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.

Duct Tape Corn

Now I don’t believe in exaggerating and I am definitely not one to give into bragging or hyperbole, but I can say in all humility that by late May my sweet corn was light years ahead of anyone else’s in the state. By Memorial Day weekend the farmer’s field corn was only ankle to knee high despite having an exceptionally early dry April planting spell; I had been keeping an eye on all the gardeners and they were at about the same stage. But my corn… my sweet corn was as tall as me, fully tasseled, had yellow silks and ears. I had planted early and covered it with newspaper during a frost. My goal with my whole garden was to get as much plant growth up as early as possible so that when the insect hordes hit, my garden would have enough foliage and be far enough along to take a good hit. I am using natural pest controls not so much because I am environmentally conscious as that I am cheap and lazy. I felt that planting early and getting out ahead of the insects and Mother Nature’s surprises was worth the risk. Besides, for a small gardener like me (and unlike a commercial farmer) it would cost relatively little to buy seed to replant. So by Memorial Day, all I had to do was to wait for the yellow silks to turn brown and I would be eating sweet corn.

Everything looked so dandy I decided to go fishing…bet you saw that coming! After a couple days of relatively good fishing I checked back on my corn patch. All of the silks on my first planting had been eaten back by beetles to the husk. I raced to pull out my organic gardening guidebook. Yes, beetles sometimes do this; no silks, no pollination, no corn; the ears would not fill out. Simple translation: you’re screwed; try again next year.

Had I been slam dunked by Mother Nature again at the last minute? I decided not to go down without a fight. I went out to the patch and pulled back the husks on every ear of my first planting, exposing the tip of the cob and another two inches of golden silks. I grabbed my trusty roll of duct tape and tore off two inch pieces that I held between my fingers like a man preparing to roll a cigarette; I pulled my other hand across the tassels and dumped the pollen beads into my duct tape cigarette and wrapped it around the newly exposed corn silk. If those beetles were going to get these last silks, they were going to have to eat through duct tape to do it!

The following Sunday, after church I told a farmer buddy who sings in choir with me what had transpired and asked for his advice. I’m one who believes in picking an expert’s brain. As he listened politely, he was grinning broadly on the outside so I knew he was guffawing on the inside.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone do that before; it’s interesting how people solve problems. When seed companies want to pollinate corn, they put the pollen they want into a small paper bag and then staple it over the ears they want pollinated. Each bead of pollen has about ten thousand grains of pollen on it. You might try that.”

When I got home from church that Sunday, I went to have another look at my corn. I noticed that the silks on my second planting of corn—planted a couple weeks after the first-- had not had their silks eaten on, so maybe this silk-eating phase of the insect’s life was over. I pulled all the duct tape off my first planting and pulled handfuls of pollen off the tassels and mixed it into the now again exposed short silks. I do not know if it was the duct tape pollination or the later hand pollination that worked, but I do know that when the kids came home Father’s Day, we ate buttered corn on the cob, cucumber and onion slices marinated in sweet vinegar, a green bean/new potato and sausage entre and a cherry cobbler dessert baked from the cherries that we picked from our trees and scoops of vanilla ice cream we bought at the store.

Now I’m not one to exaggerate or given to bragging but…FRANK NELLIS-ONE; Mother Nature-ZIP!

Half-wild Salads

The irises have been popping blue-purple everywhere. The apple tree and cherry trees blossomed snow white a couple weeks ago, then shed their blossoms and now the green cherries are already beginning to appear. Spring passes in a blur of speed. It has been an unusually droughty April, which the farmers loved because they could get their corn crops in the field, but today the weatherman has promised an inch or two of rain and possibly a twister so I have time to write a blog.

I divided some rhubarb plants and replanted them in one-foot deep and wide holes filled with compost so that next year we should have some early summer pies to be followed by the cherry pies of late summer and apple pies of fall. It is nice to have a succession of eating even though that is not necessary today with a freezer. We had not planned to plant strawberries but when a neighbor gave us 30 plants we couldn’t pass it up. The rhubarb and strawberries now occupy a perennial area in the far west end of my garden. They receive the morning sun but are somewhat shaded by the apple tree in the hot afternoon. The morning sun is a blessing in summer but the afternoon sun is a curse. Next year I also hope to add a permanent bed of asparagus to this perennial area of the garden.

This year where the asparagus will be next year is a bed of salad greens, seven five-foot rows of lettuce and two of spinach. This represents the first produce of the garden we have begun to consume. We have had several salads so far, some of the wilted greens variety made with a hot topping of sweetened vinegar, bacon and bacon grease—the kind we ate in the 50s before salad dressings were sold in plastic bottles. We threw in some sweet violet leaves which are ubiquitous in my yard and edible and tasty in salads. Violets have none of the bitter taste of dandelion greens and have more nutritional value than garden grown greens. We will probably be eating a lot of salads for the next month until later vegetables begin coming in. Good deal for the waistline.

