In addition to their speedy growth, and obvious nice flowers, it turns out that they are a virtual magnet for aphids. As a result, they’ve become something of a sacrificial lamb for my garden.

The ones shown in the photo to the right are planted next to my lettuces, and chards. The lettuces and chards doing very nicely, and the nasturtiums are taking the brunt of the abuse from the aphids.

Most strangely, I’ve cycled at least three sets of nasturtiums out of this space, and now I’m afraid to NOT replant more. Perhaps it’s time to get more ladybugs?

“The Raccoon” has torn up all the red plastic mulch around the tomatoes I put down earlier this year as an experiment. He chews on the watering can (it too is plastic) and someone told me yesterday they could very well be chewing on the plastic for the oil/calories in it. That, I think was very sound advise as he always goes for whatever is plastic in my yard until the veggies are big enough to devour.

This last Saturday he pretty much ate every ripe strawberry I had, there was strawberry shrapnel everywhere on Sunday morning. He also dug up the newly planted fig tree and again ate the bean seeds. I was just glad the corn wasn’t up yet…..

So what to do about this kind of pest is difficult. The city says you can’t and I quote, “transport wild animals” so even the Havehart animal cages designed for them you can trap them and have the city come kill them and let you dispose of them but you can’t do it yourself, nor can you “transport” it. Over the years I have tried trapping it, I have left lights and a radio on, I have set up a scarecrow (yea that didn’t work), I have slept with the window open so my dog would alert me and I could go outside in the middle of the night and run it off. I have tried “chicken balls” which is chicken skin filled with red chili, Tabasco, and anything else hot you can think of. They are then tied with string and left out for the Raccoon to “find”, burn his hands, eyes, mouth and decide this is a bad yard and not come back. HA-HA-HA. Those didn’t work and I had to pick up disgusting chicken skin strewn about my yard. Oh, I also bought coyote urine on-line, that worked until it rained, which here is often.

I was so fed up on Sunday I did set my Havehart trap and then I re-homed him down to the state park, I don’t really consider this “transporting” and it may only be to justify it to myself, but really he is in the same basic neighborhood but perhaps even better digs down there.

Just about to be “Re-Homed”

If he comes back and/or if the neighbors cat(s) don’t stay out, my next attempt is going to be this snazzy thing I found at the nursery, it is quite spendy but sounds worth it. It is a Water Scarecrow, a motion activated sprinkler and it is supposed to work both night and day. If I end up buying and installing it I’ll let you know how it works. If any of you have used it please feel free to comment on how it works, I for one would like to know before dropping 75 bucks on it.

Here you can see a bit of the aphid’s destructive prowess:

These butter lettuce babies were MUCH perkier a few days ago!

Image from Wikipedia – Illustrating how overwhelmed a plant can become with aphids

Here’s the quick rundown on aphids – (Thanks Wikipedia!)

Aphids, also known as greenfly, blackfly or plant lice, are minute plant-feeding insects in the superfamily Aphidoidea in the homopterous division of the order Hemiptera. Aphids passively feed on sap of phloem vessels in plants. This sap, being kept under high pressure, once a phloem vessel is punctured, it is forced into the food canal. Aphids actively ‘drink’ (suck) from xylem vessels when thirsty. As they feed, aphids often transmit plant viruses to their food plants. These viruses can sometimes kill the plants.

Simply, they’re annoying little bugs that can lay waste to your best gardening efforts. Since we are not users of commercial pesticides that will end up in the vegetables, and ultimately in us after we eat them, we’ve decided to take another route, and call in the cavalry.

Enter, the ladybug.

A cute little ladybug hanging out on a zucchini seedling

The humble ladybug, cute and sweet seeming, is a voracious eater – capable of eating up to 50 aphids a day! And I unleashed 1,500 ladybugs in the greenhouse! That could be up to 75,000 aphids a day being eaten! Hopefully the ladybugs can eat aphids faster than the aphids can reproduce.

These ladybugs are busy setting up their new homes.

After only a couple of days, I can see marked improvement – a distinct reduction in the number of aphids visible. And today when I checked on them, the ladybugs seemed to be quite content in the greenhouse, digging in, and (HOPEFULLY!) laying eggs around the plants. Once the new ladybugs are born, they start eating aphids themselves, and mercifully leave the plants alone. Yay for carnivorous bugs! (How many times do you say that in your life?)

I hope this means they’re liking their new home.

More ladybug news as it develops.

