During summertime, we might be tempted to sow our lettuce seedlings. Pesky bugs can make it difficult to keep your lettuce plants healthy and thriving.
All lettuce varieties are easily grown, but most kinds are vulnerable to these insects, which harm the lettuce and can either destroy it fully or do damage that we can’t fix. They devour the lettuce. Continue reading to learn further about these insects and when it might be necessary to treat lettuce with an insecticide.
How To Prevent Bugs From Killing Your Lettuce Plants?
If you detect unwanted bugs on your plants, you’re more than likely to encounter a handful of the most frequent ones. Pests may still be a concern in hydroponic farming, but they’re less common than in a regular soil environment.
Good news: natural garden pest management in hydroponic farming is considerably easier to apply than with soil-grown plants in the ground!
Companion Plants and Attracting Useful Bugs for Lettuce
Beets, radishes, and other root crops can be terrific partners for lettuce, depending on the time of year. Aromatic herbs and alliums, along with taller versions of flowers or veggies, are excellent choices. Whatever your goal is, there is a buddy for you. You can use it to avert a parasite, grow lettuce outside of the season, or even entice pollinators to your plants!
When producing lettuce in the fall, be sure to include the root or allium plants to ensure that your greens are well cared for until winter. Planting radishes close to our lettuce will help keep aphids distant from the greens while providing a trap crop that won’t harm the radish root in any way.
Beets and carrots, which grow in the ground, are other excellent chances for boosting the crop per square foot. These plants can be grown close to lettuce, which has shallow roots and therefore does not directly compete for water or nutrients. Adding onions, leeks, or garlic to your salad garden will help deter or mislead caterpillar pests that are drawn to leafy greens.
As a way to attract helpful insects like ladybugs and protect your lettuce from root-knot nematodes, sowing culinary flowers such as marigolds is a decent choice. In addition to its medical properties, calendula is known to deter slugs, a common lettuce pest.
You’ll want to safeguard your spinach and arugula during the late spring and early summer so they can flourish at their finest. It’s possible to grow them year-round if they’re planted with other plants that give shade. It’s a good idea to put them under taller herbs like dill and parsley, or under sprawling tomato plants.
Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars will lay their eggs on these plants, which will shelter them from the bright sun and double as host plants. Since leafy greens require a lot of nitrogen to thrive, bush beans are an ideal plant to have in your garden with your nitrogen-fixing bacteria friends.
Gardeners often use trellises to raise cucumbers because of their heat-loving nature and the ability to grow lush greens beneath them in the summer. Using this method can ensure that you have a steady supply of leafy greens all year.
Using Chemicals to Control Lettuce Pests
If cultural and biological controls, such as mulching or removing waste and vegetation, aren’t working, you may need to turn to chemical controls to deal with the lettuce pest problem.
Caterpillars and aphids are resistant to the natural substance azadirachtin, which is obtained from the neem tree. Cattle-killing bacteria are naturally occurring soil bacteria.
We can control insect pests such as leaf miners and Lepidopteran larvae using Spinosad. Some bug species have developed resistance to it after years of treatment. Methoxyfenozide-based compounds are also utilized to manage caterpillar infestations.
Natural Ways to Get Rid of Lettuce Bugs
Natural pesticide
Every action has a beginning and an end! The natural spray should be used with caution because of this.
Spraying various lettuce varieties with neem oil, a natural insecticide derived from neem tree seeds, kills bugs. You may get away from these bothersome bugs by spraying neem oil onto lettuce leaves.
Although these methods aren’t chemically controlled, be careful while using them on crops.
You might harm beneficial insects including ladybugs as well as the parasitic wasp and lacewing larvae that are natural predators of pests, such as roaches and ants.
Spraying Lettuce with Natural Bug Repellent
If you don’t want to spend money on commercial pesticides, you can protect your lettuce plants with a homemade version of a natural bug spray.
After planting romaine lettuce or another variety, use a DIY natural bug spray made with diluted rubbing alcohol to kill hazardous bugs. Pests are less likely to land on your plant if you add dish soap to your foliar spray.
You may produce your homemade insecticide for aphids and kissing bugs by mixing water and rubbing alcohol with liquid dish soap in a spray container. This homemade pest spray for lettuce plants is easy to make and effective.
Spray your plants with this solution to kill insects and keep them away from your crops in the future. Avoid over spraying or using too much soap, since this could harm your plant’s health.
Control Guide for Common Lettuce Pests
Here are a few things to look for and tips on controlling some of the above insect pests of lettuce:
Common Lettuce Pests
Various pests devour lettuce plants. Some of the most common lettuce pests are:
- Crickets
- Aphids
- Whiteflies
- Vegetable weevils
- Thrips
- Snails
- Slugs
- Leaf miners
- Nematodes
- Grasshoppers
- Garden symphylans
- Darkling and Flea beetles
- Corn earworms
- Armyworms
All or some of these pests may be found on lettuce plants in your area, based on your environment and location. Every insect in town is for your romaine, so you’re not alone in your desire for fresh greens.
1. Aphids
Aphids represent a quadruple threat.
