Category Archives: Pests

Short ‘n sweet.

This little Lemon Basil (success at growing basil from seed! finally!) has enjoyed the shade of the carrot greens while adapting to the ways of the outside world.

These two characters made me laugh when I saw them. It takes some special kind of talent to hang from the very thing you’re eating.

I used to pull the snails when I found them, dropping them in soapy water or taking them down to the pond. Then upon closer observation I noticed they left all of my food alone, and spent their time devouring the spent vines, the decomposing leaves, and the other not-quite-yet-composted goodies on the surface. Since then, I’ve left them to their own devices in the garden. Hopefully they’re not the ones responsible for the Squash Disappearing Act?

Crawly critters

I am grateful for my lack of furry critters making use of my garden as their market. We have rabbits and deer in our neighborhood, but they haven’t found my garden to be worth the fence-hop. As for the community gardens, I can only assume they don’t like the busy roads on two sides.

I do get quite the surprise sometimes when it comes to the crawly critters. Awhile back, it was the caterpillar bigger than my middle finger. This time, it’s a few things.

Like this thing. A cicada shell. They’re currently peppering tree branches and leaf piles throughout the neighborhood.

Each board is two inches wide. It’s head is to the left, bent under. That horizonal line moving from left to right was the middle of its back, before it split the shell to escape in it’s new, bigger, shell. (Cue flashbacks to the movie Alien if you’ve seen it, I have not.)

I found this shell when chasing down a tree roach that leapt from the earth I was digging, just fast enough to make me jump before I saw what it was, and race off.

(Backstory: I grew up a tomboy. I liked lizards and spiders. Grasshoppers were fun. I claimed a daddy-long-legs in my bedroom corner as my pet when I was five. I went searching for earthworms and snakes to discover under boards in the pasture. I woke up once with a mouse on my shoulder, staring me down from four inches away, and was fine with it. And then I moved to Texas. The grasshoppers here make me jump. (They’re HUGE!) The lizards are more colorful (and plentiful) and I finally encountered a bug that just *got* to me. I finally understood the visceral reaction so many have in response to spiders, or snakes, or any other oft-feared creatures. I had encountered my first tree roach.)

I’m not sure of their actual name, but imagine a cockroach, that gets about three inches long, and FLIES. Then imagine it hosts a demeanor of an attack missile. Sometimes when you come upon one and startle it, it will actually run away. Other times, it will come AT you. It’ll get stuck in your hair, hang onto your shirt, and otherwise make you dance around hitting yourself like a maniac only to leave you with the creepy-crawlies for the rest of the day.

I mean…

Not familiar with a tree roach? This was the best photo I could snag of the fellow.

Or, for easier viewing, I found a funny post by another Texas-transplant here – with much better visual aids.

And then there’s the Case of the Creepy Sweet Potato. Fiber issues? Drought issues? Bug issues? What’s your guess?

We’ll finish this Creature Feature with a wonderfully ancient-looking caterpillar. It reminds me of both The Neverending Story, Chinese dragons, and Alice in Wonderland. Have you guessed yet?

It’s the happy-looking Giant Swallowtail Caterpillar.

See that charming smile?

I put him back on the potted orange tree where I’d found him. DH says he’ll be evicted if he takes more than his fair share. I went to check on him a few days later to discover that he had a new little friend of the same kind, and he himself had more than doubled in size.

In my brief reading to research this caterpillar, it became obvious that they like citrus trees. Why he and his brother selected the orange over the lime, I couldn’t say. Mimosas over margaritas, perhaps?

Tarzan

image

My guess is that if Tarzan lived here, he’d swing from morning glory vines. I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to finally find the base of this invasion and tear it out. I have been back in No Time To Garden Land, but a cold front blew in last night just in time for a free Saturday. (Cold fronts in Texas this time of year means a high of only 92° AND a low of 60° AND a near constant breeze. Which translates to the first time we’ve been able to open the windows in the house since April.. .for an hour.) Posts of the progress soon!

And they’re all / going to / Bug City / for the night…

I apologize in advance for the graininess of the close-ups! Wrong lens in poor light – double whammy…

However – double plus bonus points for anyone who recognizes the song quoted as the title!

I guessed that this guy was a “bag bug” and he met his end shortly after this shot was taken.

