Deer and other Pests

There is a semi-wooded area behind our house and garden that I have cut a meandering oval walking path through. Several weeks back I discovered that three deer were also using this as their path and it led them to within two deer hops of being in my garden. I had read somewhere that deer hate man odor and that hanging some bars of soap in trees along their pathway might deter them, so I did. It did not work. After a full-moon night later that month I found deer tracks inside my garden and some leaves eaten from my sweet potatoes. There were also deer prints in my field of watermelons and some plants eaten.

Desperate times call for desperate solutions. I slipped out of my pair of clod hoppers which I wear without laces so I can get out of them easily whenever I go into the house ( this has helped to save my marriage) and peeled off my pair of socks. I put the socks on a couple garden fence posts and that evening after working in the heat a good part of the day I put my rank smelling, long sleeve shirt on a third post. I know for a fact that these articles will repulse even two-legged dear. Yes, Bambi and kin were definitely going to know that “man is in the woods.” It seems to be working; the deer have not returned despite several more full-moon nights and my patch remains protected by dirty socks.

Spot the cat who came to us from my daughter’s downtown apartment has transitioned from city cat to country cat and has become quite a huntress. She and a couple feral tomcats who include us in their territory have kept the rabbits that were the bane of our first retirement garden, well under control. I have only seen one small bunny in my vegetable garden all summer and my wife was able to grow Asian lilies without a single loss this year. Maybe the two-foot chicken wire fence helped too.

When I was in the first grade a bunch of us lads got into trouble (I can’t remember what for) and the teacher decided that we would “have our mouths washed out with soap.” (Yes, teachers did have more disciplinary latitude back in those days…especially nuns). I didn’t understand how the game was being played…that each boy was only touching the tip of his tongue to the bar and grimacing, so when my turn came I bit the end of the bar off and swallowed it. Sister’s eyes about popped out of her head. Before I was back to my desk my hand was up and before I could say a word, the young nun was yelling, “GO…GO…GO!”

Now I guess I just have a mean streak, but I don’t want to kill the insects that attack my vegetable garden; I just want them to go through what I did that afternoon after eating soap in the first grade. So when flea beetles and baby grasshoppers began destroying the leaves on my sweet potatoes, I put a chunk of soap in the bottom of a spray bottle, added water, shook it and misted the foliage. It seemed to do the trick. The damage ceased. Even had several grasshoppers come up to the house and ask for paper.

I had other bug problems too. There were potato beetles that attacked my late potatoes, but I successfully handpicked them in the nymph stage before they got wings and could fly. It only took about three pickings and they were gone. I also handpicked half a dozen fat tomato worms before they did any real damage. Planting early and getting a lot of plant up before the insects hit really helped. Of course what happened with the corn silk beetles is old history in another blog.

Then in June the Japanese beetles came and they did have wings and did fly. Japanese beetles seem to me to have a couple unique traits other than their voracious appetites. First, they seem to really like a particular type of plant species and will ignore other plants right next to that particular species. They are picky eaters. I had pole beans and cucumbers growing together and climbing on each other. The beetles only ate and congregated in large numbers on the highest leaves of the pole beans. If that is what they wanted then I decided to give it to them. The beans had about petered out anyway and we were definitely getting a little tired of eating them so I decided to use pole beans as my “trap crop” to keep the beetles off other more desirable plants.

The second unique trait of the Japanese beetles is that they drop before they fly…about a foot or so. Catching them was just a matter of holding a container beneath a leaf with half a dozen bugs on it and then tapping the leaf. The bugs dropped right into the container. For a long term solution I will need to get some Milky Spore disease into my yard next year.

My real insect nemesis this year has been cutworms…much more so in my field crop of water melons than in my vegetable garden itself. I found an awful lot of large melon plants that were looking great one day and the next day were cut off at the base. Of course this could have been avoided had I had the sense to knock the bottom out of a Dixie cup and use it as a cutworm collar. I’ll do that next year. What I did do was replant…first with more watermelons…then when the season got too short to mature watermelons, I replanted with cantaloupe and finally with pumpkins. I went through plan B… and C…and D. On a positive note, I do appear to have a good watermelon crop growing so I guess in the end, I won.

These are my major pest travails to date this year. As I have more, I will update you.