Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs are major problems for vegetable gardeners. They cause damage by inserting their mouthpart, a tubular proboscis, into the plant tissue and sucking out the juices, leaving a wound that results in curling pods of okra and causes hard, necrotic spots in beans and tomatoes. Cultural controls can help with these insect pests. Keep weeds near the garden cut low as stink bugs are and I’m quoting from a fact sheet – extremely polyphagous – they eat lots of different plants including common weeds. If you will clean up wood or debris piles you can help eliminate their overwinter sites. There are no pesticides we home gardeners can use that give good control so hand picking and destroying the masses of barrel-shaped eggs and clustering immatures is our best control strategy.
A Control Strategy for Stink Bugs and Leaf-Footed Bugs
Katja Schulz via Wikimedia Commons
