Hey there Gardenerds I'm Christy Wilhelmi. And I'm at my community garden plot today to
share with you a trick I know, how to take care of big infestations of crawling stink bugs. Now
for me that particular bug is the ba-GRA-da bug or the BA-grada bug. It's a Mexico native that
has migrated up and it loves our brassicaceae plants and they breed in temperatures over 73
degrees, so they're all over my arugula right now. I want to show you how I take care of it
in a couple of easy steps. Let's check it out. These are bagarda bugs and they like to crawl
around on all of my mustard family plants, brassicaceaes, mustard greens, and as shown here arugula.
They are horribly invasive and they cause this stippling as they eat on the plant. They like
to move around in pairs and they like to hide on the undersides of leaves from you.
two two and these guys are mating as they crawl through the garden.
I've left a whole bunch of arugula that's really not edible at this point but I've
left it in my plot in order to use it as a trap crop for catching bagrada bugs.
And you can use, maybe you don't have wild arugula, but even regular arugula or old radishes works
because they are attracted to anything in the mustard family. But whatever your bug your pest
is attracted to you can use overgrown crops of that appeal to attract them and then trap them.
Just about two inches of water is all you need
a dish soap just a couple drops
and then ...
The next thing you want to do is put your bucket that has your trap crop that has the bugs and just bang it in
see look at all those.
Once they're all in the bucket I try and pull out some of the um bang on it to keep them inside I
try and pull out some of the detritus so that because that floats and they can stay alive
on top of that. Then we just drop it into the soapy water and I actually stir to submerge the
stuff that's floating.
And then they die. So with just two buckets, some water, and a little dish soap you can manage a
huge infestation of insects in a small space. If you keep this up for a week,
every day for a week, you'll be able to manage the problem and then pull out that trap crop.
If you like this video share it with your friends and don't forget
to subscribe and turn on notifications to find out when our next video comes online.
Consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to support all the free stuff we do here at Gardenerd and
of course check out Gardenerd.com and my books for other great tips like this one. Happy gardening.