My plan for the cabbage loopers and imported cabbageworms worked. I didn't spray once this year. The parasitoid wasps took care of them. I will now keep a bed of "bait" plants to keep a small population of these around for the purpose of keeping their predators around.

All I've had to use this year is neem oil extract to stop some powdery mildew on the squash plants.

Grasshoppers are a pain too, but nothing that a Kestrel or a pair of pliers won't take care of.

Slugs are still giving me fits. We have so many different kinds here. I am seeing decollate snails in the yard though. Well see how they do-might be next season's big breakthrough.

Had southern stinkbugs this year on the collards. The state is working on releasing several types of parasitoid wasps for those as well.

I also have a skunk or three digging holes everywhere. They apparently are after Jerusalem crickets, which in my yard, occurred at a popl'n density of about 30 per square meter/yard. Since the skunks have been doing their thing, I've not lost any plants in the middle of the night to what I thought were cutworms. J-crickets or potato bugs as we used to call them seem to love roots and tubers and they bite like sumbitches.

I made my peace with the skunks. They don't bother me and I don't bother them but hoooo boy! It sure doesn't feel comfortable to encounter one while walking behind the house at night. I move slowly and deliberately and so far I haven't been sprayed in about the 6 months they've been around.

I have heard somewheres that hydrogen peroxide and sugar deter bugs but I think you have to apply it fairly often. The sugar is suppose to hold the peroxide. Amish do this?

Well, H2O2 is good for plants in small doses to help growth from what I hear.

Found a shallow watchglass and filled it with beer. Attracted a half-dozen slugs the first night and another half dozen the second.

I found the slugs dead there in the morning.

Filled some 3 cm (one and one-half inch) deep plastic dishes with the same beer, attracted only one slug between the four of them over two nights.

This is getting interesting now: are the slugs repelled by the plastic but not the glass?

Or do they simply have an easier time smelling and getting to the bait that is places closer to their "eye" level as opposed to up, over and down into a deep container?

I will try and procure more watchglasses from a laboratory supply co or perhaps I can find them at Kmart? and run some replicate cells for a quick n' dirty analysis.

When I was young, I remember my mother and grandmother placing a bucket with a little beer in the bottom outside at night. They found a couple of snails in them now and then but we all actively (as in: out at midnight with a flashlight) caught and stomped an order of magnitude more than we passively trapped in the beer bucket.

Well, I just had to uproot all my mustard greens which were my pride and joy - they had powdery mildew. That's only the beginning - as I was uprooting them, something stung my hand and it hurts like the dickens! I'm typing this while I'm waiting out the obligatory 30 minutes to make sure I'm not seriously allergic to the venom - I have 10 minutes left to go and so far so good. I'll try to chalk this one up to experience.

I notice that powdery mildew was mentioned a couple of posts ago. I would do well to read over them, I think.

Regards,

L.

Two good pest management books I use are:

"The Organic Gardeners Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control" - Rodale Press

and

"Great Garden Companions" Sallie Jean Cunningham - Rodale Press

The latter discusses plants which help repel the pest bugs and those plants that attract/shelter predatory bugs.

Skyemoor: I have gone ahead and ordered those two books. Thanks.

Question for anyone: I found powdery mildew on my mustard greens; if I had gathered those leaves and cooked them for a long time, would I have a toxic brew or would I have killed off the fungus and have an edible meal? Also, if a leaf of a veggie is insect-damaged, would it be edible after cooking, or would it harm the person who eats it? Please note: I am referring ONLY to veggies that would be thoroughly cleaned, then cooked, not salad greens. I have a hard time accepting that our forebears who practised subsistence farming would have discarded veggies because there were holes in the leaves. I think they would have been glad of the meal.

I would appreciate reading others' viewpoints or their personal experiences of this.

Thanks,

L.

So what is hollowing out my cantaloupes?

The looked nice 2 days ago and I went to check a few last night and they were nicely hollowed out from the bottom leaving about ½” of rind.

???

Thanks SCF, going to brave the heat right now!

You can buy predator species here.

Buglogical

I'm currently trying out some nematodes, lacy greenwings and the miniature wasps. I got to it a bit late in the season so it's hard to know if it worked, but I'm with Ludi. Any alternative to pesticide is worth a shot.

Small burrowing mammals are plowing through our vegetable gardens. I'm not sure what they are, but the tunnels seem too small to be moles.... maybe mice. I'm not sure. They've been making quite a mess in the past few days.

But we want them gone. Any ideas on how to do this without killing them? With the wealth of knowledge around here someone must know a way.

I did a web search and found nothing useful.

Male urine will often repel various varmints. Try urinating around the tunnels, and around the perimeter of the garden. If you're shy, you can pee in a jar. Just avoid getting urine on the plants as it can burn the leaves.