a bribe seems to be working

I have a recipe for chipmunk stew around here somewhere. Do you want it?

We don't have chipmunks but the woods rats come by once in awhile. The mocking birds seem to take care of other bugs in the garden and they might take a peck at a tomato every once in awhile.

We're waiting on the almost a hurricane to come by and give us some rain, maybe, we hope.

GEorge

George Shirley wrote: ...

jeebus i'd have to be starving to consider eating one of them. they're so tiny... a lot of work to clean and prep for just a few bites. instead when i do have them in the traps i bury them in the gardens.

we don't seem to have those sorts of birds up here. catbirds are fun. :) they always make me smile with their chattery calls.

good luck and be safe. we're on the edge of a line of storms now, but perhaps we won't get much of anything from them. that is ok, we've had about 7 inches of rain the past several days. it was dry enough for long enough that not much ran off.

songbird

Looks like light rain here all day . We need it ... but it does change my plans for today , no working outside . Original forecast called for "scattered showers" , but it's been raining steady - though intensity has varied - since about 1 or 2 am .

...

we were predicted to get between 0.10 - 0.25 inches of rain. we had about 4 inches last i looked.

gotta go out and do a quick check on things as it looks like the rains have passed. been getting the worm buckets set up again and cooking this morning. a good day for inside chores...

songbird

We've gotten diddly squat, no rain but a few clouds. Was hoping on rain but everything went up NE of us.

Here we go dragging hoses again. I am drawing up some plans to set up some PVC piping to get water to areas in the vegetable gardens and the fruit trees. Will put in a monitor to turn on water when needed the most. Much easier to do that than to go around dragging a 100 foot hose.

George

George Shirley wrote: ...

i run one long hose to the middle of an area and then use splitters to run shorter lengths in different directions from there.

hoses aren't that expensive for the lighter shorter ones. the long one i get a heavy duty version for a few $ more. 20yrs on the oldest hose. have to get new ends once in a while.

songbird

The heat of summer here eats water hoses in a years time of being left out in the sun. PVC is cheap, easy to handle, and, I've put in lots of pvc piping at other homes over the years. Will bury about six inches down and run them through the raised beds. I drill small holes on those and then watch the water soak up to the surface.

Our beds are not that big, four by sixteen and four by eight X 2. May add on the beds around the back fence at a later time, preferably in the winter.

Our high temp today was 98F at 5PM, thank goodness for air conditioning.

George

songbird wrote: ...

...

buggers have eaten almost every one i planted which sprouted.

so far i think i have about 4 plants out of a few hundred seeds planted. i'm not sure i will get any return from them until i harvest. it's pretty late - i don't expect much of any thing at all at this point.

not enough time to hunt or trap. the air-gun needs a bit more sighting in with new ammo and i haven't had any time for that either.

if i want a crop next year of these i'll have to get a better fence and/or get the gun sighted in and/or get the traps out again.

the bribes worked for a short period of time. i needed them to work longer.

songbird

Neither fencing nor netting keeps out the chipmunks around here. I put mousetraps around the crops they favor. I am not looking to catch or kill them, the bastards - just scare them away.

Boron Elgar wrote: ...

a very fine mesh with an electric run at the top. all i need is for it to work long enough to get the plants up and growing past their first few leaves.

at the bottom you put it down a few feet out (L shape) and cover it a little. they usually won't figure out how to dig under that.

what is discouraging this year is that there aren't really that many around, but the few that are are very determined at hitting that particular patch. i've sat with the air rifle to try to get them, but haven't had the gun sighted in well enough yet to get a sure shot. they don't sit still long.

two years ago (i think it was) we trapped about

ah well... better luck next year. hope i have enough seeds left that will sprout or get enough from these few plants.

songbird

Speaking of bribes, my eggplant's leaves where just skeletons with the leaf part missing. Couldn't figure out who was eating them. Then one fateful night watering, I discovered it was the stinking earwigs. Many have lost their lives since then. And my leaves have recovered.

Those stinkers sure do love eggplant. And I know where to find them at night. Sort of like catnip for earwigs.

In the day, they love under my bag of peat moss. So every afternoon, I rattle the bag and stomp away. Down to one yesterday, from about 200 a few weeks ago. A carnage ensued.

Death to Earwigs!

Be careful T, the very large earwigs may track you down for stomping on their babies.

We're bumping the high nineties here nearly every day. The other day it rained on our subdivision two houses away from us but not on our garden. Wife is wanting me to suit up and do a Cherokee/Choctaw rain dance.

They have nightmares about me! In them, they see a YUGE shoe coming down on top of them. They scream NOOOOOOOOOO !!!

In is high 90 here too. My zukes love it. But they do demand to be watered on a daily basis or they wilt.

Love it when we have thunderstorms. The nitrogen water gives everything a growth spurt

Earwigs Must Die!

We're using one of those on-wheels portable AC's. I collect the water that it grabs from the humidity in the air and use it on my flowers in the front yard. If I don't pour it directly onto the flowers, I pour it into a large barrel on the front porch to use later.

We get several gallons of water from the air every day. It can increase or decrease depending on the humidity in the air. Free water! I sometimes will use it in the watering can and mix soluble flower fertilizer into it, too, and then water individual flowers that need a bloom booster.

You need to move to a place like Houston, we have heavy moisture nearly year around. Our AC in the attic has a drain to the outside and into the local sewer. State and county law. We're in the mid-nineties here at noon and it is sweltering outside. Weather heads say really good chance of rain for the next seven days. I will put a star on any day on the calendar that drops rain for us. Weather folk must go to a college that has a lot of classes that are wild guesses.

T wrote: ...

when the beans first sprout there is some creature that puts holes in the leaves. i've never bothered to find out what it actually is because the plants outgrow their ability to do much damage. it's never killed a plant that i've noticed.

i am all for live-and-let-live if i can get some sort of harvest. if i'm lucky i will have a few seeds from the Edamame plants...

some people make traps for them out of upside down pots full of straw stuck on poles. i've never tried that. really, i don't think i've seen them in the gardens here much at all.

for snails and slugs the idea is similar to what you are doing. put down boards along the areas where they are damaging plants and then go out early in the morning and flip the boards and remove any snails or slugs. we have not had much of a problem from either of those too.

i really like having a functioning ecosystem i just wish we had a few more top predators for deer, wabbits and chippiemunks.

ah, well, today gotta get out and pick some more cucumbers. hope there's enough to make some more dill pickles.

songbird

You know, the solution to all this is Chickens or Guineafowl. I haven't the time though

Guinea's prefer to roost in the tallest tree around and lay very small eggs. But, they are really good watch hens, anything moves they will all start their call, sounds like guinea, guinea, guinea to my hearing. When I was a boy my folks had about 20 of them to warn us if anyone or something was coming on the farm. They're all dark meat but very tasty, made a lot of guinea gumbo's back in the day. Stupid chicken will stand there and wait for a fox to eat them. They will roost in the top of a tree but will come to the barn for grain and to lay their eggs. Get some guineas.

T wrote: ...

we're not into keeping animals (other than worms!). :) i've no desire to keep them anyways. i much prefer a wild population like the quail or bob whites, but they don't come close to any of the gardens here. it is rare for us to see a pheasant in the yard, but we often hear them in the areas around us calling.

unfortunately the neighbor's hunting has reduced their population by quite a bit. we used to see a lot more of them. the wild turkeys have been doing ok from what i can tell.

songbird