Surprising yucky discovery in stored seeds

Last summer I purposely let some pea pods mature to brown on the vines so I could harvest the seeds to plant this spring. This weekend I pulled the seeds out to put them in the garden. I was surprised that so many of them had holes. What in the world? I smashed one with a knife to see if I could figure out what caused this. I don't know what I expected -- mold, fungus, maybe? -- but I was utterly surprised to find that a bug was inside. Apparently it was playing dead, because I got another surprise a few minutes later when it slowly started moving.  

I learned these are cowpea weevils. Adults lay eggs in developing legume pods or stored seeds. The larvae and pupae grow inside the seed and emerge as grown weevils. These can produce a new generation of adults in three to six weeks.

Don't be complacent if you find a hole in only one seed. One hole signals that an adult has emerged. You likely have an infestation with the insect in other stages inside the other seeds. Best to throw all of them out. And not to the compost heap, I might add, where they still can flourish.

If you recently purchased seeds and discover holes in them, I recommend taking them back to the store and asking for a replacement or refund.

My seeds were in a plastic sandwich bag which wasn't entirely sealed ... my mistake. I further erred by leaving them in a kitchen drawer (I forgot!) instead of in a cooler place. Weevils love the warmth.

I will try to save pea seeds again this year, with this added step: FREEZING. Make sure the peas are completely dry before storage; to test this, pound a few with a hammer on the driveway. They should make a brittle cracking sound and not have any gummy interiors. If frozen before completely dry the extra moisture can expand in the seed and make it crack. Freeze in a moisture/air tight container. If the mature peas were exposed to insects while on the vine, the life cycle will be in the egg stage. Freezing will kill the eggs before larvae make a dent.

As cozy as a pea in a pod? No thanks.

Getting a jump on next summer's grasshoppers

Cluster of grasshopper eggs. Photo courtesy of CSU Extension, by permission.

"Don't count your eggs before they hatch" is sound advice for opportunity seekers. When it comes to pest control in your backyard farm, minimize opportunistic grasshoppers by destroying eggs before they hatch.

Keep an eye out for egg clusters as you dig in your garden this spring. The eggs look like grains of brown rice stuck together.

If you find such a stash, take the time to put it in an airtight container that you later discard. If you leave them be, these eggs can hatch into the garden's most ravaging enemies. According to Planet Natural, a study showed that six adults per square yard on a 10-acre pasture ate as much as a cow.

Because of grasshoppers' mobility, they are extremely hard to control. Strong pesticide sprays will harm bees and other beneficial insects. Natural baits are available, such as those containing Nosema Locustae. Grasshoppers get a spore from ingesting the substance (most types are powder), which causes them to eat less and eventually die. To be effective the bait must be applied to known hatching areas when the grasshoppers are nymphs.

Destroying the eggs you find is a no-cost companion approach to any baits you may try.

Female grasshoppers lay the eggs about an inch underground in late summer/early fall. The eggs survive the winter, hatch in mid to late spring and look for tender foliage. Remove any unwanted plants and cultivate around the ones you keep to turn the soil and expose egg clusters.

Grasshoppers like lettuce, carrots, corn, onions and beans -- leaves and all. Oh, the beans! I can definitely attest to that. They frequent tomato plants, too, where during harvest time I find myself close enough to deliver finger flicks to the head. (Oddly satisfying.) Grasshoppers generally don't like squash and peas as much, although in large population cycles where demand exceeds supply, they may eat anything. 

Ducks, guinea fowl and chickens can take a bite out of a grasshopper infestation. Other grasshopper control methods include row covers (although the insects can chew through some fabrics) and trap crops. Plant zinnias around your garden border to attract and divert grasshoppers from pouncing on veggies. Such a grasshopper hangout is a more contained space to use baits.

Handpick and destroy as many grasshoppers as you can. Follow-up egg removal efforts this spring by capturing late-summer mating grasshoppers in the act, thwarting a new generation. These ... um, preoccupied specimens are easier to catch! Yes, I had a picture, and no, I couldn't bring myself to post it. As Jimmy Fallon would say, "Ew." 

