Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. The days are getting shorter. The nights longer. The insects are still around.
Chris Enroth: 00:19We're gonna talk about some of these fall insects, the good and the bad too.
Chris Enroth: 00:25But you
Chris Enroth: 00:25know I'm not doing this by myself. I'm joined as always every single week by Ken Johnson, horticulture educator in Jacksonville, Illinois. Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:34Hello, Chris. I'd say all insects are good. Some are just misunderstood.
Chris Enroth: 00:40I'd love hey. That's another Good Growing T shirt right there. Could have a we could probably write a song with that lyric right there you just made up too, so I love it.
Ken Johnson: 00:52I mean, probably say the same thing about plants, but they're not as cool.
Chris Enroth: 00:56That's true. That's true. Insects are fascinating. Yes. But, you know, we're also joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Emily Swihart in Milan, Illinois.
Chris Enroth: 01:08Emily, hello.
Emily Swihart: 01:09Hi, guys. Ken, you're just you just have the best lines, So I appreciate you for that. And, Chris, I I believe you are a guitarist at heart, and so we could have a little little band situation here. No? Yes.
Emily Swihart: 01:25No. This will be a fun topic. It you know, we don't talk about insects enough maybe in in some opinions, and so this will be a fun one to
Chris Enroth: 01:33Some opinions. I I agree. We we could always talk about it more. Insects, I think, are fascinating. And and I think why we do talk about them, they're everywhere.
Chris Enroth: 01:47They're all over this planet. There's more insects than there are anything else, and people are scared of them. A lot of people are afraid of insects. And so the more we can talk about them, the better understanding maybe we can create. Understanding breeds familiarity, which can breed maybe not fear, hopefully.
Emily Swihart: 02:07Yeah. I I will say, like, I kinda brought this to the to the group here for a conversation because I I am not an entomologist. I am one of those people. Even honestly, before I came to Extension, I was aware of insects, didn't love them, just kind of, like, avoided didn't hate them, wasn't afraid, like, understood that they're part of a healthy ecosystem and accepted that just fine. But I didn't pay any attention to them.
Emily Swihart: 02:33And, honestly, until I met, you know, mister Johnson here and I now I'll tend to, like, pictures of different things, jokingly saying I'm angry that you're making me look at bugs. But, like, it's it's so fascinating once you start to see, you know, and pay attention to the abundance of diversity and and how they are really contributing to these ecosystems we steward and oftentimes really love. It's so great. So, Ken, I do hope you know that I am kidding. I'm like, I'm so angry.
Emily Swihart: 03:03I'm angry that I'm down here looking at this insect because I'm not. I am appreciative. And so today, hopefully, we can build some appreciation.
Ken Johnson: 03:11Text there is nothing but anger.
Emily Swihart: 03:14It's that little face with the red that's, like, real red. That's me.
Ken Johnson: 03:18A lot
Chris Enroth: 03:18of angry GIFs. Yeah. Well, I mean, fall is kind of a time where we tend to see maybe not more insects, maybe more of certain types of insects. I I I will just maybe kick off and say, you know, I was on the back porch yesterday, and I saw several, like, bald faced hornets. So these are the, kind of the the hornets.
Chris Enroth: 03:48They have black bodies with white markings on their face and their abdomen. I don't really see those in the summer. They're around, but it's when we get into this time of year, late summer, early fall, they really seem to really pop more. I don't know. Do you guys see tend to see, like, wasps or hornets more often this time of year?
Ken Johnson: 04:10Yeah. They seem I think a lot of that's because you got you got these nests that have been growing all year. So, know, they're kinda getting their peak population now, and we think about what's going on in the landscape. A lot of our flowering plants are pretty much done for the year. You know, a lot not a lot of people are planting goldenrod, and asters and stuff in a lot of landscapes.
Ken Johnson: 04:29So we've got fewer food sources for the adults because the adults are feeding on nectar. So they're lot a of times, see them around people more often because they're looking for food and things like that.
Emily Swihart: 04:41Yeah. I I will observe them more on the flowers in my landscape. So that mountain mint, you know, that I love so much when it was blooming had a whole lot of wasps. I did notice that goldenrod, very popular. And and it's interesting, like, what you observe, you know, the different seasons.
Emily Swihart: 04:58And so, yeah, the wasps. I also do see those orb weaver spiders. I love watching those, like, form really cool, elaborate webs with, like, dew on them in the morning, and I just think that that's a really lovely aesthetic. I don't I also appreciate that I can see the webs and then I walk through them because that's a little off putting. But I honestly don't know much about them, though.
Emily Swihart: 05:23I don't know, Ken, if you have any fun facts. Chris, you do. I just know that they're there and appreciate looking at them.
Chris Enroth: 05:31Fun fact. They make for great free Halloween decoration, especially this time of year. I highly recommend Orb Weaver Webs and to avoid the fake Halloween decorative spider web stuff because, the U of I vet school routinely posts the animals and wildlife that get caught up in those fake spider webs that we people tend to put out once we get into October. So try to avoid those. Embrace the spider webs naturally occurring on your house.
Ken Johnson: 06:06Or the cobwebs inside your house.
Chris Enroth: 06:08Those too. That's character.
Emily Swihart: 06:14I'm gonna call your wives and see if they agree.
Chris Enroth: 06:17Oh, completely opposite thinking. My my wife, she actually was knocking cobwebs off of the front porch, and I was like, like, stop doing that. Like, who cares if, like, the delivery driver gets a face full of orb weaver? She's like, can't have cobwebs all over the house like this. But as she was walking towards me, she had a, probably a a silver dollar sized orb weaver on her shoulder.
Chris Enroth: 06:41I just very calmly said, hey. Hang on. Let me grab that for you. I pulled it off her shoulder and then showed it to her. And then she was like, this is why this is why I knocked him down.
Ken Johnson: 06:51How how excited was she about that?
Chris Enroth: 06:54She was not excited. I I mean, the opposite of excited. I think you call it angry. I don't know.
