Snoopin’ with the Snoop

Saw these today when filling up the bird bath next to the half whiskey barrel that they are in. I looked up what they are before I killed them. Does anyone recognize the little critters?

I weeded a lot of grass. And have blisters on my right ring and pinky fingers. Photos:

This may be called a sunflower, but this one doesn't follow the sun.

One of the varieties of sunflowers that I planted this spring (early summer – I put in my garden really late), was Autumn Beauty from Baker Creek. And I thought this was one of them until I went to attach the link and read that the Autumn Beauties are supposed to be 7 feet tall. This one is about three, if that. It may be one of the transplants out of the peat bag: a poor mouse who ate its way into the peat bag with a tummy full of sunflower seeds and then couldn’t get out, died, and then after partial decomposition, the sunflowers sprouted and grew. Imagine my surprise when I opened a brand new peat bag (which had been sitting in the garage for years) and found two plants growing in it. Or maybe, this sunflower is from some of my old seed packets that I planted to see if they would germinate 3 years after I bought them. Ahhh, wait. I think it’s the Torch variety. That would make sense, now that I’ve Googled it. The Torch Mexican Sunflower is Tithonia rotundifolia, which would explain why it doesn’t follow the sun. But no, wrong again. See photo on Baker Creek website. Enough waffling. It’s a flower in my garden. Another sunflower I have, which is currently at least six feet tall has not yet bloomed. The flower dimensions are there, but are green and haven’t opened. These not-bloomed heads have been following the sun for about the last two weeks. I stumped about Shorty.

As for the other side of gardening, the bugs:

Don't know what this is, but it sure is brilliant.

That red and orange striped beetle-like bug stuck around long enough for me to run inside and grab my camera. I don’t know what s/he is, so I don’t know if it’s a beneficial or a pest. Speaking of pests:

A margined blister beetle – bane of my amaranth – Epicauta pestifera

Munch. Munch. Munch munch munch munch. Chomp. Swallow. Munch. Not to mention they poop all over the leaves they eat. Yeah, I’m not touching my Tiger-Eye Amaranth. The Hopi Red Dye Amaranth that was a volunteer plant this year (I originally planted them in 2007 but did not harvest them, because I was in NC) is untouched — for now. I like to eat the Hopi Red Dye. Before the Blister Beetles came around I wasn’t too much of a fan of the Tiger-Eye, so I won’t be planting it again. I’m wavering between exterminating them, picking them off and throwing them in the beanfield where the chemicals that are already there will kill them, or trying that lime-flour attack I read about this morning (a mixture of lime and flour doused on them and the plants at the hottest part of the day). They weren’t dining when I was in my garden this morning; I first saw them around 1 or 2 p.m. today.

It appears I also have a Golden Digger Wasp building a nest between my tomatoes and carrots/beets/fennel. (Video forthcoming when I can get it to export out of Kino, which depends on my downloading mjpegtools, apparently. We’ll see.)

A full grown Japanese beetle flew into my face today, but was young enough to fall off and be smashed. At least, I hope I smashed it. Otherwise when it wakes up it will be nicely positioned next to my growing squashes.

This has the shape and size of a Japanese Beetle, but has not yet emerged from the ground.

I had hoped with the summer coming much later than usual (just this week, and it came with 95 degree >50% humidity days, with four Rate 11’s [a special program offered by our electricity provider that cuts off the electricity for no more than 2 hours between 4-6pm on excessive heat days] in a row), that perhaps they had all died off. I still hope that there won’t be so damn many of them, eating our trees to shreds, eating my rosebrambles to shreds…

The picture to the left is not the one that flew into my face, but one I uncovered while moving my firepit. I had double-lined the firepit with bricks when I first dug it two years ago, and this was beneath the second brick. What I assume is the younger larval stage of a Japanese Beetle was under another brick, but after looking at larvae on the internet, think the younger one may be a stag beetle larvae. [

Is this a Japanese Beetle larva?

]

Japanese beetles don’t like tansy, but tansy’s a weed that is impossible to get rid of without chemicals. (I assume this only because they do not attack the rose bush that is near the tansy.) Regardless, I’m probably going to be shredding tansy and garlic and cayenne peppers and dousing them with it again this year. So far I have seen no damage to the plants from giving them the stinky bath. Sometimes, I go along the plants and drown the beetles, let them sit in the Sun for weeks, and then add them to the garlic/tansy/cayenne mixture. Stinky multiplied!