Producers should be on the look out for cutworms and flea beetles in their fields — that's according to the latest insect report from Manitoba Agriculture.
Provincial entomologist John Gavloski says there are pockets of dingy and redback cutworm issues arising throughout the province, so producers should be looking for plant leaves with missing chunks. He says both species will feed on crops and weeds.
Typically, he also says both cutworm species only come out during the night, so producers may have to dig around a bit during the day in order to find the pest.
"The easiest way to do that, I find, is to take a trowel or something and a container that's big enough you can put some soil into," he says, "then, kind of shake the soil and smoothen it out so you've got just a thin layer of soil, and you can usually pick through that and find the cutworms."
Gavloski notes this can sometimes be hard to do with heavier clay soils, adding another option to look for cutworms would be to run the soil through a sivv.
The insect report also highlights flea beetles — particularly striped flea beetles — as an issue because of the hot and dry weather we've seen this spring. Gavloski says the flea beetle damage at the moment may not be very evident, as the beetles don't feed as agressively during the rainy weather, but once the sunshine and warm temperatures return, the flea beetles will return to feeding on crops.
Source : Portageonline