Your 2026 Garden

[Debbie292d]

As a side note, does anyone know how much I should worry about potato/tomato plants after the growing season? I understand removing the plants before letting the tiny raptors loose but if they find a loose leaf, is that a huge issue?

In all my years, I've never heard of a chicken getting sick on tomato leaves. They are from the nightshade family, so they could make them sick, but our chickens don't eat them, or if they do and I miss it, they don't get sick from them.

 

[Noodler]

Anyone have any thoughts on these weird eggs I found on the side of one of my garden beds?
I'm tempted to say crush them and clean it off but my brother thinks we should hold off in case they're something beneficial.

 

[fuzzi]

Anyone have any thoughts on these weird eggs I found on the side of one of my garden beds?
I'm tempted to say crush them and clean it off but my brother thinks we should hold off in case they're something beneficial.

I uploaded that photo to iNaturalist. Every ID suggestion was a pest.

Personal experience: large clusters of eggs tend to be parasites, pests. Beneficial insects generally don't lay huge quantities of eggs. Just my experience.

 

[Sally PB]

My thoughts on the egg masses. I would guess they would be bad bugs, something I wouldn't want in the garden, especially in that amount. If I found them, I'd scrape them off into some kind of burnable container and probably throw it in the burn barrel.

Maybe as an experiment, put a small clump into a jar and see what hatches out.

@Noodler, where are you located? You can add that information to your profile. Just the state, if you're in the US, or country if you're not, would be sufficient.