Category: bugs

At long last, a home for the scallions

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ Leave a comment

 I’ve had some scallions in 6-packs for a while now. I was going to replace the ones in the terra-cotta but then those got scale and I was busy.

As you can see they’ve been a little neglected.

But now I have a fancy new long and low talavera pot.

So I filled it with the good dirt and…

Shit some of the starts have scale too.

Luckily not all of them.

As for what I’ll replace them with, I’ve always wanted to try these.

But also some of the original.

Let’s hope they’ll sprout in the cold- but onions almost never disappoint.

And there’s room for all of them!

Minus the ones I had to compost because of the scale.

I really have to conquer this ant issue…

White fly abatement, hopefully

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 8 Comments

So whitefly is an issue this time of year as the aphids start to go away, out come the whitefly.

So I got some traps.

They’re sticky traps that smell like new leaves, which is what those bastards go for. The mint seems to be one of the big pulls for the little buggy jerks.

It’s just a matter of peeling the paper off and sticking it close to the plants.

The glory of the new plant stand is that it’s very easy to tie sticky traps too.

The real problem is the chayote. With the whitefly and scale infestations on the mints I’ve just been cutting back the afflicted parts and letting the plants grow back, I can’t do that with my chayote.

And here you can see one of the little bastards.

Those white specks are what the damage looks like.

Anyways the trap is up and hopefully it takes a good chunk out of the whitefly population.

The chayote is very vigorous, to the point where after I put up the trap I had to disentangle it from the apple tree. So I’m not worried too much about it, but it’s better to get ahead of these things.

I have a fair amount of work to do this week, including figuring out what to do with my sun herb bed, which keeps killing oreganos. At least whitefly wont be so much of a problem going forward.

 

Nuking it from orbit

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

The it of course being my tree collard. The nuke of course…

It’s not like I love the usual red and green aphids, they’re the worst. It’s just that grey and black aphids are the extra worst.

And those damn grey aphids are on the tree collard, and I killed a few black ones on my new baby celery.

So, in the dead of night, my weapon of many little beetles was deployed.

And in the morning at least a few remained!

Some migrated a little off course…

But the few I tipped into the baby celery were still there. In ripping out the awful potted tomatoes I kinda decimated my ladybug colonies. So in order to make sure I have enough eggs in late fall to overwinter, I’m probably going to have to keep topping up the ranks every month or two months until we stop selling them around November.

It’s always better to use a natural method of pest control, even over organics like neem and insecticidal soap.

You’ll pry my B.t. out of my cold dead hands though, as it’s the only thing I’ve ever done against caterpillars that actually works.

I’m a land of contrasts.

Mint rehab

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 3 Comments

It’s time for an intervention.

A mint-ervention, if you will.

Look. The Moroccan mint is just a mess, and it’s all my fault. It’s just not mint tea weather, so I haven’t been picking as much as I should. (Never got the hang of iced tea I’m afraid)

The Chocolate peppermint’s problems are not my fault.

Oh boy it’s scale! One of my least favorite pests.

The only solution is to cut it back, and drench it in horticultural oil. And then keep doing that until it springs back.

The Moroccan mint got a drench too, and I’m fertilizing it and babying it and hopefully it will have some new growth I can take cuttings from so I can refresh the plant.

The constabulary is over-interested in my roman mint. This is a sign of white-fly. The other sign of white fly is, all the white flies. Ick. I’m loath to spray it down while the ladies are visiting though, so I’m hoping they’ll take care of business so I don’t have to.

I think my pineapple mint has gone past needing rehab into needing a hearse. Well. It served me well and gave me many cuttings and much tea, so I suppose it was bound to happen.

Luckily I still have one of it’s clones. And this guy is super duper robust and healthy.

Tada, meet pineapple mint, son of pineapple mint!

They grow up so fast.