Emily Swihart: 07:03The new emotion that she just discovered.
Chris Enroth: 07:05Just figured that one out.
Emily Swihart: 07:06Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll say one more thing. Like so another insect I'm observing a lot more of, and and we we can get into why I am seeing more of this, dragonflies.
Emily Swihart: 07:21I'm seeing even my son, he's a pretty enthusiastic outdoor kid. He loves, like, nature and, like, all the things. Like, he would be excited to have an orb weaver on him. He would probably wanna keep it and, you know, all those things. Even commented that he was seeing all of the, dragonflies flying around last night, like, in mass.
Emily Swihart: 07:41And so, that's a fun phenomenon that we get to experience kind of late summer, early fall every year as they are migrating. Right? So do you guys have a bunch of dragonflies? We have a little different landscapes that we're living in. Do you get that?
Emily Swihart: 07:57Like, over my pasture, I just see them, like, all over the place.
Ken Johnson: 08:01So a couple years ago, we had a bunch moving through our yard in mid late September. So we'll see it this year if they they're coming through or not.
Chris Enroth: 08:12You I got a fun dragonfly fact for you.
Emily Swihart: 08:15Oh, sure.
Chris Enroth: 08:17Like, from a prehistoric perspective, they were one of the first animals to take flight.
Emily Swihart: 08:25All I can see that.
Chris Enroth: 08:27Yep. Can't you? Does that make sense?
Emily Swihart: 08:28Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That's neat. I like I will share that with my son.
Emily Swihart: 08:34He will really love that too because he he was a dinosaur kid. Now he's a outdoor kid.
Chris Enroth: 08:41I eat chicken too. But, you you know, I insects, I think they're they're around with the dinosaurs.
Emily Swihart: 08:48So yeah. Very cool. Okay. Anything else? Caterpillars?
Emily Swihart: 08:55We do see more caterpillars in the fall kinda just, well
Chris Enroth: 09:00Maybe related to spiders. The people are like, what what are all those spiders doing in my trees? And they're like, oh, that's that's actually fall webworm. So I am seeing a lot of that right now. Fall webworm occurs on the tips of branches usually.
Chris Enroth: 09:17There's also eastern tent caterpillar, which you would usually see earlier in the year. They occur in, like, the the crotches of tree branches. So I I think you can. Ken, can you get two generations of eastern tent caterpillar? Is that possible?
Chris Enroth: 09:34Or I don't see them.
Ken Johnson: 09:37I'm not sure. I don't know if that might have
Chris Enroth: 09:41an early spring and a late fall. I don't know if that would would have impact them at all. But but, anyway, seeing a lot of the fall webworm, I also have been driving around, and I I don't know if this I haven't, like, gone up to verify. Seen a lot of honey locusts that have appeared to have a lot of feeding damage, so that would be mimosa webworm. But I I literally just saw this yesterday.
Chris Enroth: 10:07I was just driving. I was like, saw one honey locusts, like, woah. That half that tree's been eaten. And I saw another honey locusts, oh, that tree's been eaten too. So I need to, like, drive by slower and verify.
Chris Enroth: 10:17Like, mimosa webworm, are you here? So
Ken Johnson: 10:24We've we've got, oh, I'm drawing a blank on the weed now. Low growing prostate, kinda succulent, red stems, green leaves, yellow flowers. First line. So we got we got some of that, you know, out of control in our watermelon patch out at our garden. So I've been pulling that in a lot of white line snakes moth caterpillars on their big big juicy ones getting ready to pupate.
Ken Johnson: 10:50So
Chris Enroth: 10:51Mhmm.
Ken Johnson: 10:52Seen a lot more. There's a lot of our a lot of those caterpillars, yeah, are getting ready to to pupate if they're gonna overwinter his pupa and things like that. So start seeing them on the move a little bit more. Woolly bears.
Chris Enroth: 11:04They the woolly bears. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're moving, though, because they're, like they're leaving kinda where they feed, and they're going to where they overwinter. Right?
Chris Enroth: 11:13Like like, their next stage of that life cycle.
Ken Johnson: 11:17Yeah. Whether they overwinter as as caterpillars, as larvae, or they're gonna pupate. A lot of times they're pupating in in the soil, leaf litter. Yeah. They're moving a lot of moving to a protected area or to dig underground to to overwinter.
Ken Johnson: 11:33Well,
Emily Swihart: 11:35I think that's a good transition unless we have another other insects we wanna mention that we're seeing a lot of. But I I think that's a good good transition into kinda what different insects like, high kinda high level, what do they do to survive winter? So winter's hard on a lot of us. The temperature drops, food resources become more limited. You know, it it water is a limited resource.
Emily Swihart: 12:03Food is limited resource, and the temperature plus dryness. You know? So there's kind of all these, like, factors environmental factors that insects and others need to kind of prepare to either survive not survive, but make sure the next generation continues or leave. Right? There's kinda, like, somehow survive yourself, have the next generation be prepared to survive it, or just give it up and die.
Emily Swihart: 12:37Right? The and there's there's nuance in there. So, like, are the right? I'm not missing any. Let's talk about each of those kind of in a little more detail.
Chris Enroth: 12:46So one of the mood. Yes.
Emily Swihart: 12:48I know. I know. What about the ones that do what I wish to do, which is just go. Just go to a a warmer climate, sometimes much warmer, sometimes just a little bit warmer, but a migration. So can you talk about, like, who's migrating, kinda where they're migrating to, what what that looks like, and, you know, what we might be observing?
Ken Johnson: 13:12Yeah. So you're in, Illinois, Midwest, I guess, East Northeastern or Northern Part of The US, Eastern US. You know, I think monarchs or even in the West Coast, monarch's kind of the classic example of that where they're migrating, you know, from Canada, the Midwest down to Mexico, to more. So they're, basically, they are avoiding freezing temperatures by leaving the area. But there's other things, as you mentioned, dragonflies.