The early spuds are up, about six inches tall, and the late potatoes are planted and under a straw mulch to keep down weed competition. I also have bush beans, pole beans and corn all up and about six inches tall. There are four tomato and four peppers plants. I am taking a chance by planting so early but I have sandy soil that drains well and heats up early. Seed is relatively inexpensive if I do have to replant because of a late frost and I really want to get the plants off to a good start before the insect hordes arrive. I did have to cover everything with newspaper and cardboard one night when frost was predicted, but I think it is worth the effort to beat the bugs and summer drought.

Besides the vegetables I’ve already mentioned, I also have two 25-foot rows covered with black plastic and drip irrigation hose under the plastic for melons and cucumbers. My horseman buddy arrived right on schedule with a free dump-trailer load of two-year aged horse manure. After two years it has turned back into soil and you would never be able to identify the substance as horse manure. So all the beds, including plastic topped, drip irrigated strips are well fertilized. The black plastic has proved a real incubator and Crenshaw, cantaloupe and honeydews are all beginning to poke through the holes in the plastic. I am taking a real gamble with the Crenshaw and honeydews since the local farmers don’t grow them and I have learned not to question the locals. But I am a melon lover and have decided to take the long shot anyway. As for watermelons, I will plant a whole field of Jubilees around May 15, hopefully from transplants and under irrigated black plastic, so they aren’t included in my little 25’X40’ vegetable garden.

That pretty well brings everything up to date. I’ll just sit here, eat my greens and listen to the thunder and rain. I don’t REALLY think there will be a tornado?

Garbage man

Trash or garbage…what’s your preference? I’ve always been more of a garbage man myself. It may be because I get a certain satisfaction in my daily routine of carrying the gallon ice cream pail of egg shells, coffee grounds, banana peels, and table scraps out to the garden compost pile. I like making compost; I like organic gardening; I like earthworms, and I don’t like waste. The garbage serves as the “green material,” (i.e., nitrogen) which helps heat up the “brown material,” which for my pile is mostly dried leaves from the maples that shade our home in summer. Compost, green manure (turned under ryegrass), and wood ashes will someday provide most of the fertilization needed for our small garden plot. I can’t put meat scraps or fish heads in the compost because that would draw vermin, so I bury it too deep to be dug up, usually three feet or more down.

Of course some trash is also bio-degradable, notably newsprint (not the colored ads) and cardboard. Both of these can serve as weed-smothering mulches if covered and weighted down against the wind. Earth worms love cardboard and newsprint mulches almost as much as coffee grounds. The worms not only “plow” and aerate garden soil with their burrowing, but also enrich it with worm castings and their dead bodies.

Some trash is recyclable, but most is not bio-degradable. I take a pick up load of trash to the public dumpster each month, only about a fourth of it is recyclable, even though I recycle metal cans and plastic jugs religiously. “How can I bring this much trash in now and have the same amount next month?” I muttered. (In our defense, I must say that we did have a lot less when I burned all paper packaging, but we have cut out burning because of the global warming issue.) “You buy more of it every week when you go to the store,” replied the dumpster attendant.

I prefer bio-degrading to recycling because energy and greenhouse gasses are created in both the transportation and remanufacture of recycled products, albeit much less than manufacturing from raw materials. Home produced vegetables and products require no containers for shipping, so I feel better about garden produce which does not need to be transported cross country or put in metal cans or plastic containers. I also feel a little more self-sufficient and independent. Gardening and turning compost piles are good exercise for breaking a sweat. No need for a gym membership. Of course, trash can be reduced by not buying stuff we don’t need. We need to discern between wants and needs. We are not slaves to consumerism. Besides, I also enjoy turning earthworms into crappie!

Going Green and Tight

Frugal and green… the two concepts often overlap. If I install more insulation and tighter windows, or if I dress warmer and turn down the thermostat, or if I buy more energy efficient appliances all in order to lower my utility bills and save me money, then in each instance I am also being green and reducing my carbon foot print. Energy conservation is both green and frugal. Likewise, if I grow an organic garden and eat out of it to reduce my grocery bill, I am inadvertently reducing the green house gasses spewed from trucks hauling produce cross country. If I decide that I don’t really need the latest electronics or toys from the Orient, then I am reducing pollution from both manufacturing and trans-oceanic transportation while I keep more money in my pocket.

OK, being economical can often have the side effect of also being green, but what about the consumer-driven economy—if people don’t buy, then manufacturers don’t manufacture, and workers don’t have jobs or income? There is a fundamental identity between the value of product and income. In plain English, if everyone consumed half as much, then everyone would only need half as much income. There could still be full employment, but people would only need to work a 20-hr work week to make their purchases. Like that would ever happen! But if it did, there would be more leisure and less global warming.

I, for one, do not believe that the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. If we as individuals (i.e., the parts) get our acts together in terms of discriminating between needs and wants, in conservation and recycling, in limiting population growth, in home production, then perhaps the whole or global problems can be alleviated.

Think of me, not as a tightwad miser unwilling to help spend the nation out of recession, when I’m actually a patriotic green environmentalist. Considering that the word frugal is a synonym for economical, and that economy and ecology both come from the same Greek root word, oikos, (which means home or environment), should these concepts really be that much in conflict?