Now my strawberry mint looks like it needs an exorcist, but it’s fairly healthy, just needs a trim. It’s interesting which mints tend towards the buggy and which tend to repel them. Peppermints seem more vulnerable than spearmints and pineapple mint (a sub variety of apple mint) seems to be the most resistant of all.

Anyways, the mint-ervention is ongoing, and I have high hopes for them all.

I will never apologize for a pun.

Pepper problems

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

So at this point I have two established pepper plants, a lipstick pepper and a Italian Bull Horn pepper. The Lipstick has some nice fruits, so I thought it was time to pick a few.

Look at those nice big green peppers. Now lipstick peppers are generally picked at the red stage, but even with our heat wave there is no guarantee they’ll get that ripe, and I just wanted to check for texture anyways.

Quality control!

One of my local ladies was chilling on the plant, which is always nice to see.

Right. So three nice green peppers. One minor problem- there was a small hole in the top of one of them. Might as well cut it open just to make sure right?

Fuck cabbage moths. Just… I hate those little bastards so much. Needless to say this pepper ended up in the compost.

Also- since when do ‘cabbage’ moths eat peppers! ARGGG.

Well It’s a good thing I bought B.t. for the tree collard. Turns out I’m going to have to use it for the dang peppers too because life’s not fair and caterpillars suck.

In the end the peppers were ok but too bitter. I’ll try to let the rest ripen, or make sure to cook them first. It’s ok- these were picked as quality control, so it’s ok that they weren’t perfect.

But seriously I hate cabbage moths.

 

Biological warfare part 2

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

So my regular ladybugs weren’t working out. They were active, but not as numerous as I’d like, and the aphids keep trying to take over the Sun Gold.

There is a solution to this dilemma. And they’re native ladybugs to boot. Had to store them in the fridge for a while.

My insane employee discount has raised its head again. The procedure for releasing them is kinda involved, but it works.

You have to wait til it’s dusk. Or dawn, but dusk was more acceptable to me.

First things first you have to spray down the plants you’re releasing the ladybugs on. This gives them water to drink.

Oh boy. That’s a lot of bugs. I tipped in some ladybugs into each pot or bed with aphids. Then I sprayed them down with a little more water so they could drink.

In the morning I saw aphids- and their predators circling their prey.

Not all of the ladybugs made it- a few I tipped into the cauliflower were clearly dead, as a few I put on the herbs.

But they’re reproducing like mad, and I await the hungry larvae.

And while I’m sure a few are going to travel to the neighbors- quite a few of the ones flying around are just going to my other plants. So I have that going for me.

This was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done- but hey, fuck aphids.

Seriously.

Fuck aphids.

Cauliflower woes

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

I had to pull another cauliflower today- and yeah, maggots on the roots. The plant came up really quickly too- like it was barely alive.

And that’s not even the only bug on the plants.

Ah good old cabbage moth. Or cabbage moth caterpillar anyways. They’re hard to see most of the time- this was the first one I managed to kill this year.

It gets worse.

In the folds of the leaves were an absolute mountain of aphids. I smushed what I could- and I’ll spray some horticultural oil in the morning.

Honestly after pulling the weakest one, I thought I’d just pull them all, and just chalk it up, maybe sow some spaghetti squash.

Only… the largest cauliflowers weren’t so weak rooted. A light tug was all it took to uproot the dying ones, but the big boys are firmly rooted.

I’m not stupid, I know there has to be maggots on these roots too- but maybe the neem oil pours I did last week worked in reducing their numbers? One or two maggots don’t hurt the plant- a zillion do. I just pulled a few of the Bok Choy for tonight’s supper and there was one maggot between them. So they’re around but not causing too many problems, except what they did to my turnips and what they’re doing to my cauliflowers.

I’m hoping with all the other cabbage family crops in the garden that this is the worst of it.

But they remaining cauliflowers do look good- if buggy.

Now the problem is… it’s going to rain again. Which might bring out more flies and more maggots.

Ah San Francisco. Growing things here is so tricky sometimes.