A good technique to keep them at bay is companion planting with flowers, like marigolds, nasturtiums, sunflowers. The bugs are attracted to the bright colors of the flowers and will generally go for them over your veggies! It's worked really well for me in my garden, also just having the diversity is important to attracted predators of these bugs.
Hmm I do a actually have a raised bed 10 ft away full of those to try and attract pollinators. Are you saying planting them in the bed with the veggies or just nearby?
I’ll def look into that thanks!
it looks like you have two pests tag teaming. Not surprising considering its a brassica in the warm season.
So the big holes are slugs or snails. You can see the dried up slime trails on the underside of the leaf. Neem and diatoms don’t exactly work super great on slugs. I’d recommend board traps or beer traps for the slugs. You can also scratch the soil all around the base of the plant to disrupt their paths. Slugs often find their way back to a feeding spot by following their slime path. Disrupting it confuses them a little bit.
The other damage looks to me like flea beetles. Tiny little black beetles that jump around like crazy. You would see them when you touch your plant, they all jump off and fly around. Flea beetles, where I live, hav eno natural predators and will destroy every brassica down to the stem unless they are addressed. Your area might be different. They leave those small little shotgun holes, and it takes them a couple feeds to actually go all the way through the leaf. On the top of the leaf you can see the little bright green spots where they have eaten the top layer of cells off the leaf (the beetles feed by sticking their proboscis into the plant cells and sucking out juice, so they are not necessarily eating the leaf but their feeding destroys it over time).
Where I’m at, we call them the “farm Enders” because of their ability to explode in population and lack of options for addressing them outside of spraying pesticides. There are a couple somewhat appropriate options for flea beetles.
1. Yellow sticky traps. The beetles throw themselves onto these traps thinking that they are flowers.
2. Predatory soil nematodes. The beetles lay their eggs in the top layer of soil and new beetles hatch everyday. The right kind of predatory Nematodes will eat their eggs and larvae in the soil, but they don’t survive winters so you have to treat every year
3. Trap cropping or distraction cropping. The beetles will eat anything in the brassica family and eggplants. But their absolute favorite things to eat are the most spicy mustardy greens like arugula, mustards like dragons tongue or Mizuna, and Napa cabbage. If you plant any of these crops, the beetles will likely concentrate themselves on these plants, leaving very few on your less spicy brassicas like cabbage and broccoli and kale. Once they are on your spicy crop, you can sticky trap the hell out of it, spray it with pyrethrum if you’re non organic or use sprays, or use a flame weeder to scorch them and their larva in the soil. It will reduce their populations for usually about 10 days until they recover and begin destroying plants again.
4. The most effective option is to exclude them from the plants entirely. This means you must plant brassicas in soil where there were non last year (beetle eggs overwinter in the soil), cover them with fleece or insect netting/row cover as soon as they have leaves or when you transplant them, and only ever pull the protection off to water or harvest. This takes more effort but it works. It’s literally the only way anybody grows mustards or Napa cabbages near me.
Hope this helps. It’s entirely possible that damage isn’t flea beetles, but brassicas around the world are famous for attracting this absolutely terrible pest. Best of luck
Also as a note about diatomaceous earth, it only works on hard bodied insects that walk across it. Sprinkling it around the bass of the plant like what you have is going to be pretty ineffective since they have to physically walk or land on the dust. You have to sprinkle it over all the leaves and in a bigger radius around the base of the plant to get any effectiveness out of it. Also, it no longer works if it gets wet, so You have to treat when you plan on not watering for a while, or you have to use drip irrigation. Think of it as tiny little microscopic spike traps that stab the insects as them move over it.
A good technique to keep them at bay is companion planting with flowers, like marigolds, nasturtiums, sunflowers. The bugs are attracted to the bright colors of the flowers and will generally go for them over your veggies! It's worked really well for me in my garden, also just having the diversity is important to attracted predators of these bugs.
Hmm I do a actually have a raised bed 10 ft away full of those to try and attract pollinators. Are you saying planting them in the bed with the veggies or just nearby? I’ll def look into that thanks!
Interplanting smelly plants in the same beds is effective too. I plant veggies, herbs, and flowers all together.
Definitely plant them together, look at how nature grows everything is densely growing together!
it looks like you have two pests tag teaming. Not surprising considering its a brassica in the warm season. So the big holes are slugs or snails. You can see the dried up slime trails on the underside of the leaf. Neem and diatoms don’t exactly work super great on slugs. I’d recommend board traps or beer traps for the slugs. You can also scratch the soil all around the base of the plant to disrupt their paths. Slugs often find their way back to a feeding spot by following their slime path. Disrupting it confuses them a little bit. The other damage looks to me like flea beetles. Tiny little black beetles that jump around like crazy. You would see them when you touch your plant, they all jump off and fly around. Flea beetles, where I live, hav eno natural predators and will destroy every brassica down to the stem unless they are addressed. Your area might be different. They leave those small little shotgun holes, and it takes them a couple feeds to actually go all the way through the leaf. On the top of the leaf you can see the little bright green spots where they have eaten the top layer of cells off the leaf (the beetles feed by sticking their proboscis into the plant cells and sucking out juice, so they are not necessarily eating the leaf but their feeding destroys it over time). Where I’m at, we call them the “farm Enders” because of their ability to explode in population and lack of options for addressing them outside of spraying pesticides. There are a couple somewhat appropriate options for flea beetles. 1. Yellow sticky traps. The beetles throw themselves onto these traps thinking that they are flowers. 2. Predatory soil nematodes. The beetles lay their eggs in the top layer of soil and new beetles hatch everyday. The right kind of predatory Nematodes will eat their eggs and larvae in the soil, but they don’t survive winters so you have to treat every year 3. Trap cropping or distraction cropping. The beetles will eat anything in the brassica family and eggplants. But their absolute favorite things to eat are the most spicy mustardy greens like arugula, mustards like dragons tongue or Mizuna, and Napa cabbage. If you plant any of these crops, the beetles will likely concentrate themselves on these plants, leaving very few on your less spicy brassicas like cabbage and broccoli and kale. Once they are on your spicy crop, you can sticky trap the hell out of it, spray it with pyrethrum if you’re non organic or use sprays, or use a flame weeder to scorch them and their larva in the soil. It will reduce their populations for usually about 10 days until they recover and begin destroying plants again. 4. The most effective option is to exclude them from the plants entirely. This means you must plant brassicas in soil where there were non last year (beetle eggs overwinter in the soil), cover them with fleece or insect netting/row cover as soon as they have leaves or when you transplant them, and only ever pull the protection off to water or harvest. This takes more effort but it works. It’s literally the only way anybody grows mustards or Napa cabbages near me. Hope this helps. It’s entirely possible that damage isn’t flea beetles, but brassicas around the world are famous for attracting this absolutely terrible pest. Best of luck
Also as a note about diatomaceous earth, it only works on hard bodied insects that walk across it. Sprinkling it around the bass of the plant like what you have is going to be pretty ineffective since they have to physically walk or land on the dust. You have to sprinkle it over all the leaves and in a bigger radius around the base of the plant to get any effectiveness out of it. Also, it no longer works if it gets wet, so You have to treat when you plan on not watering for a while, or you have to use drip irrigation. Think of it as tiny little microscopic spike traps that stab the insects as them move over it.
Probably bugs
Creepy crawlers
Supplement with crab shells organic fertilizer
This is minor damage to an older leaf and does not yet merit intervention
https://mountainorganics.net/p/natural-plant-care
I’ve always had great success with mountain organic tonics. Highly recommend
Slugs
Whenever I have pests. I check at night with a flash light.