Lord of What Flies

Said 8-year-old Samuel: "I like the way grasshoppers jump out of my way and clear a path for me. It makes me feel like a king!"

Ah, to have the joyful perspective of a child.

White Hats and Black Hats

As a child in the early 60’s, I would turn the black and white TV on and more often than not, there would be a western on. I instantly knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, and Jared & Heath Barkley wore white hats and the bad guys all wore black hats (Nick Barkley was kind of a jerk). Nowadays things aren’t so clear. In movies you don’t know who the good guys are or who the bad guys are until the end of the show. In the garden, you may or may not be able to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. For example, in the following photo, it is easy to tell who the good guys are because they are wearing white hats.

This is a horn worm that has been eating my tomatoes – a real bad guy! The white hats are eggs implanted by a parasitic wasp. The larvae from these eggs will kill this horn worm. GO! GO! GO! The Lone Ranger rides again! And there are a whole bunch of Lone Rangers!
Now, check out this guy! Is he a good guy or a bad guy?

 Obviously he is a bad guy because he has spines on his back and he had been eating my raspberry plant with that mean looking mouth.  Not so! He is a good guy – an assassin bug. Look what he is doing in this photo.

He is sucking the guts out of a stink bug that has been eating my raspberries. GO! GO! GO! I feel like I am watching the Roy Rogers rolling around in the dirt with a bad guy, knowing in advance who is going to win the fight. This one of the funnest parts of gardening, watching the good guys battle it out to save my garden from the bad guys and knowing who is going to win.  

Tomato Hornworm

We've been infested!

 It seemed to happen so quickly! The tomato hornworm is difficult to see, it's like playing "Where's Waldo" since they are green and just lay along the stems and sometimes hide under leaves. Their damage is easy to detect,  the hungry munchers eat all the leaves and just leave the stems.  My running partner wanted to see our garden,  and instead of a morning run, we spent a half hour searching for these little buggers,  we found over 20! The best and most organic thing to do is to keep watch, pick them off, and smash them. I've told the kids that there is a 50 cent bounty on each hornworm brought to me dead or alive.

Beware! check your tomatoes, but they can also infest your potatoes, eggplants, and peppers. 

Update: in the comments someone asked what the moth that lays the eggs looks like. Here it is:

Image

~marisa

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Can you see him? 

Maybe if I zoom in, it would help.

 The problem is....

My chickens are supposed to go, here.

We really want a name for our homestead.

Fantastic Mr. Fox has been coming around a lot lately,

we are thinking about naming our place,

Red Fox Farms.

What do you think?

~marisa

Those Bugs are Fowl......Food

I was horrified to read Dale's article about Asian Stink Bugs. I am not positive, but I don't think that they have infiltrated Utah......yet. It sounds like that a stinkbug invasion is inevitable though so I thought it best to prepare. I have been doing some research on how to get rid of them and Dale's experience seems to indicate that they are very hard to control. I did find one method that might reduce the amount of stink bugs in a home garden. I wanted to mention it and see if anyone can confirm that it is a viable method.

It has come to my attention that Guinea Fowl are willing to eat and seek out stink bugs. Guinea Fowl are becoming a popular animal to have on small and large farms for a variety of reasons. They are a good meat producing bird and their meat is considered a delicacy in many countries. They also lay eggs which can be harvested. In addition to their food production, guinea fowl have gained a reputation as farm watchdogs. They alert farm owners quickly of any large predators that are threatening them and other animals on the farm. They also alert owners when new people show up, with the ability to distinguish between strangers and family members.

Perhaps the biggest feature of guinea fowl that has made them popular in the recent past is their ability to eradicate pests. Guinea fowl eat most insects. They are also known to eat mice, rats, and snakes, while at the same time leaving garden greens and vegetables alone. Most importantly, I have seen on a few Guinea Fowl message boards that they do a good job at getting rid of stink bugs as well. Can any of you vouch for this?

It seems that there are a lot of good reasons to have a few guinea fowl in any backyard farm, but if they actually do eliminate stink bugs, I might have to get some to prepare for the coming invasion.

