I have a big mouse problem too. My cat is an excellent hunter, but he only hunts in the field, so I get mice in the house and garage. Everything has to be repackaged if it's opened, either into plastic or coffee cans. I put out the sticky pads and catch at least one a week. It was worse when we had a guinea pig, I think they would go steal her food!

The only time we don't have mice is in winter when the cat sleeps in the basement. I would get another cat, but I know it's just a matter of time before someone dumps one off....

I don't really have any other animal pest problems, a hawk got a chicken once, but she wasn't full grown.

The only thing I've ever used on bugs in the garden is soapy water, but I didn't have a lot of bugs to begin with.

Carla

Found a new problem gardening in the mid-west – corn lodging.

Lodging is when a plant either gets top heavy and falls over, develops rot at the roots or is blown over. After a dry spell we got a pretty good rain and some wind last night and I found about half the corn lying at a 45-degree angle this morning. I got some of it up and hilled dirt around the stalks, I’ll straighten the rest when the ground dries a little more.

Some info here: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/nwcrop ... age-02.htm and Garden Web

The moles don't seem to be as bad as I thought they might - could be the dozen or so cats and kittens we have around! We feed the cats just enough that they stay around but not enough that they don't need to hunt.

As dry as it's been I surprised we haven't more bugs than we do - well aside from the potato beetles that pretty well ate my potatoes to nothing. The main problem there was that I planted the potatoes quite a distance from the main garden and didn’t visit them enough – by the time I realized I had a problem my pyrethrin didn’t do much good. I need to study that little bug some, never had to deal with him before.

Pops,
We had the same storm yesterday afternoon - or rather a worse version of it. We were in town when it hit, and when we came home everything was in shambles. All of my corn was laying flat of the ground - straight line winds blew it over. We put posts in the ground at either end of the rows and tied a line up to give the corn something to lean on. Today I'm going to shore up the soil around it a bit to see if that helps. Many of the other plants are also very windblown, but they look like they might make it - except for a couple pepper plants.

We also had hail, which damaged some things as well, but the winds and very HEAVY downpour did the worst of the damage. It ripped the shade cloth off one third of the chicken run, pulling the 2x8 lumber that I had laying on top of it to the ground as well. It blew three of the ducks' swimming pools halfway across the pasture, one of my baby ducks was killed, there were greenhouse panels scattered everywhere (these were ones I had just gotten this weekend and stacked up till I could figure out where to put them), my poor goats went into the barn for shelter, but were still drenched. The inside of the barn was almost entirely wet - the wind blew in under the eaves. The wind also blew the lid off two trashcans that I keep feed in, drenching and ruining about 30 lbs each of rabbit food, chick starter, and oats.

We spent all afternoon trying to pick up and repair things, and today I'm at it again. So much for spending the day getting extras done. Today I'm just putting out fires.

One good thing happened in all the mess, though. When I went out to check for eggs yesterday afternoon, in the midst of the cleanup, I found that we had a new chick hatch. Unfortunately, it hatched in one of the nest boxes that the hens weren't sitting on (the stupid things move everyday, and I keep having to move the eggs under them) - so neither of the setting hens will accept him. So, I brought him in the house in a box with a heat lamp and will raise him here until he gets bigger. We named him Stormy .
Kathy

Speaking of slugs...

I had 'em bad earlier this Spring. Wiped out a lot of lettuce. The beer trick works, but only draws them from a couple of feet or so, so you need to put out lots of beer traps. I haven't tried diatomaceous earth, but when the slugs are everywhere, I think that might just keep them in as much as it keeps them out. I've heard that caffeine is a repellent - at a concentration about 4 times what you'd ever consider drinking in a cup of coffee. I was about to try it, but my other method started working:

I went out every morning and evening and picked the little buggers off my lettuce plants. Day by day, they became fewer and smaller, until... no more! Then the weather turned warm and dry, plus I pulled the mulch away from tender young plants. I think I learned something this year about slugs!

Oh, and marigolds DO attract them. They make a great trap plant, and make it easy to see if they're in the neighborhood.

Other than slugs, I have the occasional rodent attack (which is usually remedied very quickly with a havahart trap). Once I had woodchucks - talk about some major damage! I'm afraid I resorted to the ol' 22 for that particular varmint.

Squash bugs can be a problem, but hunting them down and, um, squashing them and patrolling the undersides of your zucchini leaves for egg masses keeps them under control.

I will not use chemicals, period. I know it's tempting, but the more you know about ecology, the more you realize you're just setting yourself up for a worse problem in the future. Long-term, the only way to go is to let your garden approach the state of being a balanced ecosystem...

- roebuck

Dead slugs attract slugs.

I use scissors -- a rough pair that I don't want for anything else. Each morning and each evening I go through the gardens and clip slugs in half. Then I return a half-hour later to clip the ones that are feeding on the ones I clipped before.

I live in the woods, though, so there's acres of slugs in every direction from here.

I tried diatomaceous earth last year or the year before. When it's dry it works great. So after rains (when slugs are happiest) I was still out patrolling for them.

slug slime reacts with copper, It burns them somehow.

So since I do everything important in raised beds I stapled a band of copper at least 1" wide around the entire bed. The slugs haven't crossed it. We'll see what happens when it turns green though. It looks pretty enough in the mean time.

I got the idea from http://www.thebuglady.com/ they're just up the road from me.

It’s bug season and we aren’t doing too bad.

