Garden Alive!

"She sat down in a weed patch, her elbows on her knees, and kept her eyes on the small sterious world of the ground. In the shade and sun of grass blade forests, small living things had their metropolis."   

- Nancy Price

When I really look at, I mean really PAY ATTENTION TO, the creatures in my yard, I am astonished. I equate the feeling to finding myself in a dark, remote area and observing hundreds of thousands of stars glowing in the night sky. I ask myself: Is there all of a sudden a huge increase in the number of stars up there, or were they always there and I just didn't see them, or pay attention to them?

When I really began to look at, I mean really PAY ATTENTION TO, the creatures in my small, urban yard, this is what I have observed:

Squirrels, and whole lot of them

Carpenter bees

Bumblebees 

Honeybees

Ants of many sorts

Crickets

Leafminers

Praying mantids

Rabbits 

 Lady bugs and their larvae

Cardinals

Moths

Butterflies

Grasshoppers

 Mites of several sorts

 Leafhoppers

Flies of many sorts

Earwigs

Raccoons

Slugs

Robins

Aphids

Blue jays

Wasps

 June beetles

Japanese beetles

Pill bugs

Wireworms

Dragonflies

Starlings

Chipmunks

Wrens
Woodpeckers

Mosquitos

Gnats

Garden webworms

Goldfinches

Nightcrawlers

Millipedes

Cabbage worms

Spiders of many sorts

Soldier bugs

Neighborhood cats
White-breasted nuthatches

My garden is alive! I have personally seen every one of the above in the last three months--that's an ACTIVE, garden party kind of yard.

Is this good, bad, normal? I don't know, but it is astonishing to me.

Humans are physically larger than any one creature on the list, yet we are grossly outnumbered. That fact is a bit unsettling to me--several month's worth of work in the garden could be completely obliterated in a few buggy nights ...  if not for the awesome balance of nature.

When have you last paid attention to what's alive in your yard?

My Hanging Gutter Garden

Early in the season, I cleared out a sad row of shrubs that were struggling alongside my garage. There was a lack of sun and water in the area, so we cut down some major tree limbs to let the light in, and I installed a soaker hose. The soil was amended with some good manure and compost, and the plants went into the ground.

Then the bugs moved in! Slugs and pill bugs and earwigs, mostly, and I knew my tender lettuces and herbs didn't stand a chance without changing the plan. So we developed the HANGING GUTTER GARDEN (concept by me, and many before me, with a little help from my friend Google; and design and build by my strong and handsome manfriend, Brian).

The first build failed, resulting in all three gutters, and a coupla hundred pounds of soil, crashing down on each other. With some design and stabilization adjustments, they're back up, a few weeks strong now. The plants are thriving in this location. They get the right amount of sun, some nice air movement, and they are up and away from the worst of the garden buggers.

I planted a pretty good variety to see what would take. In the top, which gets the least amount of sunlight, I have sage and a variety of lettuces. The other rows have arugula, kale, chard, strawberries, thyme, and radishes.

On the far ends in the ground are broccoli and my overachieving cucumber plants (seen the middle photo)--they are getting signs of a few pests, but my midnight bug checks have been fruitful, and the beneficial insects (mostly lady bugs, praying mantids, and spiders from what I've seen) seem to be keeping things in check. These plants are extremely healthy. And we're starting to fill our plates with the lettuces and arugula at this point in the growing season.

What do you think? Is this a good use of space? Or is my hanging gutter garden trashing up my yard?

Praying Mantids!

Back in early May, I bought a praying mantid egg case from a young gal at my local farmers market. Given my garden pest problems, I've been extremely anxious for these little guys to start poking their swively heads out and into the world. Today was that day.

I read that creating a humid environment helps with hatching, so for the last week I very lightly misted the egg case. I also warmed the container a bit on the colder days by running hot water on a metal pan, leaving about a 1/8 inch of water in the pan, and then putting the mantids' container in the pan to sit on the counter for an hour or so. Today, midday, they hatched. 

My daughter released them into the yard. They seemed to like her and hung around, and a few perched on her hand.

We were told that there would be about 200 or so hatchlings from the one egg case, and I would say that was about right. We released some in each of the three main planting areas in our yard, and left their container open and out in the back bed in case the babies wanted to hang out in what has been their home for the last months.