You can buy live ladybugs through this link here:

So Peach Leaf Curl is a fungus called Taphrina deformans, it lives on the bark over a mild winter, it is easy to treat but can only be treated before the tree buds in the spring or in the fall after most of the leaves have fallen. I ended up treating them last spring, but it wasn’t soon enough and so was going to do it in the fall, well that didn’t happen. I was hoping since the winter was so harsh (really! I lost several perennial herbs that I have had for years) that it wouldn’t have survived the winter. But it did. So this year I am not going to remove the curled leaves, they are still needed for photosynthesis and removing them didn’t work last year I am going to leave them on there until they fall. I did have lots of blossoms so the possibility of fruit is still there, it just may be blemished. I am also not going to thin the fruit if and when any does develop just to see what survives and ripens. One thing I am going to do is fertilize through the summer just to be sure its getting enough nutrients since the foliage is limited. The second picture is the one of the leaves this morning, it is easy to recognize if you have this. It doesn’t affect the plum tree only feet from the peach and nectarine trees, it really only affects these two fruits trees. So lets hope I get lots of plums!

This slug thinks that all the leaves in the garden are for him.

Slugs and snails can be found in any cool, damp environment – under leaves, rocks, boards, etc. If you are in the habit of using wood chips as paths in your garden, it’s a good idea to put a layer of egg shells under the chips to prevent slugs from making a home. Prevention is obviously the best method of slug and snail management – simply don’t give them an opportunity to move in. But they are sneaky, and persistent.

There are no shortage of products on the market, available from your local garden or hardware store that profess to be the cure all, but what are you to do if you don’t want to load up your garden with chemical pesticides? Here are a couple “home-made” options that we’ve come up with that seem to help with the ongoing battle.

Beer Traps - Highly effective, and relatively inexpensive. It’s an excellent use for your old yogurt and cream cheese containers. Clean the containers thoroughlly, then bury up to near the top of the container in the soil near to young plants. Fill the containers with cheap beer (why use the good stuff for slugs?) and wait. Every morning, go to the garden, and you will likely find it filled with slugs who have gone into the cup for a little drink, and wound up drowning. Empty out the container of the dead slugs, rinse it out, and as evening comes, add more beer and repeat.

Egg Shells – For slugs, it’s like walking on broken glass. And they certainly want no part of it. The best preparation that we’ve found for getting egg shells ready for use in the garden is a simple one. Collect egg shells throughout the week in an aluminum pie tin (or something similar) leave them out, and exposed to air. They won’t develop odor unless they’re kept in an airtight container. They will begin to dry, and let go of some scents that are appetizing to unwelcome mammals. Once your pie tin is relatively full, sprinkle the shells liberally with a couple tablespoons of salt. Put them in the oven at around 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes until all of the residual membranes inside the shell crack when you touch it. The point of baking is to make the shells more brittle, and to dry out the albumen inside. When the membranes inside are still soft, they still have a strong enough smell to be appealing to raccoons and possums and other animals more destructive to your veggie patch than the slugs.

Shells ready for use!

Once the shells are baked, and cooled. Put them in a freezer bag, and wrap the bag with a dish towel. Now, squeeze the bag, and crush the shells into small shards. Sprinkle these shards liberally around the base of your plants. Slugs and snails will not be interested in coming anywhere near your plants with these razor sharp deterrants guarding your plants.I know that there are many other methods employed to clear away these pests – I’d love to hear your home-made remedies for slugs. Please feel free to add them to the comments section!

As it is nearing time to plant carrots for those of you not familiar with the Pacific NW pests one that may not be prevalent in other parts of the country is the Carrot Rust fly. The fly lays eggs in the seed beds and the larvae tunnel into carrots and the carrots are filled with rusty mush.

One of the easiest ways to prevent these pests is to use a floating row cover like Re-may over the seed beds.

This is a plant, or as the master gardener at Swanson’s a couple years ago said was a noxious weed, that invades my yard and garden. Well its not on the noxious weed list that I could find for 2007. It can be eradicated if you are diligent and cut it back and starve the roots. Well Its not in my yard, I can’t cut it back. All I can do is dig it up when I see it and dig deep!!! Follow the very woody roots until I get them all (ha ha ha) or they break off. The Roots are very woody, almost branch like, and the tiniest piece or even a few fibers of a shredded one will sprout new growth.

It first starts to show in April, and I love digging it up right now because there is very little planted to disturb. Its in the middle of summer when there are stalks of it growing amongst the beans and are 3 and 4 feet tall, all I can do then is get as much as possible. It is a never ending battle, one I will forge again this year.

But I did say this was a lovely day didn’t I….. I got the raspberries cut back and the re-bar stakes in the ground. I didn’t get enough for a trellis and after pounding them in they were no where as tall as I wanted them to be…… rethinking the trellis thing. But in the mean time, I took a flexible wire dog tie out (It was in the camping stuff). It has snappy clips on either end so I looped it over and clipped the wire simply to make a loop on either end and wound it around the re-bar. For now it will hold the raspberries up and will be easy to remove to work the bed or when I finally figure something else out. I moved on down to the blueberries and pulled all the morning glory coming up, and then right on down to the strawberries. I only had enough compost to dress the raspberries and half the blueberries but that end of the garden looks great.

I got lots of kamikaze weeding done also but nothing else planted today. I hopefully will get more in soon. I am going to go through the seeds in the next couple days and get a plan going.

Here are a couple picks of the bed at the end of the day.