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For about a month local people and TN garden forum have been showing pictures of strange bugs no one has ever seen in TN before. Today TV News tells about invasive lanternfly bugs. I found this video on google search. We have a very large 70' maple tree, 4 fruit trees, no grapes, 2 pecan trees, TV said nothing about, strawberries or blackberries.

https://www.wkrn.com/video/invasive-bug ... y/9041515/

In my garden, the pesky lanterflies have been the worst on cucumbers and grapes.

Not sure about strawberries… have not seen much on cane fruits like raspberries and blackberries. But I do see other plant hoppers on them.

But Japanese beetles tend to attack cane fruits and other rose family plants and beans, and stinkbugs tend to attack and fruits and squash — those might be subject to their attack too?

Cucumbers, bitter melons, and okra, are the most infested plants in my garden, with spotted lanternflies. Also, basil is an herb magnet for SLF. Surprisingly, my butternuts never showed signs of any, and I never get squash bugs, stinkbugs, or many of the other bugs squash seem prone to around here. Earlier on in the season I spray them with Surround, but that doesn't even work for SLF - I've seen them walking right on top of leaf covered leaves, with cukes.

Cucumbers and squash are stink bug magnets in my garden. My main food crops are, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, beans, peppers, onions, garlic, strawberries, blackberries, it is very rare any of them have bugs. I have never seen bugs on okra. I have heard people claim okra will keep bugs away. Once cucumbers & squash attract stink bugs the whole garden has stink bugs. I have never seen lanternflies.

I think spotted lanternflies also are attracted to persimmon tree.

Last year and the year before, I used to see them on the tree and I worried that they might have laid eggs, but couldn’t spot the egg patch no matter how many times I looked up what that looked like and searched.

Then this spring, I saw nuthatches and downy woodpeckers —that had not been frequent visitors recently— climbing all over the tree, and chickadees that had taken up the nearby nest box as well. Then housewrens also started spending a lot of time in the tree.

I recalled that these birds were in the tree last year too.

This year, I really am not seeing as many SLF as I did in previous years. I can only recall about a dozen altogether, if that… some of which I dispatched, and others were found drowned in buckets of water or birdbath.

Hopefully the local Garden Patrol birds have figured out they are “lunch”.

I'm glad they aren't here. I have enough invasive species to deal with.