Although caterpillars can cause quite a bit of damage in your garden, it’s good to know which type you have because that will determine how you can contain the damage. Essentially, two types of caterpillars can be pests in your summer garden.

If you notice damage to the leaves of plants and trees, you should first look for the Butterflies Caterpillars. These caterpillars are the larval stage of butterflies and moths. Cabbage worms, tomato hornworms, tent moths, gypsy moths, all swallowtails and monarch butterflies belong to this family.

The Butterflies Caterpillars in this family are typically large and have small hairs. They tend to cause a lot of damage, usually individually rather than en masse in your garden.

These caterpillars can usually be removed by picking them by hand or with a common organic spray such as BT or Bacillus thuringiensis.

The other group of caterpillars to look out for is in the Hymenoptera Family. These small caterpillar larvae do not become a moth or butterfly, but an insect called a sawfly.

Sawfly caterpillars are small and smooth, and their color can range from translucent to yellow, green, or black. They tend to feed in groups, and if you get too close, they’ll rear up on their hind legs! (Don’t worry, they’re not harmful.)

The larvae of the sawfly feed quite many different plants such as birch, willow, dogwood, pear, columbine, pine, rose, azalea and more! The caterpillars can, for example, eat all the needles of a pine or defoliate the leaves of plants and trees. The damage varies depending on the sawfly.

The control of sawflies differs from the control to mitigate Butterflies; BT does not work on them. Try picking the caterpillars from your plants and bushes by hand or – in the evening, so as not to harm the bees – spraying spinosad or neem oil.

Rock-hard potatoes

A: The answer to this question comes from the Idaho Potato Commission: Potatoes that do not soften even after prolonged boiling and cooking may have been exposed to cold weather.

Starchy potato varieties are more susceptible to this. To avoid recurrence, start with certified, disease-free seed potatoes and choose varieties with less starch content.

Growing lettuce is not successful

A: The hot, humid and wet weather is probably the problem of the lettuce, which prefers cool weather.

But don’t give up! The weather is changing and you could start the seeds in small pots and then transplant the seedlings into the garden for an early harvest in the fall.

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