Would You Like That With Or Without Loopers?
By Andrea Peck
I blame it on the grocery store. We stroll leisurely amongst the turnips as rows of glistening produce greet us. The light is unnatural. Everything costs too much – but oh, doesn't it all look so good. Organic produce beckons. Spring mix! Washed 3 times! Exclamation point! How did our time as hunter-gatherers lead to such decadence bound in plastic and displayed on metal shelves?
Nowhere is there a bug. Not one. Should we ask - where are the flies? Do you see a bee, a bird, a beetle?
How do they do it?
Certainly my own garden flounders at such perfection. One day I talked myself into the merits of a salad instead of a chocolate donut. I do this by allowing myself chopped up cheese. I walked out to the garden where I have a half wine barrel filled with red leaf lettuce and kale. The lettuce is an easy keeper. The kale had holes. The holes, though tiny, made me balk a bit. I forged on, figuring this was real life and so I cut a handful of small leaves and tossed them into my colander.
Walking into the house I noticed the possibility of a wriggling green entity. Perhaps the same creature who took a nibble here and a dabble there? I asked my son to find my glasses and bring his own eyes on the subject. He agreed that something green and not an extension of the leaf was taking up space on the leaf. With my glasses, my son and a magnifying glass I could see a green caterpillar. It was a tiny galloper along the spine of one small leaf. Well, one little green meanie is tolerable, but it was the possibility of more that soon struck my son and I.
Are there more? I said reticently.
I think so, He said. He looked up all brown eyes and seriousness.
Then I remembered something I had just learned at my kids' gymnastics class. Something acrobatic. With my phone. It had happened when I was attempting to photograph my kids with my phone from way up high in the nosebleed section of the gymnasium. I quickly figured out that I could “zoom in” on my kids, thereby getting a closer-up photo. Maybe you have tried this trick or maybe you are guessing now, but when I could not see the invisible interlopers I made a dash for my phone, gathered my kale leaves and zoomed in.
The view was not good.
In fact, it was somewhat choking. There were six caterpillars, so tiny that you could easily miss them with the naked eye. My new viewing method allowed me to identify these warriors of destruction as loopers. These little green goblins feast on a host of garden fare, not solely kale, and they move with a quirky inching motion that could be construed as a loop. I suppose.
What is most interesting to me is that I use a screening material as coverage over my plants – unfortunately, it took me a few days to get the deterrent in place. I guess a few days is all it takes for the metamorphosis of the looper, a pretty white butterfly, to lay her eggs. Remember, when pests lay eggs the results can be phenomenal.
And not always in a good way.
For treatment, avoidance and general information on the looper, visit the Master Gardener website: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/VEGES/PESTS/loopers.html