Hi--it’s Mary, and I want to tell you about my experiments with inter-plantings of vegetables in the azalea bed in the front of our house and container eggplants. And my first encounter with assassin bugs! But first, some background…..The front yard is the perfect exposure for vegetables, facing south, great sun til mid-afternoon. Wrapping around the front of the house is a large bed that slopes away from the house, planted with azaleas, “dwarf” gardenias, and nandinas--typical suburban landscaping. In past years, I planted some eggplants, peppers, and a couple tomato plants discretely between the landscape plants. Being something of a neatnick, I tried to keep them neat and staked so the view from the street isn’t ratty. This year I decided to make more room, so I cut back the front row gardenias (they were suffering—maybe too much sun?). Now there was room for a row of peppers (King Arthur, Chocolate Beauty, Anaheim) and eggplants (Hansen, White, Rosa Bianca). I’m kind of an eggplant and pepper snob, as you may have guessed. There was even room for a few heirloom tomatoes, but the Dwarf and Penn State Plum were badly hit with early blight in July. Other than these casualties, the inter-plantings have been a success. Twice-weekly watering was just what the eggplants and peppers needed to be prolific and reach 4’ in height. I wasn’t quite prepared for such altitude and had to scramble to add support—and still, a few pepper-laden branches broke clean off.
Back in May, I had two eggplants that wouldn’t fit in the garden. I hauled two decent-looking glazed pots, about 10 gallons each, filled each with a mix of potting soil and mushroom compost, planted the seedling, and put them in front of the bed. They’ve thrived with daily watering, producing as many eggplants as those in the ground.
A couple weeks ago, I was just about to reach out and pick a pepper when I noticed what I thought was a swarm of red ants on the leaves and peppers. But wait—they had orange bodies and black legs. Not ants. And they were crawling all over the top of the plant. Out of respect, I left them alone and started looking at websites for “garden pests in Georgia.” InsectIdentification.org was quite helpful and where I found images of assassin bugs, both adults and nymphs, which are like the youngsters and adolescent-aged bugs. So these were assassin bug nymphs. At first, I thought, “ugh—how do I get rid of these before they bite me?” A bit more reading told me that they are a garden asset and will eat some of the more pesky insects that attack vegetables. So I let them be, and they’ve grown and changed to a greenish color that is more typical of the adults. I steer clear because I don’t want to sample their bite, which isn’t too painful but it can itch for several days, like a mosquito bite (to which I’m quite sensitive). And in the pictures below you can see that they are definitely not ants—and how their back ends are aimed up in the air!
The assassin bugs seem to like the front bed and have been cruising from plant to plant in the past two weeks. A second hatching has brought a second crop of tiny critters, so I look rather carefully before I pick vegetables. But they stay busy hunting for bugs and ignore me, for the most part. I’m perfectly happy to let them do their work and haven’t had to use any insecticides since a brief (and unsuccessful) attempt to get rid of the eggplant flea beetles that chew holes in the eggplant leaves. The plants seem to thrive despite the increasingly lacey leaves. If I decide to make a more serious effort, I’ll try an organic pesticide. I understand that diatomaceous earth works as a repellent. It is a dry powder that can be dusted over the leaves. I’ll see how well it works, although eggplant production has not been affected, and it is almost the end of the season.