Red Lily Leaf Beetle

The other day I noticed a bright red insect on the leaf of the Tiger Lily plant.  At first I thought, wow, cool little bug with the most vibrant red colour, looks beautiful against the bright green lily leaves.  Little did I know this is a dangerous littler bugger that can end up destroying your whole crop of lilies!

I started getting concern after seeing this insect on the tiger lily again a few days later, and then again the next day.  It made me wonder if this bug is specific to this type of plant.  With a quick Google research and voila, found out this is the Red Lily Leaf Beetle.  You can read about it here.  

Need to keep an eye out for them the next few days and hopefully catch a few of them before they get a chance to eat all the leafs and flower buds!

~ Rebecca

Tips for keeping garden pests away

And..... they are back (my nemeses - the squirrels).  They seem to have no fear of human what so ever and love to hang out on top of the backyard fence.  You actually have to run outside and stomp of the deck pretty hard and charge at them before they will start to run away.  

 

The latest casualty were the cucumbers.  They take perfect little cucumbers and shreds them to pieces and throw half of it on the ground..... 

I know it's the squirrels destroying the vegetables this year because I believe the family of raccoon in the neighborhood have moved away (they haven't been seen too often this summer).  I really don't know how to keep them away other than put cages around all my vegetables but that's rather unsightly.....  

Any one have some environmentally friendly & humane way to keep pests away?  I was browsing around and found this article - may have to try some of these methods next year... 

http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/top-five-tips-keeping-garden-pests-away-191806583.html