Snoopin’ with the Snoop

1. Japanese Beetles like to eat my:
   • wild rose brambles
   • rose of sharon
   • lemonbalm
   • rhubarb
   • Hey! Japanese beetles love the taste of Bindweed leaves!
   • velvet leaf
   • okra
   • sunflower
   • purple thistle

   Beware of using traps, as they tend to more often attract the beetles:

   A question I am often asked is whether Japanese beetle traps provide control,” says Jones. “Unfortunately, research has revealed that frequently many more beetles are attracted to a trap than are actually caught. So, using traps can have the effect of increasing your beetle problem, rather than eliminating it. (University of Illinois, “Japanese Beetles: A Real Pain for Everybody”)

   And though the same article says that the damage is more localized than widespread, that statement totally depends on your field of reference. Sure, if you’re a corn or soybean farmer with hundreds of acres of fields, then yes, their damage swath is localized. It’s much harder for the small gardener to consider lost plants as localized damage when the plot total equals a handful of plants.

2. Margined blister beetles love(d) my Tiger-Eye Amaranth. They devoured the plants until, back in the beginning of August, I uprooted a stand of three-foot grass on the edge of the garden, which happened to be about five feet from the T-E Amaranth. They disappeared immediately, and I didn’t see them until weeding out more grass on the other side of the garden yesterday. My T-E has since recovered, though each plant is still only about 6 inches tall. I haven’t seen the blister beetles munching on anything else since they deserted the amaranth, but apparently they’re still in the garden.
3. Monsanto.
4. Not a garden pest, but we have moles in our yard. Sigh. Their foraging tunnels look like mini-chaotic-crop circles all over our backyard. I have flooded their tunnels (which according to the article merely forces them to the surface but does not get rid of them); however, given that they eat bugs and grubs, I’d like to keep them around, but know that is probably not acceptable to anyone but me. If only they didn’t cause grass root damage.

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.)