I had let myself believe the mealy bugs wouldn’t return this year. Just when I thought we were safe (and just when I stopped taking good care of the plants in the backyard beds…which is always how it goes…you’d think I’d learn 😉 ) they’ve returned.

If I had it in for any bug more than a squash bug, it would be these. They were what tried to kill my Oxalis. They completely decimated my tomatoes in 2010. As much as I cannot squish caterpillars, I can squish these with my bare fingertips without hesitation.

Oddly enough, they also like Blanketflowers?

This crawler, I have no idea. Do you?

This is only the evidence. The caterpillar, and subsequent moth, are long gone. If you ever see a leaf curled up like this, be sure to make certain the tunnel is empty!

This guy, I wasn’t 100% sure on. I am slowly learning my adult-bug identification, but at the nymph stage…I’m farther behind.

With a side view, I could see his striped antennae. I remembered that Leaf-footed bugs have striped antennae (as I’m sure many other bugs do, but oh well) and this leaf was his last meal.

Brrr…

At 10:30 this morning, I decided to head to the Gardens and do some loooooong overdue clean-up on my tomatoes.

  • Floppy hat: Check.
  • Old socks and play shoes: Check.
  • Green bag for possible harvest: Check.
  • Camera: Check.
  • Molasses, clippers, and gloves? In the garage…

I opened the front door. Fully expecting the wash of moist heat to crash against my skin…nothing. I took a few steps off the front porch toward the garage. I stopped.

I thought, “What day is it?” (August 19th) and then “Am I awake?”

I went back inside.

Me: Hey! It’s almost chilly out!

DH: *laughs* It’s not exactly chilly out.

Me: It is! I almost need a jacket. And my phone says it’s only…

DH: 85?

Me: 74!

In a race to beat the cloud cover’s inevitable break (which would let the heat come pouring in) I threw together the rest of my accoutrements, called the dog, and headed to the Gardens.

I was met with a lot of pruning. Little leaflets that mostly drop in your hand with a light grasp…

To entire plants that are ready to come out…

You can even see that it’s cloudy.

Two hours passed quickly, and while I nearly filled a garbage bin, the visual proof of progress was less impressive.

I did make a few discoveries during my work.

  • What you don’t prune in the spring, you will prune before fall.
  • If at first grasp the brown tomato “twigs” don’t fall off, don’t pull. The healthy vines will suffer. Let go, snake the pruners into the shadows, and snip the elbow.
  • Always follow a vine all the way up to the tip, and all the way back to a joint, before making a decision. You don’t want to accidentally lop off your best chances at a fall harvest, nor do you want to end up making four cuts when you only needed to make one back at the joint.
  • If your staking is preventing a vine from coming loose, then do cut it four times into manageable pieces.

I learned last year that fall fruit only comes from new growth. Once fruit has set and dropped, that vein won’t fruit again. As with most pruning, tomato pruning encourages the plant to redirect energy to the new growth. So as slow as this process is, it works for me. I’ve seen others who demolish all of their tomatoes except for about 12″ of the trunk, mound up the mulch, and wait until fall. I’ve seen yet others cut an 18″ length of new growth from the top of a plant, bury it 12″ under, water, mulch, and wait until fall. I’ve never attempted either of those methods, but last year pruning all of the spent vines off the living branches resulted in more tomatoes than a salad could hold for weeks before the first frost took them all.

Keep in mind! Not all varieties will like this method. (Also good to always keep in mind – not all varieties will like you.) Cherry Chadwicks love this method. Black Princes will give one more round with this method. You may get a Zapotec or an Oxheart.

What won’t you get?

Well, I won’t get any of these:

Or these:

As much as the Purple Calabash grew into a vigorous plant, and as much as the Green Zebra hardly grew at all, neither gave up a single fruit this year. (They were also the only two tomatoes in the plot that I didn’t sow myself.)

Next year, I may really make the time to stake and prune the tomatoes like I’d like to. (I always make this vow. I’ve yet to keep it!) But why? Why worry about staking and pruning when this year’s harvest was epic, and the pruning can happen now?

It has to do with air.