Ken Johnson: 13:38Green darner dragonflies is one. There's I think final list is like fourteen, fifteen different species of dragonflies that'll migrate. But for like the green darner, some of them will migrate usually starting August, mid August and further north. And then when you get out into Illinois, they're leaving or starting to show up September, October timeframe is when they're they're moving out of Illinois. And they're going down to the Gulf Coast, Mexico.
Ken Johnson: 14:03In the case of of, like, green darners, sometimes they are resident populations, so they will stay in more northern areas. They'll overwinter as niads, the larvae, the best of the larval stage for a insect with incomplete metamorphosis. So they hang out in water, bodies of water, and then they will so their life cycle is is much longer. They're staying around, multiple months, like nine months, something like that. Whereas if it's one of the migrating, it's it's a couple months.
Ken Johnson: 14:31So they get down to the Gulf Coast, they'll lay their eggs, and the new generation will come up, and stuff like that. And there's actually a list. Somebody from Texas put together a list. There's, like, 70 some insects in North America that will migrate, and we can include a link to that. So there's, as I mentioned, a bunch of different dragonflies, a couple different species of grasshoppers, a large milkweed bug, which we see on feeding on milkweed pods and stuff like that is one that will potentially migrates.
Ken Johnson: 15:01Some leafhoppers, so potato leafhopper, maybe when people are familiar with that's, you know, in the spring, they're getting blown up, from southern parts of The US, and we get that hopper burn sometimes on trees, that can look a lot like herbicide damage or some of the the feeding damage, that they cause in the spring. Some aphids, some beetles that will, and then whole bunch of different types of butterflies in addition to and moths in addition to, monarchs. We'll also do some migration.
Emily Swihart: 15:34I mean, it's an effective strategy. You know? You don't have to to do any adaptation. You don't have to kinda worry about and we'll talk about this, next, which is, like, the variability of our winters, you know, and how sometimes, you know Chris, you had alluded to, like, sometimes we have early springs and late falls, and, like, that affects anybody that's staying here. You know, there's dryness.
Emily Swihart: 15:59Maybe that could affect some of those migrating insects, you know, in different kind of climate patterns elsewhere, but not the freezing temperatures, not the cold. So what about the one oh, go ahead.
Ken Johnson: 16:11I was saying with, like, monarchs, so they get into that food availability. So, yeah, we with monarchs, we've got the big push to plant more milkweed for the caterpillars. But if you're not planting any fulblooming plants along the migration route, it's kind of a dead end. So you gotta have gotta have the food resources for those things migrating out of the area too.
Emily Swihart: 16:33Yeah. That's an excellent point. And a lot of them are nectar feeding, but the grasshoppers, what I what I just mentioned, we're watching dragonflies. Wow. That was painful, guys.
Emily Swihart: 16:48Sorry about that. They are they're eating insects when they're flying around. So, you know, so having habitat for kind of just like a robust habitat, not just a couple of flowering plants. Like, this is that argument, and this is the reasoning for having a diverse landscape that's supporting a whole food web. So, anyways okay.
Emily Swihart: 17:11So anything that's staying here, there's different strategies. So some of the adults overwinter. Sometimes it is, different different, stages of their life cycle, not just adults. So sometimes it's eggs, pupa, larvae, depending on the on the species. Who wants to talk about what that might look like and some factors?
Emily Swihart: 17:34I know there's just there's some different factors that go into their survival and the and the different strategies. We can maybe break this down. We talk about some of the studies we we read for this.
Ken Johnson: 17:47So I think, like, yeah, there's two if you're gonna stick around, there's kinda two two ways they're gonna do this. They're gonna be freeze tolerant or freeze avoidance. So with freeze tolerant, they are, you know, creating chemicals in their bodies. Basically, they're trying to control the way they're they're gonna freeze. They're trying to control the way they freeze.
Ken Johnson: 18:05So that's nucleation points, pumping water out of cells. Basically, they don't want the cells to freeze because they'll burst. So trying to control where the body is freezing and how quickly it does that. And that when that happens, like, I think they can tolerate temperatures down below negative 40. So this is a very successful way to this.
Ken Johnson: 18:26Not a whole lot of most insects, though, are gonna be more the freeze avoidance. So they're making, like, antifreeze chemicals in their bodies to reduce their their freezing points. So for example, Japanese beetles, this is called super cooling point. Their super cooling point is 19 degrees Fahrenheit. Emerald ash borer is negative 13 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ken Johnson: 18:46Cobbling moth is negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So they can basically lower the temperature which they freeze. They will eventually freeze if it gets cold enough, but they can lower that. And then for these well, all these insects, they're gonna be looking for protected locations to do this. It's gonna moderate the temperature compared to being out exposed for the most part.
Ken Johnson: 19:07Can
Emily Swihart: 19:09we just repeat that real quick? Because I think that is such an key point to our myth busting thing. We can we can myth bust it now, which is that, like, sometimes a really cold winter will decrease insect populations, and you just mentioned a few insects that I think most of us would agree we would like to not have, you know, have have have an abundance every year. So he said Japanese beetle, 19 degrees. Like, we get colder than 19 degrees many winters for a sustained length of time, and so that would reason that there that takes care of the problem.
Emily Swihart: 19:49Yes. But we've all lived and and known that that's not it. So you said, in addition to this, they are seeking shelter and and protection from elements. And so that kind of adds another layer of protection to their overwintering strategy, that they it's gonna moderate their the temperature fluctuations in their environment or keep them around that 19 degrees. Yes?
Ken Johnson: 20:16Yeah. So, yeah, with Japanese beetles, they're overwintering as larvae underground, and they can burrow down into the ground. What is it? Eight, twelve inches, something like that. So they can get down below.
