Harlequin bugs!

I've been feeling really lazy these past two weeks and been avoiding doing any garden chores. There is a lot of cleaning to do both on my balcony garden and community garden. I haven't gone to the community garden for some time...fortunately it has been raining on and off so the remaining plants are doing quite well. I planted some kale and bak choy - I will be posting updates later on.

This post is about bugs...and lots of them. I thought I would have problems with the brown stink bugs this year but in fact the little buggers that decided to hang out on my balcony is it's close cousin: the harlequin bugs. I've been noticing these creatures earlier in the season but they exploded in numbers about 3 weeks ago. There were consistently clusters of 4-5 pairs of harlequins bug couples on each of my three collard plant. There were also hanging out on my lone bok choy plant. My combat strategy was to shake them into a container filled with water, but for a while it seemed like it was not worth the fight.

The harlequin bug couples on collard are little camera shy

Harlequin bug in bok choy

The eggs of the harlequin bugs are absolutely beautiful and also easy to spot. So I've been checking the leaves frequently and scraping them off.

Eggs are pretty but must be destroyed!

At this point I feel that I may have won the war since I have not seen any harlequin honeymooners the past 2-3 days. You can clearly see the damage on the collard and bok choy. Fortunately, the damage was not too detrimental to the plant. The diversity of the insects in the garden never fails to surprise me.

Spots where harlequin feasted on collard juice

little damage on bok choy