Mike

Backyard Farming Disasters – Stink Bug Apocalypse

 We have an apocalypse now - the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. It is a plague of biblical proportions here in western Maryland. This bug is an invasive species that is native to China and accidentally introduced here. It is called a stink bug because when irritated or excited it releases a foul smelling chemical reminiscent of cilantro (no one eats cilantro here anymore). It inserts its rostrum (tube like beak) into plants and sucks out the juice or sap. It leaves fruit with a mottled appearance and the fruit quickly spoils. Here is the kicker – it has no natural predator, it is resistant to pesticides and since it loves all types of plants, there are no effective decoy plants.
We have a fruit industry here, primarily apples and peaches. This bug is destroying the crops and may drive our farmers out of business. Our local vegetable farms are suffering too. There has been a big meeting of farmers, USDA scientists and Extension specialists to discuss the problem. The problem extends beyond the farms to everyone. Our garden is pretty much finished for the year because of stinkbugs. And soon the plague will move indoors. The outdoor surface of the sunny side of the house appears to move as thousands of bugs congregate. These bugs then get through the tiniest cracks to infest a house for the winter. There are no effective pesticides for home use. You can’t vacuum them because the smell is intolerable and attracts more stink bugs. You caulk and seal them out the best you can and then it turns into a pitched one-on-one battle indoors. You take a jar half full of water with detergent added to sequester the smell. You go around and knock them into the jar. I am lucky because I am tall and can reach the ceiling. I click the jar on the ceiling around the bug and it drops in. I click the jar under the bug on a wall and it drops in. When an inch of dead bugs accumulates in the jar, I dump them outside and then start over. After I have eliminated one army of bugs, I wait awhile until another army appears and the battle resumes. 

I can only assume that this plague will spread nationwide. It is humbling to realize that after we do all we can to develop and deploy our production methods, whether they be organic, conventional, sustainable, industrial, or integrated pest management, in the end we are at the mercy of nature and may not have solutions to serious problems.

Here are some pictures from the University of Maryland  Extension Home and Garden Information Center

Dale

Plant first aid

By Jennifer

Victory!

Earlier this month squirrels (at least I think it was them!) toppled a jalapeno pepper plant in my garden.

I was not content to see it die. They say necessity is the mother of invention, right? And I needed a porous type of tape to bend and mend my little plant. Porous tape? Do gardening stores even carry such a thing?

That wasn't the point. I realized I had just what I needed in my first aid cabinet. A bandage!

I bandaged it back in place and staked it to keep it upright. Three weeks later the plant has more than tripled in size and is producing blossoms.

Now, this method doesn't always work; this was actually my third attempt. Earlier in the season I tried it when snow damaged one of my tomato seedlings. The plant seemed OK for a while but succumbed when temperatures rose rapidly. A second time I tried to rescue another pepper plant but to no avail. I think what made the difference is the doomed pepper plant's leaves were already drying out when I found it, whereas my jalapeno plant was still pretty springy (if you didn't over-evaluate its ripped stem!) Its stem was also wider, and more fully formed than the other plants, suggesting it had other channels to deliver water upward while the rest of the plant healed.

Still, when a plant has been injured, I say you have nothing to lose by whipping out the old first aid kit. You just might enable a full recovery.

Jennifer

I've got an earwig, crawling towards my brain.........

I’ve got an earwig, crawling towards my brain……….

Not really, but how many of us have seen earwigs and cringed in horror. I have always been disgusted and even a little scared of earwigs. I think I have a few good reasons.

My disgust with earwigs started as a young boy. I remember sleeping in a tent in my grandma’s yard with my cousins Steffan and Cory. In the morning, some earwigs had crawled into our tent to escape the coming sun, and my older cousins proceeded to tell me that we were lucky that we woke up before the earwigs crawled into our brains. Needless, to say, I was not pleased by this idea.

Following this experience, my family rented a VCR from the local video store for the weekend. I cajoled my parents into letting me rent Star Trek the Wrath of Khan (my geekiness started early in life). There is a terrifying scene in that movie where Khan let’s a huge bug crawl in Chekov’s ear and burrow into his brain for the purpose of mind control. I immediately surmised that this must be the alien version of the earwig that was in my tent.