Ken Johnson: 20:28You know, we can have polar vortex come through where it's negative 20, mere temperature, but that under the soil, if you have any snow, there's gonna be further insulation. It's probably not gonna get that cold unless it's gonna be really cold for a really long bare soil situation. I would say a typical winter, we're not getting cold enough in Illinois and then most of the Midwest where it's gonna kill them. The same thing with them on ash borer, those larvae are in the trees under the in the cambium layer, so it's not quite as much protection, but they're still protected. What was it?
Ken Johnson: 21:00The US Forest Service, was at zero degrees Fahrenheit, 5% of the insects will die. So even though there's super cooling point to negative 13, you're still gonna have some die regardless. Thirty four percent die at negative at negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit, negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, 79% dye, and negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, 98% dye. But you're still gonna have a little bit of that insulation under the bark of the tree. So air temperature is, you know, negative 10 degrees.
Ken Johnson: 21:30If it's not gonna be negative 10 for an extended really long period of time where that cold can penetrate that tree, it's probably not getting that cold underneath the bark or in the soil, any of that.
Emily Swihart: 21:43Okay. Well, that will save some people some phone calls this winter too, extension. My family members talking to you. Okay. So I guess we talk like, what do the adults do?
Emily Swihart: 21:59So you just talked about larvae.
Ken Johnson: 22:02So that that it just depends on the insect. I'm trying to think of one off the top of head that would be an adult.
Chris Enroth: 22:10Pink lady beetle?
Ken Johnson: 22:12Yep. Yeah. So the native pink lady beetle, the other when I found them, like, under tree bark in in woodpiles, things like that, you find them in there. So each each individual species is gonna overwinter if they're overwintering in an area different way. So it could be an, like you said, egg, larval stage, as a pupa, as a prepupa, or as an adult.
Ken Johnson: 22:37So it just it just depends on the species, that you're looking at as to how they're gonna bright out the winter, so to speak. Okay.
Chris Enroth: 22:46An interesting thing I learned about caterpillars, especially the spiny ones like the moths, when they go into their their pupa, their their cocoon, a lot of times their spines will become part of their that outer covering of that cocoon. So if you have a spiny caterpillar that has, like, venom, you know, they stings, it gives you a rash or something when you touch them, that also still happens over the winter when they're in their cocoon. So when you find a little moth cocoon in the wintertime and it's all fuzzy, doesn't mean it's safe to pick it up. So just just a word to the warn wait. I said that wrong.
Chris Enroth: 23:30A warning to the world. I don't know how to talk. It's a podcast. I forgot how to talk.
Ken Johnson: 23:38I'll pick
Chris Enroth: 23:38up fuzzy caterpillars.
Emily Swihart: 23:40I was I was gonna ask, how did you learn that? Was this a literary review, or was this an experience we had?
Chris Enroth: 23:46It it's it from I read this on etymology podcast. Read it. Listen to it. Guys, hold on.
Emily Swihart: 23:59Ken, you gotta hold us together. I'm not gonna be helping out much either. So
Ken Johnson: 24:04it's fuzzy. Pick it up with your nondominant hand. That's my. If if you feel the urge to pick it up, use your nondominant hand.
Chris Enroth: 24:14Yes. There you go.
Emily Swihart: 24:15Or a glove.
Ken Johnson: 24:17That would work. But
Chris Enroth: 24:19you gotta find out what's gonna happen if, like, how do you know? Maybe it's maybe it's perfectly fine. Woolly woolly bears are typically not gonna bother your skin.
Emily Swihart: 24:27Okay. Let's move on. Alright. Anything else we wanna say about how like, strategies for overwintering? Because I do wanna talk about like, Ken, you mentioned some that are less desirable, but there's a lot of, like, beneficial insects.
Emily Swihart: 24:39And part of the reason I brought this to you all to learn about is because we spend a lot of time talking about beneficial insects and helping pollinators. We have a whole, like, pollinator week in June that we celebrate. You know, like, we we do programming on how to help rear, you know, beneficial insects throughout the growing season. But now we're we're heading into another season. Like, there are still things we can do and and strategies that they have developed that we can also help enhance or at minimum not hurt, with some of our landscape management practices.
Emily Swihart: 25:16And so I kinda wanna make sure that we get into that before we get too far along here. So folks have takeaways. Ken, you kind of already mentioned it where they're they're overwintering, like, in the soil, so we're all gonna leave our soil. Do we that was a joke. Of course, we're leaving our soil.
Emily Swihart: 25:35But should should we like, for trees, I'm I'm saying, like, we gotta water the trees. You know? Like, that's gonna help the root systems develop, gonna help moderate soil temperatures, going to, you know, be a water resource at least until that ground freezes, you know, before winter. And then after winter, it's gonna be available right away for those tree roots. Like, the same applies for insects with that temperature moderation.
Emily Swihart: 26:04Right? And so a moist soil is going to help insects more. Is that a a good assumption?
Ken Johnson: 26:14Yeah. It's gonna retain that heat a little better than if it's really dry. That that that cold cold temperatures will be able to penetrate deeper in a drier soil than a a well watered moist soil.
Emily Swihart: 26:27And we can't control it, but snow has an insulating effect as well. I know, you know, same with the tree roots. Like, we like to have snow on the ground because it does help moderate that fluctuation. Gonna keep that water from evaporating even in the winter months out of that soil. So we'd like to have snow, and it's it's beneficial, and it can be pretty.
Emily Swihart: 26:51This fall, though, we can also leave things we we can you sent a couple of interesting studies for us to read that looked at leaf removal. We're gonna be dealing with leaves here coming up in the fall, and we get a lot of questions about what do we do with them. Do we chop them up? Do we leave them on the landscape? Like, they're gonna smother my grass.
Emily Swihart: 27:10What do I do? Do I bag them up and ship them off? Do I you know, like, there's a lot of options. Today, we're talking about insects. What what do we know from that perspective?
Emily Swihart: 27:20If that is one of our landscape objectives, keeping habitat for when insects overwinter, what do we do?
