Green Vegetable B(ugh!)

Every morning, before breakfast, I stroll down to the food forest to see what, if anything, has happened during the night, and to pick a handful of herbs for my breakfast cup of herbal tea.

At the moment, I’ve got two rather nice patches of potatoes and to my consternation they were sporting a crop of green, shield-shaped bugs. Not having seen them before and assuming they were probably up to No Good, I started picking them off and squashing them. Ugh! Not a good idea. After Googling and discovering they’re also called stink bugs, I realised why.  So the rest were drowned in a tub of water.

There’s a good site here, with more info and some nice illustrations. Since I hadn’t seen any of the nymph forms, I assume the adults arrived fully formed and were not the result of eggs previously laid.

So there’s a good lesson in this. Don’t assume nature will always take care of the pests. Inspect, inspect, inspect, and be ready to pounce on anything that might come between you and your food.