Making It Grow made a trip to Dillon recently to learn about and film former refugees from Rawanda and Tanzania who have relocated here. When not at work, they care for a large community garden. The major crops are a small, white eggplant and amaranth, in their diet. Powell Smith and Susan , Clemson entomology experts from Lexington, found all sorts of insects there. The most interesting was a mating pair of beneficial stink bugs one of whom had its proboscis, a feeding tube, stuck in a plant-eating beetle larva --stucking out his juices! They also spotted a tomato horn-worm caterpillar which had been killed by beneficial wasp larva that had developed in its body. This crop had not been heavily treated with broad spectrum pesticides which allowed these beneficial insects to flourish.
Beneficial Stink Bugs