Ken Johnson: 27:30Yeah. So the paper, we were looking at is removing autumn leaves in residential yards reduces the spring emergence of overwintering insects. So this came out last last February. Now this was done in Maryland. So, basically, what they did is they went to I think they had, what, 20 different yards they went to the first year.
Ken Johnson: 27:50And then they had a low maintenance area, high maintenance area. They removed leaves from each of those areas and left an area where the leaves were retained. And they looked at the number of insects that emerged from those areas the following spring. So just from the abstract here, overall leaf removal decreased the abundance of emerging arthropods. So they looked at spiders.
Ken Johnson: 28:15This is insects and spiders, by 17% with some tax and more negatively affected. Moths and butterflies were reduced 45%, beetles 24%, and spiders up to 67%. They also looked at parasitic wasps and flies. They were also declined, but not quite to the extent. And then, you know, depending on on, you know, the the the type of species that were emerging.
Ken Johnson: 28:41So if you removed all the leaf litter, you had different types of of insects emerging. So, you know, which makes sense. You'd allow the the leaf mining insects, moths, and stuff like that. Remove the leaves, you don't have them anymore. So we talk about pest control, that may be a good thing if you don't want those leaf mining insects.
Ken Johnson: 29:01But it kinda changed what species were emerging, you know, the ones where they had just grass, majority of a lot of those insects that were emerging for the moths and butterflies were ones that overwintered in thatch or were feeding on grass, which makes sense. So
Chris Enroth: 29:18I did have a question for you, though, Ken. If there's no statistical difference between the high maintenance and the low maintenance, one of the things factors of the study was all the yards selected, none had been using insecticides, like lawn insecticides. Correct? So, I mean, that might play a difference in it too if you are shifting from more of a high maintenance lawn where you are using things like grub control and stuff like that, and now you're just gonna cut that all out, there might be a difference in in those two different maintenance reg regimens.
Ken Johnson: 29:59Yeah. I I think they did the, you know, no fertilizers, no pesticides. They can isolate Mhmm. Only the the presence of leaves. Yeah, when they get they get into, you know, part of the discussion alright.
Ken Johnson: 30:14So so one of the reasons they they put in here for why the, you know, the high maintenance areas sometimes had more or just as many insects as the low maintenance, which would be kinda counterintuitive to what you would think a lot of times. Part of that, what they said, is the the the scarcity of lease leaf resources in high maintenance areas might create a more attractive location for those insects when they're wandering in the larval phase. So you've got an area with no leaves, so they're gonna move into that. So they're you're drawing them into this area, which could have been why they were seeing that among among some other reasons as well. So there's there's some reasons why they think that may have happened, and then you need to do some more.
Ken Johnson: 30:58You mentioned you need more research as needed to find out why exactly that was.
Emily Swihart: 31:04Yeah. And to that end, you said that, you know, they, so the selection process for these yards, you know, I was really excited as I started reading. The methodology was they had over a 100 respondents when they asked for people to volunteer their yards. And I was like, that's amazing. You know?
Emily Swihart: 31:19And then I kept reading and they selected 20, and then eventually, was it seven dropped out of of a portion of it. So it is a limited study. I I don't mean to, like, bring that up to be like, well, this isn't valid, because it's absolutely not. It's just, like, there is more it brings up really interesting questions. There needs to be some replicated studies, and I imagine that was probably because of funding limitations.
Emily Swihart: 31:47Time and time and resource limitations really would would narrow down that that pool. But
Ken Johnson: 31:54I think, yeah, our second year, half of them dropped out. Something like 10 the second year.
Emily Swihart: 31:59Yeah. Yep. So I volunteer in my yard.
Chris Enroth: 32:04I I would throw that out too. I like if anyone knows of, like, a community science project that's along these lines, let us know. I think people would be interested in providing the data.
Emily Swihart: 32:14Yeah. Yep. It also kind of goes into the the paper that I found, which is talking about climate change and, like, this the evolutionary impacts of winter climate change on insects. And so, you know, kinda made the point that the climate is changing and evolving, essentially having our winters have a more substantial temperature change than our summers, and that can affect the overwintering populations of insects as well. There's more to to be said about that.
Emily Swihart: 32:56There's different I'm trying to I'm trying to, like, summarize it where and this please jump in. If I'm misunderstanding this, you have a much better understanding than I do. But the couple of things that I I found fascinating was there's the phenological, changes that also affect overwintering of insects, especially ones that are doing it as adults or in those later stages. So, like, we tend my logic goes that a warmer winter, we would not have that as many kill, you know, like, that as much, loss from cold temperatures for overwintering insects. Like, that's a good thing.
Emily Swihart: 33:35But in some cases, when we have these, fluctuations that kinda break down some of those, like, they was it, like, their their metabolism starts speeding up when it gets warmer? And so then they're using energy resources that they had reserved either for when they actually do emerge in the spring or, to sustain their life through the entire winter. So when that temperature, like, starts warming up, they're using energy resources, and it may depending on the winter, might be a detriment to their survival even if they make it through winter because they don't have feeding mouth parts, and so they can't, you know, regain any of that energy loss to complete, you know, a breathing cycle, or, they just don't have enough access to nectar, in the early part of the season. So, you know, planting those early early blooming plants can be a benefit to so many of these insects. Kind of a I like to think of it as, like, extending our winter care for these insects.
Emily Swihart: 34:36You know, by planting those, like, really early blooming, spring plants, but they're a limited plant palette for sure. It it just like, I I had not thought about that. Like, we we talk about it from a, like, a turf grass perspective. I get that question a lot. It's like, oh, do I water my grass in the in the summer months or not?
Emily Swihart: 34:56And it's my answer is along the lines of if you're going to do it, it needs to be consistent so you're not depleting those resources, that energy reserve, and stressing the the turf grass. Like, that's that's all I thought of when I was reading this. Was like, that's the same principle, but we can't control as much of the temperature in the winter. So just an evolving condition of our changing climate. Do you have anything to add?
