Topic: The summer fun begins

[small]

I suppose after the mild winter, it was too much to expect that all the asparagus beetles would have died off. Found the first two just now, so it's back to the night and morning check and squish, oh joy.

[GREGME]

yes i have been blessed with these blighters this spring - none noted last year but i stopped checking after June last year and probably overwintered them in the compost pile. They are pretty things - do yours scurry away when you try to squish ?

[small]

I'm quicker than them! I'm really hoping that I can stop the infestation early, if not squish every beetle then at least destroy any eggs they manage to lay. I've not caught any actually mating this year - they certainly can't scurry away if you catch them "in flagrante"!

[artichoke]

They do scurry....they run around the shoot as you approach, and drop to the ground to hide.....but you have to squish them, or their eggs (cunningly pushed horizontally into the stems) will hatch into ravenous grubs that will strip the fern in a day o two.

At the moment we are all harvesting our mature asparagus so the beetles and eggs have nowhere to go. The people who have to look out are those who are patiently waiting for a couple of years for their asparagus to mature, so the fern develops early and the beetle grubs eat it.

[small]

I made the dreadful mistake this year of only picking the fattest spears, and leaving skinnies to help build up the plants - they are 30 years old and I thought might need a rest. I've squished literally hundreds of the beastly beetles this week, and that's only a ten foot row. Well it keeps me off the streets, I suppose.