The jungle that grew this year didn’t let air circulate. This is part of why there were bunches upon bunches of brown “twigs” throughout the tomatoes. When the air doesn’t circulate, the soil doesn’t dry out. This can be a good thing, in that the soil stays cooler even when the mercury passes 105. Like with most things, a balance is important. This year, my soil was a little more damp than ideal. How do I know?

These guys. They like the moist. They like the dark. They like the rotting. They’re not “bad bugs” when they’re just here and there. When they reach these levels? They can take out a small transplant in a night. With the area cleared up a bit, pruned a lot, and re-trellised a smidge, they’ll be moving along to some place less airy and full of light (and more damp and dark) …like the rest of my tomato patch is still.

Guess who else I found hiding under the lush vegetation?

I don’t squick easily. I like most bugs. This thing…well, I thought it was dead. It didn’t mind the potato bugs crawling on it. It didn’t mind the spiders scampering across it. I couldn’t quite tell what it was, and decided to poke it with a “stick” (really, a length of tomato trunk.)

Lordy did that thing move! I managed to catch it. There was one other gardener working a plot this morning, and I walked over to her side of the allotments. She jumped back when she peered into the tub.

And that’s when I saw the horn.

This one made the one on the pecan look like a miniature caterpillar. I couldn’t squish it, it was too big and that would be actually disgusting to me. I found myself wondering if I knew anyone with a large pet bird or reptile. Instead, I left it in the tub on the porch until it was time to go snail hunting.

And the tub came along on our evening walk, which tonight had a detour to the pond.

I do so enjoy how gardening challenges me. It challenges me to let things go, it challenges me to let things be “good enough” when they’re not perfect, and it challenges me to allow for (and occasionally enable) the natural state my dad tried to explain to me as a child when I was sad about a lamb lost to a coyote: “They have stomachs, too.”

I didn’t stay to see whether or not the ducks (or the geese they ended up chasing around a tree, amusingly) found the snails and the caterpillar, or whether they’ll all just make their way into the bacterial stomachs on the pond floor.

Some people find their practice in yoga, or running, or painting, or baking. Something where the purpose isn’t achievement. The purpose is practice. Mine, for now, comes from the soil.

 

Something’s missing…

One could philosophize as to whether the leaf is missing, or the caterpillar that ate it is. I would simply argue that both are long gone. DH was upset enough that as soon as I found the perpetrator, the perpetrator was no more. No chance for a photo op for the hungriest caterpillar.

Not only was it the hungriest I’ve seen (our poor small pecan lost nearly every leaf in such a short span of time) it was (likely as a direct result of its voracious eating) also the largest caterpillar I’ve ever seen.

If you haven’t seen the caterpillar for a Sphinx Moth before, I hope you get to some day (outside of your own gardens, that is!)

It was easily more than two inches long, and bigger around than my thumb. Not unlike this photo I found:

I am grateful, however, that I didn’t come upon it when it had reached this stage:

As that guy actually creeps me out a bit.

The one in our yard had unfortunately nearly finished off every leaf by the time I found it.

But thankfully, a few short weeks later, the tree looks to be making a solid come-back.

Lesson learned: Don’t leave your trees to fend for themselves.

I’d never really considered checking trees for caterpillars or other pests before. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, there are so many trees that to do so would be a full-time job that never ended. Here though, where our trees are more sparse, it would be easy to simply do a quick walk-by and make sure that I found the smooth criminal (or fuzzy!) long before an entire tree was in danger of being eaten.

Calamine, calamine, calamine lotion…

Oh, no no no, not the lotion.

The mild mannered attempts at fire ant removal are a thing of the past. Today, while pulling grass from beneath the tomatoes, I felt a bite. Not at all new, as each visit to the beds awards me with anywhere from one to three bites usually, and usually on my ankles. This time, the bite was on my forearm. I looked down.

My entire leather glove was black and red. My arm, nearly to my elbow, looked like it had been dipped in a teeming ooze of fire ant. Angry, and mildly terrified, I quickly ripped my fire-ant-clad glove from my hand with my other gloved hand, and dropped it to the ground. I beat my poor arm like it wasn’t attached, dislodging as many fire ants as I could with each swat. It worked. So well, in fact, that the ants had rained down and grabbed hold of my thighs, my calves, and my shoes. I beat them off as well. When I was satisfied that I had no more on me, I gingerly picked up my fallen glove and beat it soundly against a board. Ditching both gloves to be abandoned by any possible hangers-on, I went for the hose and doused my arm in cool water.

