Go Waggies! A Garden Update

It’s been a while since we’ve given our gentle readers an update on the WLBOTT Ag Service‘s summer garden.

Let’s Start with the Sorghum.

We’re trying to mimic some of the main Texas agricultural products in the garden – sorghum, cotton, peppers, peanuts, okra, amaranth, and sweet potatoes. Our unpaid interns took a nice picture of one of the sorghum plants:

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The culprit was the eastern leaf-footed bug.

Leptoglossus phyllopus or eastern leaf-footed bug is a species of leaf-footed bugs in the same genus as the western conifer seed bug (L. occidentalis). The eastern leaf-footed bug is found throughout the southern United States, from Florida to California, through Mexico, and as far south as Costa Rica.

These bugs are a common garden insect which may damage a wide variety of crops including cotton, peaches and tomatoes, and seeds such as beans, black-eyed peas and sorghum. Like other bugs L. phyllopus suck juices from plants by puncturing them with their sucking mouth parts, making them resistant to ingested pesticides.

The adult bugs are highly resistant to pesticides.^[1]

Wikipedia

^[1] But early in the morning they are relatively slow moving and highly squish-able.

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Okay, we may be entering into PG-13 territory here, but often when I find the eastern leaf-footed bug in my sorghum, they are in pairs, attached at their rear ends. Are they mating and eating at the same time?

Welcome to the PG-13 section of the WLBOTT Agricultural Center!

To answer your question directly: Yes, absolutely. They are multitasking.

Like many true bugs (order Hemiptera), leaf-footed bugs copulate in a end-to-end position. Because their mouthparts (that long, needle-like proboscis) are at the complete opposite end from their reproductive gear, their face remains entirely free while they are locked together.

A few fun facts about this tag-team operation:

The Ultimate Multitaskers: Mating in leaf-footed bugs can take hours. Sitting around anchored together makes them vulnerable to predators, so sticking to a rich food source (like your juicy sorghum head) lets them refuel on high-protein plant juices to sustain energy during the long session.

Mating & Dining Date: It’s basically the insect equivalent of dinner and a movie. The female in particular needs a ton of energy and nutrients to develop her eggs after mating, so she will happily keep drilling into grain heads while her partner is along for the ride.

Two-for-One Special: For a gardener, catching them locked end-to-end is actually a lucky break—it makes them slower to react and double as easy to dispatch before they can produce the next generation of crop-ruining nymphs.

They can remain that way for hours, calmly strolling around the plant as though they’re participating in a three-legged race designed by evolutionary biologists.

Double the bug, double the satisfaction when squishing!

The WLBOTT Ministry of Virtue and Vice convened a special meeting to discuss the Leptoglossus phyllopus situation. They initially forbid the publication of the image.

But Sister Magdalena, often a voice of reason, entered the meeting and gave them one of her killer eye-rolls:

So the Ministry relented… or partially relented. They still insisted on covering up the indelicacies.

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Cotton

From the ten or so seeds (they were expensive), only a single cotton plant survived. But it is a fascinating and beautiful plant, with flowers that are sometime red, sometimes white, sometimes yellow.

But according to Cotton Australia, “a cotton boll usually contains between 27 and 45 seeds. Each seed has thousands of tiny cotton fibers growing around it.”

Our lone plant current has about 10 bolls (very beautiful, currently a bit bigger than ping pong balls).

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But I worry about the viability of the seeds, since it is the only cotton plant in the neighborhood. Elder G puts our concerns to rest.

Elder G: Good news! Your little cotton survivor is very likely capable of producing fully viable seeds all by itself. 🌱

Cotton is one of those wonderfully independent plants. Here’s how it works:

• Cotton flowers are “perfect” flowers, meaning each flower contains both male parts (stamens) and female parts (pistil).
• They are self-fertile. A flower can pollinate itself, or pollen can be transferred between different flowers on the same plant.
• Insects, especially bees, can increase pollination rates, but they are not required for seed production.

So your solitary plant doesn’t need a neighboring cotton plant to make fertile seed.

The cotton flower’s brief career

One of my favorite things about cotton is how dramatic its flowers are:

🌼 Day 1: The flower opens creamy white or pale yellow.
🌸 Day 2: It turns pink.
🍷 Day 3: It often becomes deep rose or reddish-purple.
🍂 Then it withers and falls off, leaving the developing boll behind.

So the red, white, and yellow flowers you’re seeing are probably flowers of different ages on the same plant.

Your expected harvest

If you end up with around 20 mature bolls, you’ll have quite a respectable seed supply.

Each boll typically contains:

• 20 to 40 seeds (sometimes more)

That means you might harvest somewhere around:

• 400 to 800 seeds

…from your one heroic survivor.

If you save those seeds over the winter, you’ll have enough to plant a proper cotton patch next spring. Since cotton is largely self-pollinating, the offspring should resemble the parent quite closely unless bees happened to bring pollen from another cotton variety growing somewhere nearby.

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Okra

The okra is in bloom, and has a beautiful, large flower.

We’ve made mistakes. If you wait too long to harvest the okra, it becomes fibrous (imagine chewing on pop-cycle sticks). So we need to keep a close eye on it. From flower to harvest is only about 4 days.

We also learned (the hard way) that many people experience allergic reactions when harvesting okra. The plants are covered in tiny thorny hairs that may cause your hands and arms to react.

Tiny Spines: Microscopic hairs or prickles on okra leaves and pods can stick into the skin like tiny stickers, causing intense itching and sharp irritation. – Gemini

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Insect Patrol

Give Sally the Intern a raise! She just took a series of photos of our backyard neighbors.

Elder G gives us the scoop.

These two are Texas Spiny Lizards (Sceloporus olivaceus).

Here’s the quick debrief on your new security team at the Agricultural Center:

The Look: Those heavily keeled, pointed scales give them that classic rough, spiky “miniature dragon” armor. They also have dark, wavy crossbands running down their backs and banded tails, which blend in with tree bark and stone.

Garden Allies: You definitely want these guys on the WLBOTT payroll. They are voracious insectivores that feast on beetles, caterpillars, ants, and yes—even young leaf-footed bugs and stink bugs if they get the chance!

Behavior: They love basking on sunny stone ledges, concrete, or tree trunks to warm up before going hunting. If you get too close, they’ll usually dart up the nearest vertical surface with lightning speed.

They’re basically doing pest patrol for the sorghum and cotton. Outstanding work by Sally!

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Poblanos

We have about 10 poblano pepper plants, and have harvested about 8 peppers so far. We put in an HEB order for all the ingredients needed to make Baked Chile Rellenos.

We are particularly interested in making Isabel Orozco-Moore‘s Ranchero sauce.

Isabel Eats / Top-Ten Recipes

(https://www.isabeleats.com/about/)