At first, they remove water and nutrients from the plant’s tissue, causing the leaves to curl and the plants to die. Secondly, the dead aphids don’t wash off the leaves because they are typically parasitized.
Third, aphids are commonly used to spread illnesses like lettuce mosaic, which are transmitted by aphids. It’s the honeydew trail left by aphids that enable sooty mold to thrive on the leaves.
You should introduce or promote natural predators such as birds, parasitic wasps, flower fly maggots, lacewings, damsel bugs, and lady beetles as a way to reduce aphids as another option. You can control Aphids with horticultural soap or neem oil.
No systemic pesticides exist for aphid control. Various types of caterpillars attack lettuce, including cutworms, armyworms, maize earworms, and cabbage loopers in the Lepidoptera family.
Even if it eats the whole lettuce, it will still have holes and twisted leaves because of the distinct eating habits and life cycles of each species. Natural predators of some Lepidoptera can be encouraged, or an insecticide may be necessary.
2. Thrips
A University of California research team says thistles and ornamentals in the surrounding area may harbor viruses, which Western flower thrips feed on before flying into the lettuce field and dispersing the viruses there. Clear the area around lettuce fields of weeds and other potential tospovirus hosts.
To prevent the spread of thrips to newer fields, they easily eliminate them or plow down plant remnants left behind from reaped lettuce fields. To keep thrips at bay, avoid planting close to crops like tiny grain crops.
As a result of sprinkler watering, thrips can be washed away from plants.
Monitoring
Observe the fields regularly. Aphids and other pests can be monitored using this method. January–March is the worst time for western flower thrips to attack in the lower desert.
Thrips numbers rise in coastal locations in April and keep rising throughout the year. Thrips, which feed on the lower leaf surface and are particularly difficult to examine and cure in locations like leaf folds, can be found all over the plant.
You can analyze thrips in a variety of ways:
The occurrence of thrips as well as feeding scars, along with creases in leaf tissue around the plant’s base, should be carefully analyzed. One can safely assume that there are three to five times as many thrips on a little plant as were found, either hidden behind folds in the leaves or distributed from the plant.
When the daytime temperature rises above 63 to 65°F, place blue and yellow sticky traps around the field boundaries to detect the arrival of adult thrips from nearby plants. The plants can be numbered and recognized by beating them on a sheet, tray, or another adhesive surface. Adults are least active in the morning, making it a great time for a beating.
Choosing a Treatment Plan
At this time, there are no established criteria for when and how to begin treatment. Treat when thrips numbers have dropped and damage on leaves is first noticed, especially when the climate warms.
When adults are far more vigorous, apply the pesticide of your choice. Insecticides are available in a variety of forms, and spreading surfactants enable them to reach regions where larvae are concealed.
3. Leaf miners
Leaf miners lay eggs on the upper surface of leaves, which hatch into maggots as a result of their work. Spinosad, an insecticide commonly used in commercial farming, has been shown to reduce the number of infestations, but some data currently suggests that the insects have developed resistance.
Keeping your plants healthy, well-watered, and fed is the greatest method to avoid pests from invading your ground and hydroponic farms. Pests are drawn to weaker plants. Keeping a close eye on your home for pests is another way to keep them at bay.
When spraying your plants with organic pesticides, be careful to do so in the early morning or late afternoons whenever the sun isn’t as strong. To avoid burning your plant’s leaves, do not apply the spray in direct sunlight. To evenly spray the foliage, spray the plants in calm winds.
4. Caterpillars
In some types of moths or butterflies, the larval stage is known as a caterpillar. By placing their eggs near food sources (such as your seedlings), butterfly and moth eggs are more likely to hatch into caterpillars with a shorter migration distance.
Caterpillars come in a wide variety of colors and patterns. However, the majority are green or brown worms which leave a dark trail of excrement and holes in the leaves they feed on.
Often located on the underside of leaves, they might be difficult to spot because they tend to hide against the stems of the leaves. When they’ve had their morning snooze, they’ll get up and go about their day.
Caterpillars are drawn to a wide variety of foods, including lettuce, although they will eat practically anything.
- Check your plant for black droppings on its leaves, since hornworm caterpillars adore vegetation in the nightshade family.
- Crush or dump the caterpillars in a pail of soapy water for an all-natural solution to the problem of caterpillar infestations.
- Spray organic Bt on afflicted plants every week. It is derived from bacteria that are naturally present in the soil. Only caterpillars may get harmed if they make contact with the treatments because Bt is non-toxic to people and pets.
5. Fungus Gnats
Insects that feast on algae that form on top of the growth medium for sprouts are known as fungus gnats. Small, clear worms are produced as a result of their egg-laying in the growth medium.
Even while adult fungus gnats aren’t harmful to seedlings, larvae are. Fungus gnats are drawn to wet areas, where they can feed on algae. As a result, the seedlings’ growth media is a magnet for them.
Controlling Gnats
- Remove the seedling’s medium’s upper surface with care.
- Use Mosquito Bits each week in the Farmstand storage tank until they are gone*.
- Use neem oil or BT to spritz the top of the seedling growing medium once a week.
A vertical farm’s pump won’t get clogged or affected by mosquito parts because they will eventually disintegrate in water.