Juli Lawrence – Rakish Gardening

Wow! A few days ago I found the most unusual eggs on my butterfly weed. Little tiny white eggs, hanging from little hair-like threads. They were in perfect alignment, in rows, as if a little perfect army of warriors, waiting to hatch.

My digital camera doesn’t take great pictures of tiny things like that, so I use my good equipment. But that’s film, which means I have to get it developed. I did get some pictures of the eggs, though and will post when I do. They’re cool. I had to google to find out what on earth they were.

Oddly enough, the first year I went organic I bought lacewing eggs from Planet Natural. I didn’t know what I was doing, so they weren’t really appropriate for my problem of cucumber beetles and leafhoppers. But I followed the instructions, let them hatch into tiny little larvae, then pranced around and sprinkled my “fairy dust.” It was crazy good fun. Read the rest of this entry »

My ongoing list. Read the rest of this entry »

This year hasn’t been the best for my vegetables. I’m afraid that the tree I love and hate has grown, and is perhaps casting a bit too much shade over the vegetable garden. So I’m going to put some raised beds in a sunnier location for next spring. Originally, I knew the sun was better in that spot, but the ground was lower and I worried about drainage issues. Raised beds will take care of that.

Since leaves are never in short supply, I’m going to start the beds this fall, do the lasagna method, and by spring, I should have some nice, crumbly worm-filled soil. There are a number of ways to do the lasagna method and you can Google for more info.

What I like about it most is that you don’t have to til the soil. We don’t have a tiller, so I end up renting one from a rental store. There are advantages to tilling, and the biggest one is it exposes bad bug eggs and they die. But in virgin soil with grass on top, I think the only pest is Japanese beetle eggs and grubs. The *second* year is when the cucumber beetles and other pests lay eggs. I might be wrong, but that’s what I think based on years of gardening and my own common sense.

The disadvantages of tilling: you expose weed seeds and assist weed growth; and you chop up the earthworms. You also destroy long strands of fungi that benefit plant roots and the soil.

I do lasagna with the things I have on hand, but it’s usually about the same:

1. A good layer of newspapers and/or cardboard. It’s a good time to clear out those Amazon boxes I’ve piled in a corner of the basement. That smothers the grass and makes a good base. Some people use weed killer (either chemical or vinegar-based), but I think that’s a waste. The papers/cardboard will do it just fine.

2. Then I begin layers of chopped up leaves (I suck, chop and save using my wonderful Leaf Hog from Black and Decker plus trash can attachment) and grass clippings. If I have no grass clippings, just any kind of green material. Sometimes I buy a big bag of alfalfa meal or alfalfa pellets from the feed store. It’s great stuff: use it to make alfalfa tea (nitrogen fertilizer) and add to the compost pile if I’m low on green materials to get the pile cooking.

3. The instructions usually say add layers of peat moss. I prefer not to use peat moss because this is not a renewable resource and peat bogs will eventually run out. So I use coir, a by-product of coconut shells. It’s fabulous stuff, and I also use it as potting soil (helps prevent mold, too!). Most of the time I leave this out because I have to drive about thirty minutes to get to an organic store and I don’t think it’s a requirement.

I’ve also been known to just do newspapers, leaves and sprinkle blood meal on top. I like to buy blood meal in fall when places like Wal Mart put it on clearance.

Or, you can save up some urine and pour that on. Sounds nasty, but it’s a perfect source of high-nitrogen to start breaking those leaves and paper down into nice humus. The great thing about urine is that you’ve got an unlimited source, it’s free, and unless you have a bladder infection, it’s sterile.

Another source of course is manure if you have access to that. A neighbor with pet rabbits is the best thing in the world if you garden! They’ll love you forever for taking care of the rabbit poo, and you’ve got a source of good manure.

That’s it. Lasagna method is easy to do, a lot less work, and the bonus is you’ve got a good base in spring. Plus worms and other goodies.

Oh, and keep it watered as best you can if it doesn’t rain or snow.

The spined soldier bug is one of the most coveted beneficial insects in the garden, preying on over 100 kinds of insects. I’ve now tragically discovered they also like my younger monarch caterpillars. Fortunately, other monarchs survived and they’ve all left now to become butterflies. I always miss them when they leave.

Any time you read about beneficial insects, the spined soldier bug is at the top of the list. You can buy eggs for about a hundred dollars. That’s a little more than I’m willing to spend on 250 eggs.

