{"id":3016,"date":"2013-06-20T14:08:59","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T06:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/?p=3016"},"modified":"2013-06-22T16:23:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T08:23:58","slug":"haleotydeus-destructor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/20\/haleotydeus-destructor\/","title":{"rendered":"Haleotydeus Destructor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20130610<\/a>The name says it all, and we are infested with them. \u00a0I first spotted them a month ago<\/a> on my new asparagus spears, and have now found a whole host of them on the spinach and rocket \u00a0in the vege beds on the other side of the property. \u00a0There are also hoards of them on the capeweed<\/a> in the goat paddock and we are not even at peak numbers yet. \u00a0The main concern for us is newly sprouted oats<\/a>, as in addition to the broad leaf weeds and clovers\/legumes, they feed on ryegrass and young cereal crops, especially oats.<\/p>\n

Imported from South Africa by mistake almost 100 years ago,\u00a0the red-legged earth mite costs farmers in Australia almost a billion dollars in lost production every year. \u00a0A member of the spider\/arachnid family, adult mites are only about the size of a pinhead (up to 1 mm). \u00a0The mites are often clumped together in large numbers, but you have to sneak up on them if you are trying to count them as they will drop to the ground and disperse if disturbed. \u00a0They spend 90% of their time on the ground, so you have to spot them when they are eating first thing in the morning or on cloudy days.<\/p>\n

The life cycle of the red-legged earth mite is a bit unusual. \u00a0Three generations hatch each year, but only the third generation creates thicker walled eggs that can survive summer. \u00a0The female dies with up to a hundred eggs inside her body, effectively becoming an egg case that is small and light enough to be carried by the wind. \u00a0 The eggs lie dormant in the soil and\u00a0can withstand surface temperatures of 70C.<\/p>\n

The hatching of the first generation is completely temperature sensitive and at least 6 consecutive cold days with temperatures below 20C are required. \u00a0 This first batch of mites grow for 3 to 8 weeks before producing thin walled winter eggs and dying. These eggs hatch almost immediately and pass through four nymphal stages over about 4-6 weeks. \u00a0 There is an apparent drop in numbers in July as the first generation dies and the second hatches. \u00a0Numbers start building again in August and peak in early October.<\/p>\n

Red legged earth mite organic control<\/h2>\n

Most of the advice for controlling them centres on chemical control, which is not a path we want to follow. \u00a0So we are investigating other options. \u00a0It looks like the guinea fowl may be eating the mites as they are spending a bit of time in the capeweed, but I don’t think that will be enough. \u00a0 The first plan will be on controlling the capeweed, as Red legged earth mites love to\u00a0live on the ground in the shade of the leaves and\u00a0congregate and reproduce in the flower heads. \u00a0Farmers have had some success with heavy grazing of the capeweed<\/a>, but as we don’t have any sheep yet, we will slash and whipper snipper where we can. \u00a0I have also been trying to find out if steaming\/burning the capeweed and surrounding soil after the eggs are laid in October would help with numbers next year. \u00a0 They can only survive up to 70 C\/158F, so I think it would, but I haven’t found any discussion of this anywhere yet, although stubble burning has been shown to help in crops. \u00a0For the vege beds, I have pulled out the spinach and infect rocket and will sterilise the bed with black plastic next summer. \u00a0It will also be important to keep the capeweed away from the vege beds. \u00a0I will look at “flame thrower” butane\/propane blow torches like the \u00a0Hot Devil<\/a>\u00a0and steam wands like the Wagner<\/a>\u00a0that can produce a good head of steam for a long time.<\/p>\n

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The name says it all, and we are infested with them. \u00a0I first spotted them a month ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,17,19,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farm","category-garden","category-property","category-wildlife"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/20130610-066.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3016"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3151,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions\/3151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}