I checked in on them a few hours later and saw lady beetle larvae in and around the container. Who would win out in a battle between the two, the lady beetle or the baby praying mantid? Not sure. They are both beneficial to my garden--let's hope they work together to get the bad guys.

On my midnight garden outing, I spotted one lone praying mantid perched on the highest leaf of my previously earwig-plagued broccoli plant, no earwigs to be found. This morning, there are a half-dozen sunning themselves on the leaves of my iris plant, which is in the bed where I had the mite problem. Go forth and prosper, you little cuties. I'll be watching out for you.

 

The Urban Garden Bug Bash Rocks On

 Here's my beautiful Lacinato Kale (the orange specs on the plant are cayenne pepper--obviously the culprit likes its kale hot and spicy!):

And my Filderkraut Cabbage (the white powder seen around the plant is white flour--it's obviously not helping much):

It's maddening. Thankfully, this kind of damage is only seen in one planting area, and I have lots of both of these plants as backup yet.

I know that this could be done by many a bastardly creature--so I immediately initiate a multi-faceted search and destroy mission. Over the next three days, I: (1) make Bug Killer Juice; (2) set beer and oil traps; (3) place rolled paper in the garden; (4) begin hunting at midnight.

(1) Bug Killer Juice: I adapt a Jerry Baker recipe, combining water, dish soap, finely chopped onion and garlic, and shredded marigolds. I spray it on all of my plants daily, and I shoot the bad guys with it when I spot them. Bugs really seems to hate the stuff, and it doesn't harm the plants. Bonus: my garage and yard smell delizisio! 

(2) Beer and oil traps: Who doesn't like beer, especially at one's first Spring Bug Bash? I cut the bottoms off of plastic water bottles and also use a few flower pot trays, and set them into the ground so that their tops are about even with the soil. I pour beer in some, and olive oil in others. I lay a few beer bottles horizontally into the ground so there is just a slit of an entrance into them.

(3) Rolled paper: My daughter and I collect a few empty toilet paper rolls and some newspaper, twist them and wrap them with a rubber band. I pour a little beer into each and place them throughout the garden. Various pests are said to like this kind of environment and crawl in for shelter before the sun comes up. At that time, they can be snatched up and put in soapy water.

I step back and sigh--my garden looks terrible with this paper and cardboard and bottles in it, but I don't want to lose all of my heirloom plants. I head for bed and hope the morning brings some insight into what is feasting on my cabbage and kale. 

The sun comes up, and I run out to the yard. First thing I see, mucking it up on a paper roll is the mighty SLUG. Drats! Repulsive. There's also one in a beer trap. I begin to turn over stepping stones, and within 10 minutes, I'm looking at more than a dozen slimy, gross slugs.

These guys can do MAJOR damage. They love wet, dark hiding places, so I move the large rocks in my garden and place them toward the back fence and away from my edibles (over the next few days, I will continue to look under them for additional slugs), and I decide to stop watering the beds in the evening.

I continue to search for them. They're under the plastic plant trays on the patio and in the little drainage holes of the plastic planters. My daughter gets a kick out of using tweezers to pull them out--I'm too grossed out by them--and we place the planters in a drier place. In total, we collect 30-40 slugs in two days. Yesterday we could find none.

(4) Midnight hunting: I get on my boots, take a flashlight in one hand and the Bug Killer Juice in the other, and head out. The first night, I discover another garden pest enjoying my marigolds and broccoli--the cursed EARWIG!

More than a dozen of them are on one plant alone. Prior to this point, I didn't even know that earwigs ate plants. Lovely. What else do I see en masse? Pill bugs, aka rollie-pollies. I've never seen them ON PLANTS before, but here they are, I'm assuming also munching away. I douse them all with bug juice. I check back out around 5:00am, and the plants are bug-free. It seems to be working, at least for now.

On the positive, the lady beetles are numerous and industrious. I've had no additional issues with mites. But I realize that I need to make some changes, and fast. I believe that wood mulch is probably causing pest problems--it may need to go. I wonder if I should give up trying to grow anything in the cabbage family this year. They are prone to attack, especially when growing them organically--and I'm not about to start using chemicals.

Also, I need a plan for getting more plants off of the ground. It's time to get creative with vertical gardening.