One plant that is said to attract them: goldenrod. In fact, some people actually go to meadows in the fall to try and find one of these bugs on a goldenrod, then take it back to their gardens. Some people even take them inside and raise them.

Soldier bug nursery

So last year I bought and planted a goldenrod. It’s in a different garden, so I don’t know if it had anything to do with my soldier bug. I had been seeing a stink bug, and spined soldier bugs look like your plain old stink bug. I cannot tell them apart. I made the decision to leave that stink bug in case it might be a soldier bug, because one stink bug isn’t going to cause much plant damage. (Part of my philosophy is to not worry about bad bugs as long as there are just a few. The exception would be bugs that transmit disease, particularly my nemesis the cucumber beetle.)

That stink bug did turn out to be the spined soldier bug, so I made the right decision.

Despite what I like to call “The Monarch Murder,” I’d like him to stick around and make himself at home.

A week ago, I was checking on my caterpillars and my butterfly weed was loaded with monarch cats, along with the usual bug universe. Such diversity!

I saw one of my cats hanging from a leaf, just dangling in the air. I thought he might have gotten tangled in a leaf fiber or something and wondered if I could help him. I thought I could untangle him and place him back on a leaf.

And then pure horror!

It was not a leaf fiber, it was the killer harpoon mouth part from a spined soldier bug. They kill by stabbing their prey with the harpoon, and releasing a chemical that paralyzes it, then they suck all of the delicious juices from the body.

My heart just sank. I wondered if I could rescue the caterpillar, but the spined soldier bug looks mean and I decided not to go to battle with him. I spend too much time in that garden, in the plants, and he might hold a grudge. So I ran to the house to grab my camera instead.

There was a strong breeze, so I had difficulty getting the picture. It’s not good, but you can see quite the food chain. You can’t really see the spined soldier bug (I can, but I know he’s there…hidden in the leaves). The sadness is the caterpillar hanging from the tongue of death. And if you look carefully, you can see a blur of a ladybug on her way to eat some aphids. On top is what I believe to be a katydid wasp.

This next picture was a moment later, and both the spined soldier bug and the caterpillar were GONE.

I surmise one of three things happened:

1. The wasp, which does eat katydids and other insects, ate them in the moments I was forwarding the film and training the lens back on the plant.
2. When the wasp landed, it created enough thud that it knocked the spined soldier bug and his prey off the plant into the ground (I did look, but didn’t find them).
3. The spined soldier bug, seeing the wasp, took his food and got the heck out of there when he saw the wasp.

It was both traumatic and exciting to witness this bit of Mother Nature. It just hadn’t occurred to me that there might be some predators who would eat my precious monarch cats. I work so hard in that area to make a nice, inviting home for monarchs and other butterflies that I have little feelings for them. Not as much as I love my cats, but I do care, and I stroke the caterpillars as they feed, hoping they’ll remember me when they return as butterflies. They don’t seem to mind, and I have to say that I always have at least one butterfly who will frolic with me and sometimes land on my finger.

Here’s a better picture of a spined soldier bug (actually a pair of them – tag team) sucking on a caterpillar. More on the spined soldier bug in my next post.

The caterpillars are hatching, butterflies are coupling in my gardens and it’s my big reminder why I went 100 percent organic.

I keep a stack a pot filled with herbs on the back deck so that when we need them for cooking, all we have to do is step out the kitchen back door and harvest.

But I plant lots of herbs in every garden for companions and extra parsley and dill for swallowtail cats. They’re sometimes called parsley worms and can eat a parsley plant overnight. The solution to that is to plant several – some for them, some for you.

I was just spraying a new batch of hearty compost tea, after accidentally plugging up the sprayer, and there’s a large dill plant next to a tomato plant. I started to spray, and then saw them. Several cats of varying sizes, but none were full grown.

I rushed to my “butterfly garden” and saw the monarch cats were hatching! They’re all over the place. It just doesn’t take much in my garden to make me giddy.

Getting so heavily into gardening again has really helped my mental health. When I’m working outside, the rest of the world ceases to exist. Just me, my bugs and my plants. And occasionally one of the cats, when he gets a special treat. (Indoor cats, but he’s so behaved I let him out with me in the gardens now and then, but the other kitty has to be sleeping or she throws a fit. I would too.)

As promised, I’ve uploaded some of my beetle sex photos into the photo area. Clickie on the picture for a better view.