Fast forward to junior high (still a geek) and I recall listening to The Dead Milkmen’s song “Earwig.” The poetic chorus went a little like this “You got an earwig/It’s crawling towards your brain/and you got an earwig/the glorious pain.”

As you can see earwigs and I go way back and I am still horrified when I come across a gang of them. Luckily we don’t meet up very often since earwigs are nocturnal and I prefer to sleep at night. I also don’t find myself hanging out in earwigs favorite damp wet areas like mulch, cracks, organic debris, and crevices. Earwigs do however eat some of the same things I do like exposed fruits and vegetables, not to mention that they will eat the leaves and shoots of my garden plants.

How do we get rid of them naturally, just in case my cousins Steffan and Cory were right and they do have a habit of burrowing into our ears? Try the following methods.

1 Limit moist dark areas when you can. This is not always easy in a garden but it is easier to do around your house if you have a pest control problem.

2 Take a small cardboard box and poke holes in the side near the ground. Get the box wet and sprinkle with oatmeal. Set it out in the evening and empty the trapped earwigs the next morning.

3 Place some beer in a small jar and set the jar on its side in your garden. Earwigs will be attracted to the beer, crawl into the jar, and drown.

4 Roll up a magazine or newspaper and get it damp. Leave it in your garden in the evening. Earwigs will escape in to damp dark newspaper and you can then dispose of the newspaper in a sealed container the next morning.

If you follow these methods, you will reduce the amount of earwigs in your garden and around your home, thereby reducing the chance of one actually crawling into your brain.

Whodunnit?

By Jennifer

If I get a worthwhile harvest from my garden this year, it will be a miracle. 

I am baffled by the new crime scenes I find every morning. The season started with entire pepper plants -- root ball and all -- pulled up and left on the ground. Some plants survived the replanting, thank goodness. Now, all of a sudden, the offenses have escalated to trampling and chewing and other maddening insults to my little plot of land.

My first glimpse at an empty pea pod still on the vine made me laugh that my kids were just that lazy ... but now after seeing the carnage to the rest of the patch, I know I have a perpetrator on my hands.

But who?

I present to you the shredded evidence:

 

And this one today, the most infuriating of all, a jalapeno pepper plant (my one and only!) broken at the stem:

In early spring when my seedlings were uprooted I suspected raccoons seeking water. (I've seen signs of their digging before.) This damage, although devastating to me, is still a bit delicate to be their calling card. And it's a little much for birds.

That leaves me to suspect squirrels. Or, as I like to call them, rats with bushy tails. They're just cute enough that my neighbor Karen likes to leave walnuts out for them, and coo and talk to them when they come close. (She doesn't know I was on the other side of the fence working in my garden!)

What do you think? Am I dealing with squirrels? Know any remedies? I thought of sprinkling cayenne pepper to deter them, but wonder if this would have an adverse affect on the tender veggies. Please help!

####

They're BA-AAACK!

By Jennifer

Silly me. I thought (OK, make that hoped) last year's discovery that leaf miners were devastating my leaf crops would be an isolated incident, never to be repeated in my fair garden. I got rid of all infested leaves and rotated crops for this season. Not only was the spinach I planted at winter's end in a different area of the garden, it was in a container with packaged soil. Immune, right?

Nope, as my dinner salad harvest showed me. Here again are the eggs, stacked like rice grains on the underside of leaves. If left to hatch the eggs will become burrowing worms that fatally channel between the layers of leaf tissue. (Fatal, that is, to the leaves.) All this on a merry chase to become adult flies and lay another generation of eggs. 

What's a gardener to do? One method is using floating row covers atop the plants so the fly can't land, but the evidence of eggs shows I'm already too late into the insect's life cycle for that. 

The Internet abounds with ideas for using different chemicals on the soil around leaf crops, but I really don't want to go down that road, especially since mine is just a small patch.

My approach, then, will be daily checking of leaves, constantly harvesting those with eggs. This may be one case where my Baby Bear-sized garden is just right -- because it takes hardly any time at all to inspect the leaves of each and every plant. The eggs are easily removed from the leaves by scraping or cutting away. So far I've seen no evidence of hatches. 

