LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Joseph Farmer owns Lucky Clover Farm in eastern Kentucky and it’s like he was destined for this job.

Saturday, he was selling his products in Louisville at the Paristown Garden Show.

One of the crops he grows is tomatoes. And he’s seen some unwanted and invasive creatures: stink bugs.

What You Need To Know

  •  As the weather warms up, plants are beginning to grow

  • Invasive species can threaten the plants 

  •  Barriers can be used to keep invasive species out 

“They’ll go through all my tomatoes and put a little hole in them and I won’t see it or know it until my tomatoes turn ripe and then they have these little white dots all over them,” Farmer said. 

Though these excited insects aren’t truly damaging the crop, Farmer said it does decrease their quality.

“It’s nothing poisonous or hurt the fruit, it just doesn’t make it that ‘A’ quality or as pretty as other ones,” Farmer said. 

But invasive bugs are not the only species gardeners should be looking out for.

“The best thing you can do is acknowledge or figuring out is there anything in my garden right now that could be potentially harmful,” Fen Maloney with Louisville Nature Center said.

Maloney said there are numerous invasive plants to look out for. 

“It really depends on what kind of areas you are worried about managing,” Maloney said. “Because places with the highest disturbances are going to be the places with the highest disturbances.”

Farmer said that in order to protect your crops from the invasive bugs he is seeing, a barrier is a good idea.

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