I do have some tomatoes with nice round holes about or less than dime size, mostly on the upper part, I think it’s probably birds because I don’t find anything inside or obvious on the plants – any ideas?

I found a tick sucking on a tomato – that was weird!

Hornworms have been helping me keep the tomatoes topped – I love hunting those buggers and grinding them underfoot, great satisfaction.

We OD’ed on squash before we had many squash bugs and I haven’t seen any on the cukes or anywhere else.

I’m oiling corn now. I read veg oil is better than mineral oil, which is what I’ve always used; any thoughts on this? Also came across an article saying pyrithrin in the oil is more effective but I don’t know if I’ll go that far – at least this year.

Heineken mentioned Surround, a fine clay product for Jap Beetles and I’ve also read about this for earworms as well.

I still have stunted bell peppers and haven’t figured the reason.

The Flea Beetles that got to the tomatoes when small are still happily munching spiny amaranth – that is the only good thing I can say about that stuff - is a misery.

Haven't seen nary a slug out here which suprises me - we used to use copper tape in Ca around the trunks of citrus trees. Good idea to put it on bed frames - garden beds that is.

I have pill bugs, little many legged annoying creatures. They seem to have killed off the budding squashes on my squash plant. I had no idea what to do and have been putting up with them for quite some time.

then my mother suggested taht I use a spray bottle with sunlight dish soap in water. I sprayed the roots of my squash plants and they left, disappeared elsewhere. This seems to work with lots of bugs and is apparently non-toxic.

From Louise Riotte <i>Carrots Love Tomatoes</i>:

"To form an effective mole repellent, plant castor beans every five or six feet around the perimeter of the garden. Use them also as companion crops: Plant several pole beans close to their base and let them climb the tall-growing plants. " (page 147)

But remember, as the author points out, that "all parts of the castor bean are poisonous to livestock and humans, particularly the seeds. " The seeds contain ricin and two or three eaten can be fatal to a child.

She also writes: "[Moles] can be deterred by a few plants of caper spurge (<i>Euphobia lathyrus</i>) strategically placed [and] by daffodil bulbs. Thorny twigs of raspberry, rose, hawthorn, or mesquite pushed into burrows will scratch the moles and cause them to bleed to death." (page 159).

I also reside in an area where slugs can be the deciding factor between eating from your garden and NOT. I have always tried to stear clear of using things that could be toxic to kids and pets. Last year I bought 50lbs of diotamaceous earth and it does ok in the green house. But anywhere that is irigated or rained on it quickly loses it's punch. This year a tried a little home made electric fence. I simply strung two wires about 1/8 - 1/4 inches apart on 1 X 2 boards using nails as suport posts, and a 12V tractor battery with a fuse. I surrounded about a 16 foot section of one of my 4 foot wide beds where I had planted spinach, lettuce, mustard and a few other greens that the slugs seem to have a craving for. I am now enjoying the best harvest of greens I have ever grown.
It's also very satisfying going out each morning and picking a few of the dehydrated bandits off the wire. I only wish the survivors could tell their freinds to scram, as this garden is a dangerous place.

=======================

Wealth is a lot like manure.
When piled up it stinks.
When spread around it is nourishing.

Jim Hightower

I've used boiling water for ants. I'll QUICKLY as in a FEW SECONDS dig a small hole in the center of their anthill (tumulus) with a sharp miner's shovel and pour the boiling stuff in. If what you have are Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFA) then there may be some sort of Braconid wasp for biocontrol. Be careful with RIFA, the colonies have multiple queens and their burrows can go quite deep and be quite extensive. Make sure you're NOT allergic to bee/wasp stings before you go messing with fire ants on their home turf.

Curse you all for mentioning snails and slugs!

I've been getting overrun with lots of slugs lately but they seem to zero in on the marigolds which I have in every bed. They've bypassed perfectly delicious spinach and lettuce seedlings and just head straight for the marigolds. I go out at night with a flashlight and cut the bastards in half with a pair of needlenose pliers.

The marigolds make a great trap-plant for those slugs. I've just procured some seeds of the ancestral Tagetes patula so I no longer have to but those sterile cultivars from Home Depot all the time.

Companion plantings work!

I wonder if making the area around outbuildings/other targets for field mice clear of cover, so helping the predators, would help you.

My biggest garden destroyer is the chickens, as a cohabitant thinks their (3 in ) 30 m2 space is limiting and lets them out. They've done wonders for the 5 fruit trees in their pen, abolished everything else. No moles or rabbits, get rats and foxes, birds after seed. Spring now, fabulous.

I've recently decided to banish the chickens from the garden, as they always manage to get into areas I've tried to fence them out of. Since one hour's eager foraging by a chicken could potentially wipe out an entire season's harvest and consequently an entire season's food supply, I've decided to build them new pens separate from the garden and not let them forage anymore, even though they love it so much and do help keep down the bugs.

Regarding fire ants - we have few of them, and they seem to be kept down by armadillos, who dig up the nests and eat the ants. Our pasture chickens also dig up and destroy fire ant nests.

[quote="uNkNowN ElEmEnt"]I have pill bugs, little many legged annoying creatures. They seem to have killed off the budding squashes on my squash plant. [\quote]

Is this problem still ongoing? Often times on squash family plants, unfertilized female flowers will appear to develop a small fruit but since no fertilization occurred, the fruit will simply abort futher development and fall off.

It is my understanding that pill bugs and sow bugs are primarily scavengers as opposed to active plant predators.