What do these things have in common? Organic pest control! A little about each.
There is a groundhog in our neighbourhood. It has been plaguing Iulia's garden on the west side of my property, and her neighbours' on the other side. They have been seeing it and evidence of its appetite for the past month or more, but it didn't seem to have found my garden, which puzzled me. Iulia has fences all around her yard, so the beast has to work to get at her tomatoes and cucumbers. We took down our wooden garden gate because it blocked the sun on my herb garden. We are still planning to replace it with a chain link gate to match our neighbours' fence, but ran out of money once we paid for the sod, earth, etc., and decided to put that in our garden budget for next year. You can't eat a gate, and flowers are prettier, so it was put on hold. My youngest child being nine years old, we did not have the same need for security as Iulia and Ovidiu who have two toddlers. So our vegetable garden has what amounts to a red carpet inviting the groundhog to come and go as he pleases. Somehow our garden escaped his notice. Until I planted my second round of romaine lettuces. I waited until before I left on vacation to start a new crop, as my first plantlings were getting big enough for salad. I kept the pot of baby lettuce up on my table and had friends water it while we were away. They were big enough to plant last weekend, and I put them in three neat rows near the bigger lettuces. There were too many to fit, so I put the remaining three plants up in the bathtub between the basil and the sweet potatoes. They were doing great until yesterday. I came home from work and they were gone. Almost all of them were gone, the three in the magic bathtub were still there. What happened??? As with every new development, good or bad, I immediately went to Iulia who had just pulled up in her car home from work and told her. They are gone!
"It's the marmotte," said Iulia. (We speak a mix of English and French in Montreal.)
I had a Bugs Bunny moment.
"This means WAR!"
Passionate discussions ensued with Josh last night. He wanted to follow it home, find out where it lives and pressure the owner of the property to do something about the marmotte. Or buy a slingshot and shoot it (my youngest daughter is appalled by this option.) So in the end we settle on an option which a former neighbour of ours has used. Coyote piss.
Where do you get coyote piss? Garden centres? Hardware stores? I suggested the internet. You can find anything on the internet.
If I have lost you by now, I will explain. Coyotes mark their territories in the way dogs do. I don't think I need to explain how that works. Prey animals will avoid the smell that indicates they are on the territory of a predator which will eat them. Coyote urine sprinkled around around your yard should keep out some of the critters that munch on your produce. We learned (online) that you can buy it in liquid, pellets, powder or gel format. So we ordered some and I will let you know how it works. I have been thinking about how this miracle product must be obtained, and have put this on the list of the top ten worst jobs I can think of.
Hardcore gardeners will know that it is a great thing to have a mantis in the garden. An ooth is an egg case, which will hatch out 200 to 400 tiny mantises the size of mosquitoes. Once again, the internet is the resource which offers gardeners and farmers the opportunity to order Chinese mantis ooths (these are the type that you see locally. They live and breed well in our climate). Mantises, like ladybugs (which you can also order online), are voracious predators and will eat the bugs which eat your garden. I have had more personal experience with mantises than anyone I know because I am married to a mantis freak. Josh, an amateur entomologist who is good buddies with the folks in charge of the Montreal insectarium, and trades live bugs and spiders with a world renowned British entomologist (now a close personal friend), has raised and bred exotic mantises in our living room. I have become adept at spotting runaway mantises on my kitchen walls and scooping them back into their plastic cups when they are tiny. When we have had Chinese mantises hatch out in the past, Josh walked around our neighbourhood and dropped extra baby mantises on gardens he likes. Now that we have a big garden, he ordered three ooths and we attached them in random places around the yard. Unless you are present to witness the hatching (easier when it is in an aquarium in the living room), it is hard to tell if the ooth is full or empty, dead or alive. So it was with great excitement when I finally spotted a mantis, not yet full size but getting pretty close, in my tomatoes. I saw him again (or another one, same size) yesterday.
The beer is for the slugs. As mentioned before, we seem to be cursed with a ridiculous quantity of slugs on our property. I have been researching ways to address this problem as they seem to really love eating almost everything I have planted in the garden with the exception of green onions, lilies and mint. I have tried surrounding every plant with egg shells, then with coffee grinds, neither of which worked. I tried beer and lime (not the kind you put in your corona, the powdered mineral that you sprinkle on the ground) at the same time, and I am not sure which one made more of a difference, but that was when things started to turn around. There are still slugs everywhere, and they are still munching my plants but not to the point that the plants are eaten to nothing, just lightly nibbled.
The beer solution involves putting out cups or containers of beer, poured about an inch deep, dug in level to the ground so it is like a beer wading pool. Slugs go crazy for it. They are not picky about quality (Labatt Blue dry had been my choice because it is the cheapest stuff they sell in my neighbourhood), and they don't care if the bubbles are gone and the alcohol is evaporated, because they are still diving in a few days after I have refilled the bars. What is important is that it attracts them like a magnet, and it is fatal to them. It is gross, but I can keep track of how well it is working. It also has demonstrated to me just how many slugs I am dealing with, because despite finding between 50 and 100 of them pickled daily, I am still finding more on my plants.
My other two techniques I have tried were suggestions to deal with aphids on my new baby jersey mac apple tree, a gift from our friend Jacques. After a few minutes of scientific fascination watching ants farming aphids (I have read about this but never seen it), I decided it was quite enough and they would have to go so my tree would survive and eventually I would have apples (and a whole new level of pest control to learn). I first tried a solution of tobacco, a cigarette soaking overnight in a spray can full of water. I tried this for a couple of weeks on the tree and on my pepper plants (I am still not sure what was eating them, maybe slugs or something else), without much dramatic improvement. I could still see the aphids under the leaves and the ants running around the trunk and branches. The ants all abandoned ship when the spray showered down on them, but they were back later on. My second attempt seemed too simple, but in fact it worked really well. A few drops of dish soap diluted in water in the spray can, for a few days (reapplied after rain or the sprinkler), and the aphids seem to be completely gone. I have started using it on the rest of the garden now.
Up until my tomatoes started to ripen, I had nothing eating the leaves or fruit. I found two tomato hornworms (never had seen or heard of them before, but my amateur entomologist husband recognized them) who had been heading towards my tomatoes, drawn by the smell or something, but who never had a chance to do any damage. I found out this week that slugs like ripe tomatoes. Time to buy more beer...
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