. I asked what they were doing and he told me he took whole milk and mixed it 60/40 water and foilar sprayed.  Did it during the heat of the day so the proteins in the milk would bind to the leaves.  He said it will also help repel insects.

fixed

This may seem counterintuitive but foliar feeding sugar or molasses will drive a lot of bugs off.  Most bugs have a hard time processing high sugar concentrations and will leave for something more appealing.  

For a bonus it is bee friendly and a great energy source for the plants.

I am really happy to see this thread taking off.  Does anybody know what might be eating my peppers?  I ran into this last year - some foliage damage but mostly they eat the fruit, starting at the stem end.  I never did find the culprits, and heat levels in the peppers do not seem to deter whatever it is at all.

I am not sure - I will try to get pics today.  

On a different note I just watched a bunch of slug experiments using copper tape, copper wire, eggshells, coffee grounds, and beer.  

Video tests:

Copper tape/wire.  They hesitated and clearly didn't like it, but they crossed it anyway.
Eggshells/coffee grounds - crossed anyway.
Beer - effective in about a 3 foot radius, but a number will still find their way out.

Other research information with no videos:
Iron phospate slug bait - works and it non-toxic to other things.
metaldehyde - old-style chemical bait.  It works but it's toxic and can be attractive to dogs which eat it and then have problems.  
Watering in the morning instead of the evening is supposed to reduce damage by as much as 60%.  This also reduces your likelihood of getting fungus on your plants, so it's a better choice all round.
Hand picking - effective but labor intensive and nasty.

All in all I would go with iron phosphate slug bait and watering in the morning instead of afternoon.

The pepper plant damage.  These are the worst of the damaged leaves.  Now that I look closer it may be a pest on the leaves and a fungus on the fruit...


Fruit damage:

I believe you are correct in the 2 different problems.  I can identify tomato hornworms, but thanks for the pic offer.  If they are just hiding the pepper plants can #@%$!! well turn their head and cough if that's what it takes to find them.  I'm sure they'll get over the indignity eventually.  

Looking online the fruit issue may be the month of rain - whole month without rain - heavy rain -2 weeks without rain.  Even with watering it is no where near what we get when it lets loose around here.  The soil has plenty of calcium, and the tomatoes are not showing signs of any issues though.  They are also susceptible to sunburn, apparently, and it looks similar.  We are at 2 weeks straight of 100 or nearly 100 degrees with no rain, and they get almost 10 hours of sun this time of year.

On the pepper picture it looks like a tiny hole on bottom right where the stem meets the fruit.  I have had earwigs do that and nest inside the fruit and it starts to rot from the inside.  Look closely at your other peppers and if you find another one cut it open and see what is inside.

Showed up here in this past week too.  It's a shame they can't be trained to eat the diseased foliage.

Pics coming soon.

After taking the first photo I started to pick this fat fella off but then decided watch how long it took for it to eat down to the branch.  After it got started again it took only 8 minutes for half a body length

Have been fortunate this year to have the time to pick bugs both early and late in the day but still missed many.

Squash bugs hatching



About 4 days old



A slightly older batch



What are you guys doing for these, spaying or hand picking?  We've only hand picked but it's a lot of leaves to look at twice a day!

When I see those I toss the entire tomato (worm and all) to the chickens.

Worm is INSTANTLY gone - Tomato gets gone soon thereafter. (Chickens LOVE tomatoes)

Nothing gets wasted around here.

Speak of the devils.  Apparently they added eggplant to their menu this year.  Last year they didn't touch them




Prior to the Japanese beetles the flea beetles pressed the eggplants hard and an occasional colorado potato beetle would show up.

Nothing biological, just knocking them into a cup of soapy water whenever possible.  Sometimes it feels futile but I guess in the big picture it's disrupting the feeding enough to get the plants through this hatch.  

We're actually considering spreading some "milky spore" to see if that  is truly effective in reducing their numbers.???

Does anybody know what these are?  They are partying down on my eggplant, and I have found some on my tomatoes as well.  I have tried sevin and soapy water, and so far neither seems to have appreciably reduced their numbers.

Leaf-footed nyphs.  I have very little luck controlling these but an application of Bayer Advanced Vegtable every 5 weeks and keeping my surrounding areas mowed help keep them at bay.  

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/weekly_Q&A/p&dc_12.htm

Thanks for the prompt answer.  I wish the answer was different, but thanks for the answer.  :(  Any idea why the soapy water works for shield-shaped stink bugs but not the leaf-footed variety?

I'm not sure but they are the aids of my garden.  I can keep them at bay for quite a while but when it gets to the point where they fly out of my tomatoes like wasps I sit back on the porch with my volquartsen and just pick um off and call the season done.

I wonder if pyrethrim   pyrethrin   would knock them out?  So far it has worked well for soft body pests as a "contact" spray in our garden.

Pyganic/Evergreen, and the other Pyrethrum products, knock the snot out of them, but it has rather short activity, and clobbers just about everything else, good and bad.
The Zeta and Beta Cypermethrins have much longer activity, as does "Eight" the Pyrrethrin based dust. The nice thing about the dust, is it washes off easily, and isn't persistent in the soil.

Just keep an eyeball peeled for aphids after use, because any of them, will wipe out most of the aphid predators for one cycle, and it will take a couple weeks for them to build back up, giving the Aphids a head start.
I would rather use a systemic, applied at dusk or night, to protect the beneficials somewhat, but that's just me.