Garden Pests and Diseases: Suggestions on what could be doing this to my plants!, 1 by jcoakley

jcoakley wrote:
Almost all of the plants in this one small bed are being chewed up something terrible (I will post pictures). I have killed a few japanese beetles, but from what I know of them this doesn't look like their kind of damage. I have also seen these little tiny red & blue striped guys that someone IDed for me as a kind of leafhopper, but they are soooo tiny . . . I can't imagine them doing work of this magnitude. Unfortunately I have been unable to catch anything in the act. I'm thinking caterpillars and/or slugs? I did find a skinny bright green hopper looking kind of thing on my carpathian bellflower, which I killed, and a greyish-brown caterpillar curled up in a petunia blossom, which I also killed, but for heaven's sake. I'm getting very frustrated because everything just looks so ragged and sad. I hesitate to spray anything because I don't want to hurt the bees, but I'm getting desperate. Any ideas? I feel like it would help if I could figure out what I'm fighting. My MIL is having similar issues in her yard this year; could it be that our cool rainy spring & June produced a heavier than normal bug population?

Here's a marguerite daisy with holes in the petals.

Edited to apologize for the sideways and out-of-focus photos. Stupid camera.

This message was edited Jul 14, 2009 3:21 PM