Consumer columnist and West Hartford resident Harlan Levy has more than 20 years of experience writing stories about everyday experiences that anyone could encounter.

By Harlan Levy

It’s early spring but not too early for our bugs to start their activity. And they’re coming for us – I mean our plants, flowers, and vegetables.

But first my weekly price check at the usual West Hartford supermarkets, this time for broccoli crowns (our family’s staple), the vast majority of which come from California and Arizona:

• Big Y: 3/25: $2.39/lb.
• Whole Foods: 3/25: Conventional: $2.99/lb, organic: $3.99/lb.
• Trader Joe’s: 3/25: $1.99 each.
• Stop & Shop: 3/25: $2.49/lb.

Bugs

In Hartford County this spring we’re going to see adult male and female deer ticks – also known as the black-legged tick – carrying the pathogen for Lyme disease out and about as it gets warmer, mostly living in shrubby undercover areas, tick expert Megan Linske from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station said. Last year in Hartford County we had a 47% pathogen (disease) prevalence causing Lyme disease from female black-legged ticks. The adults have started coming out now, and they’re more infectious than at other stages. In May into July we’ll start seeing nymphs starting to come out. They carry the pathogen for Lyme disease, too.

What to do? If you’re walking in the woods, stick to trails, because ticks like shrubby areas. And make sure when you come inside you check yourself and your pets. Also you can wear treated socks, which you can tuck your pants legs into, because ticks like to attack you at your ankle and calf areas.

You can treat your backyards with natural and synthetic pesticides at the peak period in May and the beginning of June to target the nymph stage. “The one we’re using right now is synthetic-based cyhalothrin,” Linske said.

Then there’s the Japanese beetle. The beetle larval stage will resume final feeding mid-late April with adult emergence in early June, said Experiment Station entomologist Dr. Gale Ridge. Adults can feed on over 300 host plants. They consume the soft mesophyll tissues between the veins creating a lacing effect on the leaves. Their favored plants include, apple, chery, grape, peach, plum, blueberry, asparagus, beet, broccoli, roses, sassafras, clover, and alfalfa.

Milky spore disease (applied with a spreader) is very effective against Japanese beetles, Ridge said, “but care needs to be taken on timing, since the soil needs to be warm, so wait until mid-to-late spring for treatment.”

A second lawn pest is the Asiatic garden beetle. It has become as serious a lawn pest as grubs, and as adults they feed on over 200 species of host plants. They can consume entire leaves and eat anything that’s in a vegetable garden. It has become resistant to milky spore disease and since imidacloprid has been banned from public use, there is little other than natural parasites and predators to control populations.

Four-lined striped plant bugs are also causing severe damage to a broad spectrum of plants like herbaceous perennials, herbs like mint and basil, woody ornamentals, flowering annuals like marigolds, berries like gooseberries and blackberries, and vegetables like peppers. And they’re not bothered by rainy weather.

They’re small, a quarter-inch to a third-of-an-inch long, an have an orange head and a yellow or green body with black stripes.

To fight them, you can spray or cover the plants in the early spring with row covers, which you drape over the plants, Ridge said.

Then there’s the Gypsy Moth, now called the Spongy Moth, in Hartford County toward the Massachusetts border, but Ridge said he doesn’t think there’ll be much activity this year.

Another destructive bug is the invasive Spotted Lantern Fly, now found in all of Connecticut’s eight counties, with the largest populations along state highways, like the the I-91 and I-95 corridors. They attack a broad spectrum of plants. The main issue is that they do severe harms to grapes, which concerns the state’s vineyards. Their eggs hatch in the next few weeks. To fight them you can have professionals spray for them.

Generally, the wet weather this spring has affected all the insects compared to last year, Ridge said, helping mosquitoes and hindering ticks.

That’s my bug update. Now you know.

NOTE: If you have a consumer problem, contact me at [email protected] (“Consumer” in subject line), and, with the power of the press, maybe I can help.

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