Sunday, August 25, 2013

Fearful Symmetry

We are in the vineyard making a last pass through the vines at dusk on Sunday. The vineyard beckons with promises of discoveries to be made, good or bad, delightful or fearful, known or unknown. This evening, walking and Max Tapenering (more on this process in another blog), and doing bug patrol, I came upon a vine that looked white. A thought ran through my head, "What is white fungus doing on a vine?" I should tell you, I need to wear glasses to see anything more than 6 feet beyond my sight line so white fungus was what I saw. But on closer inspection, I recognized it for what it was and it looked like this:
I know, it looks like sweet corn, doesn't it. I was torn. Leave it in the vineyard or cut the vine and remove it. We're still new in this business so we know that if this is bad, it is very bad, but if this is good, it could be very good. Foe or friend?
That is the question. In the end, I chose to cut the vine and bring it back in a water bottle that I had previously emptied. Having these eggs in hand I was able to take closer photos of these mystery eggs. What we believe is that these are stinkbug eggs, but we still do not know if these are beneficial stinkbugs or not. Either way, it's amazing how so many eggs can be laid in such straight rows.
Update: On August 29th, we went to a Soil and Cover Crops Workshop sponsored by the NRCS and we met Pamm Cooper of the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension who identified these eggs as being that of a cutworm.

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