Emily Swihart: 35:22I that was probably just the most basic summary. It was a fascinating read. I I could just read it to you guys. I'm gonna do that. Sure.
Chris Enroth: 35:33Let's go for it. How many pages was it?
Emily Swihart: 35:36It's a couple.
Chris Enroth: 35:38Now I I will equate it to something that happened to me this very morning. For some reason, our smoke alarm went off at 04:30. That's fine. I don't we couldn't figure out why, but you we got woken up, disrupted our sleep. Man, I have been out of sorts all day.
Chris Enroth: 35:58Imagine if you're an insect. Like, you are supposed to be in your your diapause state, your hibernation state, or, you know, or you're in a pupa, and all of a sudden, the temperature changes, and and you spend that energy to to emerge, to reach your adult form. Same thing happens to plants too. I I see this with, like, garlic. We get these, like, super warm stretches in the winter, and we get these stunted garlic bulbs because they're, like, growing.
Chris Enroth: 36:29And then they get hit by the frost, and then they're growing, and then they get hit by the frost. So, yeah, it it messes you up. And what in reading that that paper, they they talk about how it's just kind of we have a more unstable jet stream because we have less stratified layers between the cold poles and the warmer Equator. We just it it's just it's become less of a layer cake. It's become more homogenous, and now the jet stream just to just go wee wee all up and down, and so we get these wild fluctuations in weather.
Chris Enroth: 37:06And then your smoke alarm goes off at 04:30 in the morning.
Emily Swihart: 37:14Okay. So what do we do? Can we just summarize what we do? We kinda covered quite a bit here, and I am still new to the world of insects. Like, I just I have so much to learn.
Emily Swihart: 37:26And so, like, Ken, can you just, like, break it down? Like, bullet point for me what I'm doing this fall. I do want to provide habitat in my landscape, and I'm confused about what do I do with the leaves still a little bit based on this survey, you know, or this research. Can I move them? Can I leave should I leave them?
Emily Swihart: 37:47Can I you know? And so that's the tree leaves. What do I do on the landscape beds as well? And then let's get to the vegetable garden, but that's a lot I treat that separate. So let's get there then.
Ken Johnson: 37:59So yeah. So in the I guess in the landscape, ideally, you'd be leaving the leaves. Okay. But we live in we don't live in the the ideal world. So and, like, if you have turf and you have a heavy layer of leaves on there, you're gonna smother your turf and kill it.
Ken Johnson: 38:13So, you know, areas where you've got turf grass that you wanna keep alive, you rake that ideally, move it to an out of the way area, don't bag it up, and put it you know, have the city or or burn it or whatever. Out of the way area. So if things are in there, they do have the potential to, you know, ride out the winter and emerge in the spring. If you've got a a light layer of leaves on your grass, on your turf, you know, you can leave that. If you can still see the turf, it's there's probably enough light's gonna get in there.
Ken Johnson: 38:43It's gonna survive as long as it's not matting down. So, you know, out of the way areas, you know, landscape beds, you you can leave that stuff. Again, as as long as you don't have, like, a two, three foot layer of leaves. It's gonna smother stuff. You can leave that stuff stuff all over winter, and then you can clean it up, come spring if need be.
Ken Johnson: 39:05So if at all possible, leave it. If not in your little more high maintenance areas, areas where you want turf, remove it. But if you can, leave it on-site in an out of the way area instead of moving it off-site to be composted or burned. If if if we're all if if we're only looking at insects and only worried about the insects, that's what we wanna do.
Emily Swihart: 39:27Okay. I can handle that. Also, do you promise it'll kill my turf grass?
Ken Johnson: 39:34Yeah. Weave enough on there. It'll kill it.
Emily Swihart: 39:36Just kidding. This is an ongoing battle in the house. It's okay. What about in, like, the ornamental? I do have a lot of native plants.
Emily Swihart: 39:46We haven't touched on this overwintering in the stems or, you know, like so we've talked about this a bit in the past, but we could probably go into it a little bit more if you want. We have time. What about stem?
Ken Johnson: 40:06Stem nesting. Stems.
Emily Swihart: 40:07Nesting. Wow. Guys, stem nesting.
Chris Enroth: 40:12Did your smoke alarm go off in the morning too?
Emily Swihart: 40:15No. My brain is just, like, malfunctioning. Wow. Stem nesting. Brilliant, Ken.
Emily Swihart: 40:23What about those insects?
Ken Johnson: 40:25So you've got bees and some wasps that'll nest in in stems. Flower sucks, usually. Those hollow flower sucks. So what they'll do in the spring, you know, they'll lay their eggs in there. They'll provision those those nests those individual cells with pollen and stuff.
Ken Johnson: 40:42Larvae will feed on it. At least they're overwintering as larvae or pupa, but they're gonna overwinter in those stems. So if you want those bees around, you gotta leave those stems and they'll emerge, come spring. So usually when we're talking about cleanup, you know, we're talking about native plants, you know, you don't need to really do anything in the fall. Just leave it be, you know, there you know, the stem nesters, there's things that lay eggs on on leaves or they may overwinter at the base of plants, you know, similar to like you would in leaf litter.
Ken Johnson: 41:11There are insects overwintering in various spots in these native plantings as well. So usually, they're kind of the typical typical recommendation is don't do any cleanup until soil temperatures reach 50 degrees. By then, you know, in theory, most of it has emerged in this paper we talked about. They were still catching stuff well past 50 degrees soil temperature, so maybe that should be adjusted. But type of recommendation is when whenever you put your tomatoes outside, that's when you can clean up your native plants.
Ken Johnson: 41:40And even then you're not, you know, cutting them down to the ground. Typically, you're leaving those flower stalks behind so things can utilize them again. And if you are removing that stuff again out of the way area in landscape, you can brush pile or something like that so that if there is stuff in there, have the potential to emerge. If you've got a giant brush pile that's, you know, 10 feet wide and five feet tall, stuff in the middle is probably not getting out. But if you've got a smaller brush pile, things should should be able to, in theory, emerge from there.
