Ladybugs, You’re Fired!

Look at this carnage! Look at this aweful infestation! Oh, it’s terrible, isn’t it? We just got done saying how this was the most beautiful, healthy bunch of Red Russian Kale we’ve ever grown. It was lush and green and verdant. And we couldn’t wait to roast it and steam it and saute it. But instead the aphids got to it first and it was pulled out and given to the chickens.

What happened to all of those ladybugs, soldier beetles and friendly praying mantis‘? Where did they go? A quick look around at my flowerbeds spent blooms told me that I wasn’t doing my job to give them a happy home. My flowerbeds always look gorgeous in early spring but by August they are brown and wilted. So off to the nursery I went and planted a cart load of flowers hoping and praying that our beneficial friends return and keep those aphids at bay.

What you don’t want to see in your garden

This is what you don’t want to see in your garden. Especially at the base of the steps that your toddler just sat at and which you just walked over.

Every year we catch a few black widows, but they are usually back in the wood pile or under rocks. This time it was right out in the open. And it was huge. Unreal looking. I mean, doesn’t it look like a dime store plastic ring? Although we don’t use an exterminator, everytime I see one of these in our yard, I have a strong desire to call one and just have them spray the heck out of our yard. However doing a little reading up on them made me feel a tad bit better about Scott and my fatality should we ever get bitten:

Although their venom is extremely potent, (15 times more potent than that of the rattlesnakes; it is also reported to be much more potent than the venom of cobras and coral snakes), these spiders are not especially large. Compared to many other species of spiders, their chelicerae are not very large or powerful. In the case of a mature female, the hollow, needle shaped part of each chelicera, the part that penetrates the skin, is approximately 1.0 millimeters (about .04 in) long, long enough to inject the venom to a point where it can be harmful. The males, being much smaller, inject far less venom with smaller chelicerae. The actual amount injected, even by a mature female, is very small in physical volume. When this small amount of venom is diffused throughout the body of a healthy, mature human, it usually does not amount to a fatal dose (though it can produce the very unpleasant symptoms of latrodectism). Deaths in healthy adults from Latrodectus bites are relatively rare in terms of the number of bites per thousand people. Sixty-three deaths were reported in the United States between 1950 and 1990.

However I still live in fear that one of our boys gets bit. It’s a good thing the ER is just a few blocks away. Has anyone heard of anyone getting bit by one of these? Anyone have any near misses?

Our Little Praying Pet + Free Download

The other day while walking through the yard with my camera I glanced down at my shoulder and saw this little guy sitting on it. There he was sitting here, just along for a free ride, as I strolled along. Of course my little one wanted desperately to hold him. This hasn’t been the first time we’ve had a hitch hiking praying mantis. They are friendly little creatures and love to hop on for a free ride when they see that you’re walking through the garden. And they’re bad ass too. Read this description I got from Wikipedia:

Mantises are notable for their hunting abilities. They are exclusively predatory, and their diet usually consists of living insects, including flies and aphids; larger species have been known to prey on small lizards, frogs, birds, snakes, and even rodents. Most mantises are ambush predators, waiting for prey to stray too near. The mantis then lashes out at remarkable speed. Some ground and bark species, however, pursue their prey rather quickly. Prey are caught and held securely with grasping, spiked forelegs (”raptorial legs”); the first thoracic segment, the prothorax, is commonly elongated and flexibly articulated, allowing for greater range of movement of the front limbs while the remainder of the body remains more or less immobile. The articulation of the head is also remarkably flexible, permitting nearly 300 degrees of movement in some species, allowing for a great range of vision (their compound eyes have a large binocular field of vision) without having to move the remainder of the body.

Ellen asked me the other day what we did for pest control so Scott and I had a talk about it this morning over breakfast. And really, we take a preventative approach to pests. When we first moved in 6 growing seasons ago, we did have a pest problem, and a lack of water retention problem, and a whole lot of other problems. Our plants were small and bug eaten, but as we’ve learned more and more about organic gardening we’ve learned that the key to pest prevention is to nurture healthy plants. Give them highly nutritious soil, water them correctly and provide habitats for beneficial insects.

Now while we do have our fair share of white flies, aphids, grasshoppers and other pests out in the yard, after six years of returning the soil back to health, we have them outnumbered with ladybugs, praying mantis’, birds, chickens, soldier beetles and all sorts of good little guys. And really at this point we don’t do much to control the bad bugs. We collect snails when we see them and pick off a worm or two, but at this point we let nature take it’s course and live with the little bug bites we do get. Of course, that’s not to say that we haven’t lost a plant or two, but really that was my own lazy fault for not jumping onto of the situation earlier.

If you’d like to read up more about different pests and what you can do to organically treat them you can download this free pdf. It’s an exerpt from the ebook I have over in my sidebar: How to Start an Organic Garden. You can download the pdf here, it’s full of photos and treatment ideas and its yours for the taking.

radishes

Here are our french breakfast radishes, bug bites and all. Our friend, Doug, told us this weekend that his favorite organic bug control is to mix soy sauce and canola oil and put out a dish of it in the garden. The bugs are attracted to the soy sauce, but once they get the oil on their legs they can’t move. He said he can’t find anything else to compete with it. This might be just the fix for our radish bed.

I hope you don’t have scales

I’m going to start with a pretty picture, because what I’m about to show you is ugly. Remember how I wrote up a nice little cheerful post about the good bugs in the garden? Well, what’s below is one that I hope you never see in your garden. And that is scale.

I don’t normally get squeemish about a bug here or there, but when they are in mass, it completely gives me the heebee jeebeeies. I first noticed these little black round guys on my two Chinese lanterns last year, but never did much about them at the time. I read that you should scrap them off, but being that I had just given birth and also had a two year old to contend with, I wanted no part of scraping anything extra off of anything else. So those poor plants when untended to. This year, the scale killed the smallest chinese lantern and seriously did some major damage to the above varigated one. I loved that tall, seven foot beauty, but it and it’s nasty scale had to go. It was completely covered, so I ripped it out.

Unfortunately I waited too long and the dreaded scale moved over to my oak leaf hydrangeas too. Those I did scrape off, the whole while wearing a look of complete disgust on my face, so hopefully it can be saved.

The UC Davis site says: “Populations of some scales can increase dramatically within a few months, such as when honeydew-seeking ants or dusty conditions interfere with scale natural enemies.” As you can see from the photo above, those ants were all over it.

Has anyone else had to deal with scale? Did you remove it successfully?