Of course killing pests is important. Organics require a great deal more labor to control little bugs, critters, spores, and diseases than conventional farms that can make it all go away with one magical spray. Importance aside, removing the things that exist to prevent you from eating your produce is fun. While I know that testing the nematodes in the lab is going to end up producing greater results than going out and hunting down the snout beetles with only our bare hands as weapons, it's a lot less rewarding.
However, we're not dealing with snout beetles in our little garden. We've got cucumber beetles that are attacking our zucchini and cucumbers relentlessly. As you can see in the close-up, they don't tend to blend in very well with their surroundings. The black and yellow outer wings make them stand out like a bumble-bee, with less buzz and no sting. I could stand out there for hours patiently waiting for one to land on a leaf just to snatch it up and squish it between my fingers.Since there are no control methods aside from using pesticides (although one source I found said nematodes provide some measure of control... I'll have to look into it), squishing them is really the only thing I could think of. Just to give you an idea, in our little garden with three cucumbers and one zucchini plant, I killed 16 or so in one day two weeks ago. Imagine if we had an entire field of those enticing plants. Recently I've seen a lot fewer, two or three in one day at most. When I attended the Dilmun work party however, I must have killed 30 or 40 of them, and probably over 100 squash bugs as well. They have already lost half of their squash plants to these pests.
The only tip I can provide is catching them in the early morning or evening when they're not so energetic and don't flee as quickly as during the middle of the day. Other than that, happy squashing!
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