Hello everyone, welcome back to the Epic Gardening podcast.

We are joined again by Susan Mulvahill, Master Gardener from Swilkan Washington, and her

book, The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, is out April 6th.

So you can check that out in the podcast description.

And that is what we have been talking about this entire week.

Now this time, Susan, we're talking about identifying the damage on a crop as an indicator

of what pest is doing that damage, because I guess sometimes they might be doing it when

you're not there, and they might not be there by the time you actually see it.

So you're going to have to figure out a different way to ID them, right?

Right, bugs are sneaky.

So in my book, I've included a lot of powerful tools to help people figure out what's

munching on their plants.

And you know, you might think that most pest damage looks alike, so maybe like holes

in the leaves, but you'd be amazed at all of the different ways bugs can cause trouble

for plants.

Even though there are some similarities, there are also a lot of very unique forms of damage

that really help you figure out the identification of who the guilty party is.

So for example, you might see a slime trail, and that usually points to slugs or snails.

Or maybe you'll see a sticky residue on plants and you think, ha ha, aphids.

But did you know that leafhoppers and whiteflies also exude honeydew?

So that can make it a bit trickier to identify who's causing the damage.

So for my book, I created a massive chart to help gardeners identify the bugs that are

...