Thankfully, while allergic, it’s not a life threatening allergy. I got to feel a little light headed and a fair bit of woozy for the rest of the afternoon, and this evening I’ve watched the swollen white welts turn to a swollen red arm, turn yet again into the usual little blisters the ant bites leave behind. Although this time they’re tinged with green, instead of the usual creamy yellow. I’ll try not to think about it.

Within the hour I was at Green and Growing picking up a bag of organic fire ant bait. If the weather holds, the onslaught will commence at sunset tomorrow.

In the meantime, I did not think to run for the camera when I saw my arm coated in crawling fire, but I did notice a previous nest had grown. Remember the failed ant trap? It’s time to show you its neighbors.

They were a bit peeved that I had just watered the earth they had claimed as their own. I gave them a wide berth.

Enough about the ants though, there are still some plants growing thanks to this lovely mild-for-us summer.

 

An herbalicious mess.

When I planted each of these less than 18 months ago, they were from cute little 4″ pots, or even smaller transplants of my own. I over-pruned the sage in the back this spring (oops…) which created room for the rosemary to expand (and DH rarely cooks with rosemary.) The Italian Oregano made SO many seeds last year, I could plant an acre or more, and it’s starting up again. Nevermind those lovely purple trumpets on the Mexican Oregano, they can stay as they keep the bees, butterflies, and other flyers happy.

The volunteer Texas Hummingbird Sage and Thai Basil are popping up in some far-away places! Here they are fighting the good fight against some more Henbit.

And those green onions I had in a jar on the kitchen counter? They’ve earned a pot – right next to my new watering can that I like maybe a little more than a sane person should.

The tops of the onions made it onto a burger for DH the other day. I’m curious to see how many more times it will re-grow.

Speaking of re-growing? This guy had co-existed peacefully with five seed trays for the last month.

Notice I said “had.” This morning I was awoken by DH, who was obviously unhappy. When I inquired what was the matter, he said he had some bad news. I automatically started running various grandparents through my mind and then he explained that the truce was broken and four of my seed trays were demolished by the charming-looking feline pictured above.

I worked quickly, plucking the wee sprouts from the piles of tossed earth and replanting them in a resurrected tray. The cat has been locked in the other room all day. We’ll see how I feel about letting him out tomorrow.

Fingers crossed that the baby cauliflower, broccoli, lettuces, and greens recover. So much for keeping track of varieties this year…

Known and unknown – another bug mystery!

I saw a sleek and stylish caterpillar in the garden the other day munch on, of all things, a pepper plant! It was time to see what I was in for. Would it eat every plant for the next two weeks? Was it likely to have an entire herd of chic caterpillar friends? I was determined to find out.

Thankfully, the outfit was easily described and as easily lead to proper identification – a yellow-striped armyworm.

See him there at the base of the pepper plant? This little pepper was a late volunteer, and likely wouldn’t have gotten to set fruit this year anyway. Seeing as this caterpillar is new to me, and all by his lonesome, I left him to enjoy his spicy salad in peace. The stripes are a little more yellow in person. The fading light washed out the hue.

This next fellow has a style all his own. He thought to match his brown overcoat with black and white striped socks! I was unlucky in my scouring of the internet for his name. Any one out there have a guess? In the photo below, he’s crawling about on a Painted Daisy. Just this morning I saw another one (perhaps the same one? although I doubt it) crawling along the top of a blade of Johnson Grass.

Apologies for the photo quality, I didn’t have the camera properly set for such a zoom! This bug’s about pea-sized, maybe slightly larger.

And for anyone who was wondering how the Great Ant Trap Experiment of June 2012 was going?

Aside from being impressed that it was hot enough to caramelize the sugar, I think I  may have assembled it incorrectly. In the soap water in the bottom one could find two dead gnats, one dead hover fly, and some random debris. Nary an ant to be found. I’ll be in my wellies in the garden until further notice, and seeing as they’re not intended for garden use, what with their blue/grey plaid/argyle pattern on a cream background…when combined with gardening shorts, wide-brimmed white straw hats, and leather gloves, I sometimes end up looking quite the character myself! (Perhaps I should ask the round fellow above where he buys his socks.)