Husband and I are traveling to Tacoma, WA on Monday to see our Daughter. We will be gone for a week. This week we are prepping our gardens for our absence, watering like crazy and taking care of any garden pest and disease issues.
Due to the lack of humidity and the isolation on the Northern Great Plains, we have a comforting lack of pests and diseases in our gardens. We rarely need to combat anything, but there are a few persistent garden problems that require action.
We somehow have blight problems in our tomatoes and roses that require an application of fungicide. I sprayed with Daconil last night. Last year, we had flea beetles in our kohlrabies that required insecticide. I applied some Sevin to some chewed up kohlrabi plants last night. The potted tomatoes and peppers in the church garden need something called Rot Stop to combat Blossom End Rot. (Calcium uptake in a pot is difficult at times.) We also have cabbages that need help with cabbage worms with Thuricide, or Bacillus Thuringiensis, which is an organic worm deterrent. No worms in our Savoy cabbages!
How do you deal with life’s pests, garden or otherwise?
Trail Baboon 
I stomp on them with a hobnailed boot. 😉
Seriously, for non-human pests, I swat them away or hit them with RAID or weedkiller. I try to be as non-toxic as possible, but sometimes ya gotta use the hard stuff (especially when your wife is climbing onto your shoulders to avoid the creepy crawlies).
Human pests are best eliminated with a nasty stare, maybe a sharp word or two, and then complete ignore-ance.
Chris in Owatonna
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
Chris, I like your distinction between human and non-human pests, especially given our recent discussion on annoying co-workers. I can go on and on about garden pests, and later today I will. The chigger/no see’ update bites are healing up, but they required a lot of cortisone ointment combined with a decision not to scratch.
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Biggest pests in my life right now are spam/scam callers, especially the ones that show up on the caller ID as “800 Service”. We get about a dozen of those a day. We never pick up, of course, but nothing seems to discourage them. Add to that the calls offering us extended warranty on our vehicle (they claim to know that our warranty is expiring but they apparently don’t know our name or the make and year of our car) and the miscellaneous calls from the IRS, Police Officers (just generic police officers) and who knows what else. As a consequence, we seldom answer our phone unless the caller ID shows it’s a name or number we know.
I know there is a “do not call” registry, but why would a scammer, intent on fraud, adhere to a constraint like that?
I don’t see any solution at our level. I think the phone companies could curtail a lot of it, but they won’t unless ordered to by the legislature and I don’t expect that to happen either.
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Nonny just got a robo call that said they were from a company that I’ve heard of and immediately started asking for her to confirm personal questions. I just hung up but I wonder how many folks get sucked into this. I wish all humans were like this baboon community.
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So do I, from what I’ve seen so far, Sherrilee.
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Second biggest pest is all the requests for contributions, or to “take a survey” or to add my name to some petition that show up in my inbox. Easily 100 a day.
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Completely agree with that. I am so over surveyed. And I rarely respond anymore. I just don’t think I need to take time out of my schedule to tell Amazon how happy I am that a package got delivered.
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I complete few of those. However, today I did do one as a medical provider for an insurance company which is particularly awful to cope with . They got a bad review. I felt better.
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Bill, it won’t help your spirits to know that I moved to this apartment complex just over two years ago. I haven’t had even one robo/spam/scamcall since getting here.
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You make that sound almost like a lament?
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I heard today they’re passing a lot to deal with all the people using funny phone numbers that won’t work for 800 number is on there or something else but at least they’re aware and they’re trying to do something
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passing a law
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Garden wise, not too many pests. I don’t know if it’s because my garden is just so teeny or because the straw bales assist but I have never had to spray anything. Knocking on wood after having said that.
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In my life, also garden wise, I’ve never had too much trouble with pests. I haven’t grown an awful lot here, but the massively abundant row of broad beans (grown a lot in gardens just here), suffered from blackfly, just as they would back home. My time honoured method of a watering can of water, with liberal squirts of washing up liquid, worked, but these flies popped up again a time or two before admitting defeat. Not used to that.
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Yesterday there was a helicopter spraying the peas on a neighbors field. I don’t know enough about canning crops to know what they spray for. It was fun watching the helicopter though!
He was flying parallel with a power line down the middle of the, and a power one along part of one end. A steep swoop up at that end.
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I think the helicopter sucks the peas into the sky and beams them to the factory. Scotty.
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I get so excited talking to you all I leave out whole words and substitute others!
A power line down the middle of the FIELD, and a power LINE along part of one end.
Gee willikers.
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I know the feeling, I do it all the time.
