Tiny bugs all over my raised beds

chic rustler

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Amy of you guys know what thesee are? Do I need to get rid of them? If so how?

There were 10 or 20 of them attacking a small beetle while I was taking pics.
 

so lucky

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They look like aphids, but I don't know about attacking beetles.
Since they look so young and juicy, you might want to dust them with diatomaceous earth. I bet that would smother them pretty quickly. Non toxic to other critters, used as a sparse, targeted dust.
 

flowerbug

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if they were aphids it would be more likely the beetle was eating them... i'm not sure what the bugs are either. there are a rather huge number of bugs out there. most of them fairly harmless, sure they may eat some of the veggies at times, but overall most garden veggies can grow much faster than bugs can eat them. i used to have troubles with my first few bean leaves getting chewed up quite a bit but i never cared much because after that the beans would grow much faster and the bugs didn't do that much more damage.

the best method for any kind of bug control is encouraging diversity, providing safe harbors during the off season so the bugs have places to over-winter or to survive the hot spells, dry spells, freezing, etc.

when you have nothing but compost spread out over a large area you are pretty much encouraging the woodland scavenger and the organic breakdown crew sorts of bugs, which over such a large area is a rather rare occurance in nature. to get diversity in there you may want to visit a nearby woodlot and get a few buckets to innoculate your garden with other creatures and get a few perennials going in there. don't spread it out but make a space in the garden mulch and put half a bucket there and space those places around your garden and then the bugs will have a home close to what they are used to and will spread out into the surrounding garden spaces.

p.s. always a good idea to ask landowner before getting samples. :)
 
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chic rustler

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They are only in 2 raised beds. Just so happens those are the ones I filled with Kellogg raised bed filler from home depot.

Makes me think they came in the soil.


I dusted with DE and ordered 3000 lady bugs from amazon. We will see how it goed
 

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ducks4you

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Agreed that we should careful what we poison, BUT, if you see a LOT of one kind of bug they are probably over populating bc the plants are stressed. I agree, too, that you brought them in with the bags of dirt. If you have to start over with those plants in those beds, you might try heavy black plastic to cook the soil, and kill the bugs and any bug eggs left.
 

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