Have any of you successfully dealt with leaf miners? While somewhat entertaining, this thread on an Internet forum shattered my belief that gardeners are a kind, friendly, resourceful bunch. Please restore it for me!

Net Earnings

Forget about the early bird getting the worm. It's your strawberry patch he's after!

Birds have an uncanny knack of finding the red, ripe berries before you do. See, the green one is untouched. But unlike tomatoes, strawberries must ripen on the vine and cannot be picked when green.

The best thing to do is to cover your patch with some sort breathable material that lets in light and water, but keeps birds out. Commercial products, called floating row covers, are available for this purpose. You can find many options online, including this one:

www.veseys.com/us/en/store/tools/seasonextenders/floatingrow

Most of the commercial row covers are sold in long lengths -- the shortest I found was 6 by 20 feet.

If yours is a small patch, or if you'd just like to try some do-it-yourself options, read on:

I made two kinds of strawberry nets, one with cheesecloth and another with tulle that I had left over from some party decorations.

I bought the cotton cheesecloth at the grocery store for $3. I imagine that dimensions vary with the packager, but my piece measured 3 by 6 feet. I gently draped it over my several plants, anchoring it to the ground on the edges with rocks or bricks. Mosquito netting, available at some discount stores, would also work great.



You can put a tall, heavy object in the middle of your patch, such as a cinder block on end, if you wish to keep the cloth from touching the plants.

The tulle I had is only 6 inches wide. I used it more as a protective "scarf" than an overhead net. I wrapped it a couple of times around the cluster of green berries and blossoms, but did not cover the leaves.



Truth be told, this method arose out of necessity, because my piece of cheesecloth wasn't big enough to reach a few straggler plants. Yet, I think that it can have an added benefit of keeping the berries off the ground (where they are more susceptible to rot), since you can wrap them from all sides and make a little hammock. This method is also less conspicuous than a large net or row cover.

More thoughts about strawberries: There are basically two types, June-bearing and everbearing. Whichever type, to encourage strong plants the first season you plant them, pluck off blossoms before they form berries. (I know that's hard!) You want the plant's energy to initially go into strong roots and structure rather than in producing fruit.

Soon, strawberries will shoot out runners like crazy. This is a fun way to grow more plants, but at the cost of fruit production. Decide which you want right away: bigger strawberries and more of them, or more plants.


If you keep runners you can guide them where you want. even burying them a bit to help them form roots sooner. When your alloted patch is already bursting with plants, but you want more elsewhere, try this trick: Put a dirt-filled pot right in the patch and nest a strawberry runner there. (You may need to use a J-shaped piece of wire to hold the runner in the pot.) After a week or so, check to see if the baby plant is firmly rooted in your pot. When it is you can cut the runner from the mother plant.

~Jennifer

Bug Spray

I love to read and the great stories always have a Hero that always tries to overcome the memorable Villain. Sometimes, if the villain is entertaining enough, my dark side roots for him. However, when it comes to my garden I don’t root for the villain, ever. Following is a homemade bug spray that allows me to eradicate the villains of my garden without getting rid of the heroes.


To make the spray you will need a spray bottle that has been washed thoroughly, water, rubbing alcohol, and liquid detergent.

Fill the bottle 85% full with water.

Add a dash of soft soap like Ivory Liquid Dish Soap, Castille Soap, or Murphy’s oil soap.

Then fill the remaining 15% with rubbing alcohol.


Mix and then spray on a few vegetables to test them and make sure it won’t harm them. After spraying wait a day and check your plants. If they look OK go ahead and spray all of your vegetables. It is better to do this at dusk or at dawn when the sun isn’t as strong so your leaves don’t burn.

You may be asking what this concoction does. Well the soap penetrates and clogs the insects body membranes which kills them on contact. This works on the villains of the garden like spider mites, aphids, mealybugs, and whiteflies. The alcohol in the mix also kills these soft bodied bugs on contact.

Since this only kills bugs on contact, spray this on your plants 2 or 3 days in a row to make sure you get as many of the bad guys as possible. After spraying this on and giving it a little time to do it’s work, it is also a good idea to then rinse off your plants. The nice thing about this mixture is that it will dissipate and won’t linger to harm your good bugs.

~Michael