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Canning crops?
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Canned peas.
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I was trying to write about the pest next door, Raoul. I seem to end up whining every time. So I’ll say, at least when he wants to go cutting firewood, I get my share. He doesn’t like chainsaws, so I cut the wood, and miraculously, that’s all I do. Raoul and maybe Lucas, his dad, either load it in my van, or in their garage, when we cut the trees close to there. I do have to help unload the van, but that’s less of a deal. I get my share of wood, as I say. Occasionally he’ll give me ten euros for gasoline (I didn’t say petrol, you notice?), and I’m happy. But other favours he gets me to do……….
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Bacillus thurengensis the organic way of dealing with those critters sounds good but in fact it’s something else again
back in dinosaur days snails lived in large groups and left large deposits of snail shells very small called diatomaceous earth today. it is used to filter paint and also in swimming pool filters. the way it works with garden pests is that they crawl over the snail shells and cut their bellies to ribbons and bleed to death so no pesticides are required they simply set death traps
gives me the creeps. beer in a saucer works good for slugs in the garden. the snails like the smell and crawl into the saucer and drown in beer.
natural methods don’t mean humane
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Not much in nature is humane. Nature’s overrated.
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That gave me the creeps just reading it
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It seems like every time I sit outside with a nice breeze and a good book, someone’s weed-eater, lawn mower, or leaf blower starts up… Not much you can do but wait ’em out.
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I just read today, BiR, that electric lawn maintenance tools are changing that old story. The most obnoxious lawn tool I know is the leaf blower powered by fossil fuels. I could be mellow about even that tool if they made no noise at all. I had an early electric lawn mower. It was a bit of heaven to use, although I kept slicing up the power chord. That has to be the future.
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We got an electric mower last summer and the tertiary effect (noise and no gas being 1 &2) is that YA now wants to mow the grass these days. Apparently she didn’t like the pull start on the old mower. I’ve only had to mow once this year!!
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I am nearly as “green” as they come, and I was born that way. But please don’t take my fossil fuel leaf blower away! It’s more fun than electric could ever be.
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battery pack vs electric cord make it an acceptable option
solar powered battery charging stations certainly make sense font they ?
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Bird poop. I love my indoor budgies and out door every body. My car is parked under a nesting tree for several species. Poop. I have a monthly subscription for car wash. They lose money on me.
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I once resorted to Sevin when I had an infestation of hollyhock weevils. I have never seen a hollyhock weevil since that application. I wouldn’t use it again, though – it’s carcinogenic, and kills a lot of beneficial microbes along with the pest you want to eliminate.
The most recent pest nest I had to deal with was a hole sheltering ground-nesting yellow jackets. I used castille soap and boiling water.
This morning I had some swarming ants on the front sidewalk, and used coffee grounds to move them away.
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Ants don’t like coffee grounds??
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Nope. Probably because they’re acidic. They make the ants relocate their nest.
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Japanese Beetles (henceforth known as JBs). I have a lot to say about those. I am considering using Sevin on my Morning Glories to rid them of this pest. My cherry tree is also prone to them so I am thinking I will use it on that so the JBs don’t kill the tree. It is done producing fruit for the year. They killed a little Mountain Ash about 15 years ago when they first became an infestation.
A Master Gardener I know is obsessed with these critters and she has tightly wrapped her entire raspberry patch in fine netting to keep them off of those. I don’t think I am that intent on them, although I really find them destructive. JBs are the true definition of a pest and they have few predators. Only chickens and European Starlings will eat them.
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Glad to know the starlings are good for something.
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In Denmark they are considered treasured songbirds, and they are superb flyers. Certain times of the year people will travel long distances to witness a murmuration like the one below:
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I was about to say something about chickens and maggots, but perhaps I won’t. It’s not a story people enjoy, though it fascinated me.
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caster oil is the way to chase moles away
but you are simply pushing them beyond the border you are laying down
people sometimes screw up and do the whole yard and the moles go berserk. they need a way to escape. you start at on end and apply caster oil on a slow moving multi day project to move them slowly and deliberately across the yard
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Around here it’s Lakeside, out of Plainview MN that contracts farmers to grow sweetcorn or peas, yes, to be canned or frozen maybe?
Rochester had a Seneca plant (the ear of corn water tower anyone?) but that closed and they demolished the building. Was a Libby’s before Seneca.
Again, I don’t know much about how Lakeside does it or what brands they become.
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Thought I was replying to VS asking about canning crops. If anyone gets this far again, that’s what I’m talking about. 🙂
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