Garden Visitors

*I dedicate this blog post to all the little insects that have given their lives in the name of my garden.*

It's an inevitable fact that bugs would make their home in my garden. I mean, duh, it's nature (Goulet.) I'm ok with this fact of life and these little multi-legged critters, however, what I'm not ok with is when they eat the things I grow that I want to eat. When I planted my garden, I decided that I would give the whole 'organic gardening' thing a try and not use any chemicals. So when I realized that I had a cucumber beetle problem, I searched for a chemical-free solution and came up with this lovely little number:

These were my attempt at cucumber beetle traps. Planks of wood painted "squash blossom yellow", covered in TangleFoot - a sticky glue-like substance that comes out of a caulking tube, never dries out, and is usually used to keep birds from places you don't want them - and then baited with mushed up squash blossoms (their favorite.) The instructions recommended all spice oil to bait them, but said squash blossoms should work too, and they also said to put them on a steak or post in the ground, but I found it easier to just prop them up with pieces of slate rock found in the yard. As you can see in the photos, they did actually work to some extent, but I wouldn't say the solved the problem. So on a scale of 1 - 10, I would say they were a 6.5 -- they trapped bugs, but mainly just got me sticky.

My traps didn't really do much good, but the cucumber beetles weren't really doing any significant damage, so I didn't stress much about it. Now, when I found the Squash Bugs wandering around, I started to be a little more concerned. These ugly little guys resemble stink bugs, and really like to much on soft-bodied fruits. This is a HUGE problem, as I have lots of yellow squash and nice, ripe tomatoes. I kept an eye on them for a few weeks, and when I started to notice more of them AND caught them mating, things had to be done. (They actually had the nerve to copulate in front of me! Oh the humanity!) Ben and I went to Oakland Nursery (the staff there really knows their pests... they're tremendously helpful and I love getting all my gardening needs there) and got some of the really strong pesticide. Unfortunately, this meant no more "organic garden", but the only chemical that would take care of the squash bugs was the highest powered stuff.

So we got the chemicals and sprayer home, but didn't spray right away. We've been kinda busy and I just didn't get around to it sooner. A few days later - it was last Sunday - my parents stopped by with my grandma to visit. Dad and I were sitting on the porch chatting when I noticed this weird, bright green splatter along our white porch railing. As I glanced up at my tomato plants popping above the railing I saw this:

HOLY SMOKES! What in the world was this thing? I'd be lying if I said that it didn't scare the jeebers out of me. It blended in so perfectly with the tomato branches, that if I hadn't noticed the weird green splatter and glanced up, I may have never noticed it. This thing was easily the size of a roll of dimes - in length and diameter. I would say it was about 4-5 inches long and a good inch in diameter. Ben took out his pocket knife to try to pry it off the branch and toss it to the birds. When he did this, that little booger started spitting that weird green goo EVERYWHERE! (Ahh... it all comes together.) Ben was shocked at how heavy it was and when he couldn't get it pried off of the branch, he just sacrificed a bit of my plant for the greater good and broke the whole thing off. (It had already stripped everything off of a few neighboring branches.)

Fortunately when we were at the nursery a few days before I noticed something called a Hornworm pictured on the "common garden insect pest guide" hanging with the pesticides. Well, the horn on his behind was a pretty dead-on give away that he was a horn worm. So later on I Googled it. (Don't you just love how "Google" is now a word...?) Anywho, I found this picture:

I'd say that's the same kind of critter... wouldn't you? The crazy thing was, I was doing some tending the day before and saw some of that poo on a few of my tomatoes. It was so large that I just thought "Huh... that's some strange looking squirrel poop..." Yeah, it wasn't squirrel poo... it came from that creature.

Needless to say that after finding that creepy crawly, we sprayed for bugs that evening.

We have a neighbor who is an Entomologist... He liked my representation of a mosquito.