Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

I live a sheltered life! Ever since moving to Christchurch a few insect “pests” have disappeared from my life and my garden: the Passionvine hopper and the Green, stinking vegetable bug (Nezara viridula)This last character is always the one that makes gardeners excited… Just look at my diary notes on talkback callers!Green vegie bugs are sap sucking insects that arrived in NZ a long, long time ago. Their tactics are simple: stick the proboscis into plant material with lots of veins and transport tubes that are full of minerals and sugars, and you are basically mainlining your journey to adulthood.Removal of these nutritious plant foods causes deficiency symptoms: yellowing and browning, leafcurl and dieback; Muckin’ around with hypodermic needles and veins allows these bugs to become very competent vectors of all sorts of diseases and viruses and that could be the bugs big effect on plants: disease transmission!These bugs go through an interesting life-cycle, starting as young black buglets and showing differ