Market Farming

[Richard Moyer <ramoyer AT gmail.com>]

Ken,

Good questions.  The beetles got ahead of us earlier this year, too, but the wasps caught up.  It is a dynamic, biological system and I wonder if our record heat and drought was a factor.

Fortunately, NJ and MD have been controlling Mexican Bean Beetle (MBB) with the parasitic Pediobius wasp for over 20 years.  Hence have the results and experience to answer your proposal.

Their 2011 summary:

"MBB populations continue to remain low in all counties where nurse plots were

planted. A total of 408,000 Pediobius foveolatus adults (parasitic waps) were released in New Jersey and no grower had to treat a soybean crop for the Mexican bean beetle."

That is, no sprays or other insecticides applied for beetle control.

See this reference for data, including maps and measured reductions in MBB over the years:

http://www.state.nj.us/agriculture/divisions/pi/pdf/mexicanbeanbeetle.pdf

Will be interesting to read the 2012 report on pediobius effectiveness, in regards to heat and drought.

Note the importance of 'nurse crops' in the NJ/MD strategy.  Ken, what you are proposing is a nurse crop of beans, planted early, that draws in the overwintering MBB from surrounding areas.  Then buy Pediobius at right time and recommended amount.  There is 20 yrs of data to back you up, and also 20 years of experience in figuring how to optimize the system.

I suggest you talk with Tom Dorsey, who directs the NJ program that rears Pediodius, the wasp that preys on MBB.  Tom would know who else to talk with, if you want to talk with field researchers or organic growers on diverse farms, re: nurse crops strategies in spring to get  and stay ahead.

We've been using Pediobius wasp for a number of years, and the late planting of bush beans I was weeding before lunch has beautiful intact leaves.  Though my earlier bean leaves were harder hit before the wasps caught up.  New leaves on that first planting are now perfect.  Picked and sold beans in quantity at market yesterday; pickling more today.  Those varieties robust enough to regrow after their initial picking, and moderate MBB damage.

The temptation of growers like me is to wait too long to release the beetles (lots going on that time of year), pinching pennies in buying mummies when adults are recommended, pinching pennies again when buying less pediobious than recommended.  I usually buy less and later than Tom recommends, so I have to keep that in mind in assessing my record.

The years I've had the best control, we do the nurse crop, such as you propose.  That is an early planting of beans, which can be a sacrifice crop if the timing or finances don't work out right.  Then, as recommended in some references, we transfer mummies (parasitized MBB) to new plantings of beans, taking weed or bean leaves with mummies attached.  So when the adult wasps hatch out, they seek MBB first within my new valuable plantings.   Yes, this takes time, but there's a perverse pleasure in finding MBB larvae that are being eaten alive by tiny worms.  Then transferring these dying larvae where their hatching wasps are needed most.  Thereby hastening death upon the tiny larvae just showing up on young bean plants.

We've shared one pediobius purchase with multiple growers (sharing the cost) by releasing them with the grower doing the earliest beans, then transferring mummies to different farms. Holds the cost down and allows one to saturate valuable, later bean plantings with thousands of wasp parasites.

Your proposal sounds good.  Has 20 years of work in NJ and MD to back you up.  Trick for me is committing the attention and funds to saturate those first MBB larvae with their parasites.

Glad you are asking how we can improve!

Richard

 

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 12:01 PM, <market-farming-request AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

Send Market-farming mailing list submissions to
        market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
        http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
        market-farming-request AT lists.ibiblio.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
        market-farming-owner AT lists.ibiblio.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Market-farming digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Bean beetles (Ken Bezilla)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2012 13:49:38 +0000
From: Ken Bezilla <kenbez AT hotmail.com>
Subject: [Market-farming] Bean beetles
To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <COL102-W32916BA97A86093DA1A175D2850 AT phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


We had a bean beetle disaster this year, even though we did two separate releases of pedio wasps to try to control them.  The product itself was fine -- another grower who shared one our shipments had good control of the wasps from her own release -- but on our own farm the bean beetles got out of control and killed off all the pole beans and any older bush bean plantings.

We usually get good control of bean beetles with the pedio wasps, but this year we didn't, and so probably next year we'll have an even bigger problem.

Thinking ahead to next year, a strategy I'm thinking about is to try an extra-early small planting of beans in our high tunnel to try to establish the pedio wasps early.  Normally our first bean planting is outside ~4/10-4/15.  Instead, we'd do a first planting under row cover in the high tunnel ~3/1-3/5.  Then the bean beetle larvae should appear a month earlier, and we could do a small release of the wasps to get them established earlier.  (And later supplement this with a second release of pedio wasps when we first see larvae on the outside plantings.)

This could be clever.  Or this could be very stupid, because we might allow the bean beetles to get established even earlier if it doesn't work.  So before I re-invent stupid... anyone ever tried this?

Ken Bezilla
Acorn Community Farm
central VA



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/market-farming/attachments/20121003/03a6091e/attachment-0001.html

------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Market-farming mailing list
Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming

Get the list FAQ at: http://www.marketfarming.net/mflistfaq.htm


End of Market-farming Digest, Vol 117, Issue 1
**********************************************