This was the day I was invaded by Japanese beetles. I’d had about one per day and was hand picking them and putting them into the “Can O’ Death,” which is a coffee can with soapy water. By the end of the invasion, it was smelling pretty funky.

So on this day, two Japanese beetles were coupling and I said “Wow.” I just never thought about bugs doing it, and it was bizarre in an interesting way. Before I finished saying wow, more came and landed in a sex pile. When I took this picture, there were five in the pile, and Mr. Studly marching to join in. All but one entered the Can O’ Death, and the other one got away. Hopefully to tell his friends to stay away.

And then here are two pink spotted ladybugs having sex. What was so interesting about this was that the one on bottom just kept on trucking, headed for the aphid patch. I’m assuming the one on bottom was the female. Apparently the male was a lot more interested, and she just wanted something to eat. She crawled all over the plant with that guy on top of her. These are my favorite ladybugs because of their color.

I’ve got one of those two-tiered metal hanging baskets. You can line them with coco mats, but I’ve been using moss. Last year I grew laurentia on top (lovely and smelled like lilacs) and a black ivy geranium on bottom. It looked kind of shabby and the black color just didn’t look good.

This year, I saw something on the Gardening By The Yard show on HGTV (Paul James) and it involved plain old begonias, the kind that comes in six packs everywhere. I decided to try it, and I’m so happy with it, I think I’ll do it again next year. You basically just stick begonias in all of the holes and fill in with sphagnum moss.

Here it is in May when I first started it:

And here it is recently:

Somewhere in there are a couple of tuberous begonias, but they got lost in the shuffle.

My neighbor says she’s seen the squirrel four times with green tomatoes. She’s not growing this year, so they have to be mine. But I just can’t decide if she’s trying to trick me into killing the squirrel, just plain cause trouble, or if she really has seen this.

I have no evidence. I haven’t noticed any tomatoes missing, and I certainly haven’t found any partially-eaten tomatoes in the yard. That was my first hint last year, but I thought it was one of my neighbor’s little granddaughters who likes to pick things. I thought she was picking her grandma’s fruits, taking a bite and then tossing them into my yard for fun. I’d never heard of squirrels eating tomatoes until I finally saw him munching on one, then throwing it away.

She also says she saw a rabbit with a huge tomato from my garden. Green one. I have an even harder time believing that one, because 1) how does a rabbit stand on its hind legs and grab a tomato (none are at ground level) 2) how does a rabbit carry a large green tomato in its mouth into my neighbor’s yard 3) I thought rabbits just nibbled around on greens

So I just don’t know about all of this. I’m so very tempted to buy some ears of dried corn and feed that squirrel with my super bungee cord squirrel feeder. It’s fun to watch, but the last time I did that, I ended up with an infestation of squirrels and they chewed up all my cable wires.

I’m starting to become a convert to kaolin clay. It’s been used on orchard fruits for awhile, with success. The great thing about it is that you don’t harm any insects, most importantly, the beneficials. (I don’t mind harming the bad guys, but so often, when you set out to kill some of them, you end up killing some good ones in the process.)

Here’s an interesting technique from Johnny Seeds (great blog!), where they actually dip seedlings in the liquid. In the video, she says it also helps with transplant shock. Interesting.

http://growingideas.johnnyseeds.com/2008/07/video-from-farm.html

I bought a bag of the Surround last year, but only started using it this year. I didn’t really have any bad bugs last year, so didn’t have much need. It’s hard to find in smaller-sized bags for the home gardener. I bought mine in a 5-pound bag from Gardens Alive, and next year, I’ll probably buy a 10-pound bag. Usually, you have to buy much larger amounts, costing over 100 bucks. Johnny Seeds also seems to have smaller bags, but I can’t tell how much “1 unit” is. Five pounds? Ten pounds?

Anyway, you mix the powder with water in a sprayer (you should invest in a good sprayer if you’re going to do this, but you should have one anyway, right, for that compost tea?). Then you spray everything and it dries to a white coating. The coating confuses bugs, plus repels them because it tastes bad and makes sticky feet. It also has some benefits regarding sun scald.

I can repel cucumber beetles (Satan), squash bugs, Japanese beetles, bean beetles, leaf hoppers, grasshoppers and so on. I’m really starting to believe in this stuff. Oh, and it just stops the flea beetles completely. I get a lot of those guys on my eggplants. (They do more ornamental damage than anything, but still, nice to stop them.)

For some reason, I find the act of going around the gardens with my sprayer to be a very satisfying task.