The second week of this project started off exciting and busy! On Tuesday we went out to our second research field at John Bowne High School in Queens. The farm here is enormous and even includes a small farm with animals ranging from tortoises to peacocks. We set up traps in a bed of squash and one of mixed brassicas. While setting up traps around the squash, we saw an incredible amount of spotted lanternfly nymphs around the plant beds and on weeds. We were also pleasantly shocked at how many ladybeetle larvae we saw on the plants!

It seems that the predators were ready to get to work and take care of the farm’s aphids! Over the weeks we will keep an eye out for the lanternflies, however, and see if they become a more serious problem. While they currently aren’t a major concern as a vegetable pest, they can destroy trees and grapes. Our overall scouting excursion, however, was encouraging as we found few whiteflies and saw little damage on the crops!

After setting up traps, I returned on Thursday after 48 hours to collect the insects. Unfortunately, the previous 24 hours had been extremely windy, and two traps had been knocked over. I collected the data that I could from these pan traps and still found a surprisingly large number of aphids and ladybeetle larvae for volume leftover in the pan. I was also disappointed to find one of the two pitfall traps filled with dirt, so no data could be collected from here.

I made a note, moved on, and tried to get as much detailed information from the other traps. Field work requires a lot of flexibility, and sometimes things go wrong. Regardless, the data from John Bowne was interesting as we saw fewer pests and pest damage than at Pink Farms, both from the traps and our scouting forays on Tuesday.

This was a week of getting too excited over a tortoise, counting spiky ladybeetles, and learning to adapt in field conditions. Until next week!

Aphid-ly yours,

El