Market Farming

["nan and stewart" <stewart AT watervalley.net>]

I was just told by a native gardener that using heavy mulch and/or sheet composting on my beds over the winter, is one of the reasons i have so many HARLEQUIN BUGS (these are HARD bodied insects that skeletonize everything....they have been hanging around the gardens YEAR ROUND...

 

She sorta advised me NOT to mulch (gee, that is a hard habit to break).  Any experience out there?  I dont' have a slug problem, but do have squash borers, stink bugs, squash bugs and harlequin bugs  (haven't notices thrips or aphids and no tomato hornworms..seems to be the hard bodied kinds that like our farm)....

 

 

any insights (i was just attributing it to soil that is not yet up to par, so plants are stressed somewhat....)

 

they seem to like the brassicas (none on tomatoes) and sunflowers, and eggplants

 

also, what kind of insect eats through the stem of the uppermost sunflower in a multi branched sunflower plant (not the russian mammoth kind).....  not every blossom is chopped off (about an inch below the flower head), but there are quite a few just hanging by a thread each day when i check..weird.....leaves are unaffected as are the rest of the heads on a plant, just wondering, it is always something here in the tropics!

 

nan j.

dancing goats farm

mississippi  zone 7b