Emily Swihart: 42:14I'm glad you mentioned about putting it out of the way because you you know, like, you're cleaning up your landscape when you're planting tomatoes. That's late in the season for a lot of people. That's gonna be a hard aesthetic to tolerate. And so I appreciate you offering that kind of plan b option for moving them out of the way.
Ken Johnson: 42:37Yeah. A lot of this is, yeah, is your how much messiness you can tolerate in your your aesthetic, what your aesthetics want to be, and what maybe your city or homeowners association will allow as well. So
Chris Enroth: 42:55I mean, if you could leave, like, a 24 inch cut stand of flowers, if you could leave that stubble there for a year's time and then in that second year, I mean, that that would be a, I think, a really good resource for a lot of insects because they would you know, if we're cleaning up this fall or not cleaning up, next year, they'll emerge. They'll utilize those stems. We leave them in place until the following year. I mean, we could do create a long term investment plan for these insects. And so, yeah, just if you can leave that stubble there, but I know a lot of people, they'll they'll chop it, and they'll just drop it wherever it is.
Chris Enroth: 43:38So they'll chop and drop.
Ken Johnson: 43:41Pre mulch.
Chris Enroth: 43:43Mhmm. I also read I've been learning more about stem diameter size. It's interesting. The the one study that I I'd, like, read more in-depth was it was a specific species of bee, and they went from, like, four millimeters up to eight millimeters. And it said that the bee could utilize stem diameters of all that whole range, but they found that larger, more robust individuals are emerging from the larger millimeter stem, probably maybe because they could just provision them with more.
Chris Enroth: 44:17Just had more space. So there's more to learn there, I think. Future show, Ken and Emily.
Ken Johnson: 44:28Do wanna talk about vegetable gardens?
Emily Swihart: 44:30Oh, yeah. What do I do there?
Ken Johnson: 44:34So I'd say vegetable gardens is is probably the one area where you do wanna well, not maybe more than one area, but it's one area you probably wanna clean up well, especially if you've had pest problems. So we talked about a lot of this stuff is overwintering on plant material. Diseases do the same thing. A lot you think about your most of your tomato diseases are overwintering on tomato plants on the on the plant material left behind. So cleaning that stuff up, you can help remove some of those pest populations, reduce that disease inoculum in your garden.
Ken Johnson: 45:06So that I would say was that's one of the exceptions to the rule of don't clean up in the fall would be that vegetable garden, so you're not setting yourself up for problems next year. But if you don't care if your plants are eaten or have disease, then I could wait till the spring too if you really wanted. Ideally, in the fall, clean that up.
Chris Enroth: 45:27Yeah. You ever But also Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go. I was just gonna talk about mention squash bug, squash vine borer.
Chris Enroth: 45:36Hate them. Hate them.
Emily Swihart: 45:40They are the worst. Just I I I do do the cleanup in the garden. I and I do the crop rotation, and they still
Chris Enroth: 45:50Still fine?
Emily Swihart: 45:50Best to me almost every year. Yeah. But crop rotation, you know, that's another strategy to help with disease pressure and insect pressure, but sometimes we just don't have enough space. And so cleanliness in the landscape or in the vegetable garden is a good option. What do we do with it?
Emily Swihart: 46:07What do we just put it to the side? What do we do with that that leaf litter? You mentioned this in the tomatoes, but let's bring it back up.
Ken Johnson: 46:17Oh, your plant debris in the garden?
Emily Swihart: 46:18Mhmm. Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 46:21If if you don't have a lot of disease or pests, I mean, you could, in theory, compost that. But a lot of times, we're not getting our compost hot enough. I would include myself in that, not actively turning it and stuff. If it doesn't get hot enough or it's gonna kill disease, a lot of these insects. So you could bury it, yard waste it, burn it if you're able to.
Ken Johnson: 46:44Ideally, get it out of the garden as far away from the garden as you can. Make it a little more make things have to work for it to get to your plants.
Emily Swihart: 46:52Yes. Thank you for going back to that. But, yeah, I I I do make a point to clean up the garden every year because that is I still I I still have problem. It's not this is not a guarantee, folks, but it does help you prepare. Okay.
Emily Swihart: 47:09Now can we talk about going indoors? And because there's things coming in. I live in an old farmhouse, and it's not as sealed up tight as I think maybe new construction is. And so I get little I get new pets. I try to think of them as little pets every year.
Emily Swihart: 47:24Like, why? What why are they coming into my home? They like, I I do all the things we've talked about. I I leave the leaf debris. I don't, you know, do much with the perennial bed.
Emily Swihart: 47:38Like, what can? Why?
Ken Johnson: 47:44If you're cold, they're cold.
Emily Swihart: 47:47I know.
Ken Johnson: 47:49So I don't know
Emily Swihart: 47:49it was. We got it in there, Chris.
Chris Enroth: 47:52I was just waiting for it.
Ken Johnson: 47:56So some of the ones, you know, we we commonly get complaints about are gonna be the multicolored Asian lady beetle, brown marmorated stink bugs. So these are both introduced species. So they're looking for areas to overwinter, you know, with multicolored Asian lady beetle, malb as some people call it. You know, they're a lot of times you find them, you know, if if you're out in the country, isolated structures, there's nothing else around. They're attracted to that south side of the building, which is warm.
Ken Johnson: 48:24A lot of times they're going to under the siding, that's where they want it overwinter. They don't wanna they don't wanna be in your house because they're not gonna go dormant. It's not cold enough in there. You don't have anything for them to eat, so eventually they're gonna die. They really wanna be kind of under that siding, or something like that.
Ken Johnson: 48:41You've got other things, you know, millipedes, spiders make it in siding and they're looking for summer over winter. If you're bringing plants inside, there's a good chance you're bringing stuff in with those as well. So and most of the stuff isn't gonna it may survive, but they're probably not gonna reproduce inside for a lot of this stuff. A lot of them aren't gonna even survive because our homes are and think about how in the winter, our homes are really dry. Probably not a whole lot for them to eat depending on what it is.
Ken Johnson: 49:10So, you know, it's just, seal up cracks and crevices, which again is easier said than done depending on your house. Make sure you don't have holes in screens. And we can start getting them to fall or, you know, start opening up your house with cooler temperatures and make sure they're not getting in that way. You know, make sure your door sweeps and stuff are aren't broken so they can't crawl underneath the doors, the the seal around the door, things like that. So, you know, you're probably never gonna keep everything out, but you can reduce the number of things getting in and just embrace them.
Chris Enroth: 49:50Give them a just embrace them. Just know that you're sharing your home with something wonderful. Yeah. Stink bugs and lady beetles.
Emily Swihart: 50:01I take a different approach where I just I understand what they're doing, and I just add it to the cleaning list. Right? Just understand. I don't worry about it. Have a hard time preventing it.
Emily Swihart: 50:12Appreciate nature for what it is, and then invite them with the vacuum to leave. Not a normal vacuum, but separate vacuum. Empty we empty that canister real quick.
Chris Enroth: 50:24I I I think a really good solution, you know, you just leave that house and go get into a brand new house. Because when we so we used to be inundated with stink bugs. We got new windows. Mhmm. That cut down on them substantially.
Chris Enroth: 50:44Now that is a significant investment. And I'm also speaking kind of tongue in cheek, like, go get a new house. But
Emily Swihart: 50:51Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 50:51Still, it is what Ken just said. Seal your cracks and crevices. And for us, it was we needed new windows because they were rotting out of the house. So
Emily Swihart: 51:04We noticed them by the windows. It just is you know, there's more seams there. And so, you know, living in an old farmhouse, yep, we we do notice them by the doors and the windows. Easiest entry point. Our previous house was relatively new construction.
Emily Swihart: 51:19It was only a couple like, five years old, and we did not have issues with it. Luckily, I grew up in an old farmhouse, so I did know what that meant when we moved. But and I love it. Like, I'm not ragging on old farmhouses. I I love them.
Emily Swihart: 51:34But they come with character, which is why I love them. And sometimes that character is living and migratory indoors in the winter or in the fall months.
Chris Enroth: 51:45We Free pets.
Emily Swihart: 51:46Free pets. I know some people spend all this money on all these pets, and, like, I just I get them for free. Yeah. Lucky me.
Chris Enroth: 51:55It's cheaper than a labradoodle.
Ken Johnson: 51:57Don't have to feed them.
Emily Swihart: 52:00Yes. Okay. Anything else, Ken, that you wanted to remind us of, touch on before we we wrap here?
Ken Johnson: 52:13So, yeah, don't big thing. Don't be in a hurry to to clean up in the fall. It's okay to leave it. I'll write you a note if you need one.
Emily Swihart: 52:25It's in Doctor. Ken. Got that sloppy handwriting and everything. We can just Should
Ken Johnson: 52:33should come up with an official letter giving people permission not to clean up their yards.
Emily Swihart: 52:38That would be amazing.
Chris Enroth: 52:42Put it on a a sign that we could put up. That's like your habitat sign instead of just a permission letter. I like that.
Emily Swihart: 52:50Like a prescription pad kind of a thing. Mhmm. Oh, this is good. Okay. Well, thank you, Ken.
Emily Swihart: 52:56I appreciate all of your wisdom and and really for sharing your passion of insects. It's not everybody's. I'm getting there. It's really fun to learn about these these critters that are foundational to our ecosystem. Like, I like having all of the things that they benefit, you know, flowers and songbirds and wildlife.
Emily Swihart: 53:17And so I might as well learn and appreciate the hard workers of the insect world. So thank you. Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 53:25If you want if you want birds, they'll clean up your yard. So they have caterpillars to eat.
Emily Swihart: 53:30There you go.
Ken Johnson: 53:31Look at that one too.
Chris Enroth: 53:32What about snakes?
Ken Johnson: 53:35Leave them. They're good too.
Chris Enroth: 53:38K. Just just more permission not to clean my yard. Okay. Well, that was a lot of great information about fall insects, mostly the good, and a couple of the ones that we don't necessarily want hanging around our homes and our vegetable gardens. The Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by Ken Johnson.
Chris Enroth: 54:00Emily, thanks so much for hanging out with us today and bringing this great idea, talking about, you know, insects later in the season. You know, we always think about them in the spring when they start showing up, but now that we're used to them, you know, let's give them another little nod as they get ready for winter.
Emily Swihart: 54:17Oh, it's my pleasure as always. And, yeah, I, just appreciate your wisdom. Both of you are are really just wealth of knowledge. Like, everybody on the podcast knows that. And I'm learning with this, And so I appreciate you giving me the space to ask these silly kind of questions.
Emily Swihart: 54:32They're not silly to me, and you don't treat them like that. I know community members have them. I know this is an important topic, I really appreciate the time today. I'll I'll revisit this podcast more often than than other ones, I'm sure. So
Chris Enroth: 54:48And, Ken, thank you so much. I mean, we could be a silly podcast. We don't have to take ourselves too seriously. So I I like I like silliness. But but thank you, Ken, for for entertaining all of our our serious and silliness that we bring every week.
Ken Johnson: 55:06Silliness was good. Yes. Thank you both. Another good discussion. And remember, if you're cold, they're cold.
Ken Johnson: 55:12Let them inside.
Chris Enroth: 55:14Make a t shirt.
Ken Johnson: 55:16And let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth: 55:21Oh, we shall do this again next week. Is it time to plant spring bulbs? Oh my gosh. I think it is. We're gonna be talking about spring bulbs, but maybe not the most common ones that you're familiar with.
Chris Enroth: 55:35We're be talking about some of the minor spring bulbs. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening. Or if you watched us on YouTube, watch it. And as always, keep on growing.
Disembodied voice: 55:55University of Illinois Extension