Stink bugs

[George Shirley]

Stink bugs are messing up the tomatoes big time. Put out some containers of water under each bush this morning, hoping the !@#$ bugs drown. Put a little cooking oil in each container, also hoping that keeps the bugs from getting away. We shall see.

Picked another small bucket of crowder peas this morning. Things seem to become ripe overnight but they sure shuck easy, a sort of zipper pea is what this variety is. Pop one end, pull down and the hull just opens up. Makes the job much easier.

Harvested another batch of figs, seems that about a dozen figs ripen each morning. Miz Anne put up two pints of fig jam yesterday and probably will do another small batch tomorrow or the next day. I alter the "So Easy to Preserve" recipe based on number of figs to be used. Works pretty good as long as we follow the recipe change.

Going to be hot again today, in the low nineties the weather folk say, the skies are cloudy with dark clouds and a promise of rain is in sight.

George

[Frank]

I think soapy water is better as it breaks their surface tension and they drown. There are stink bug traps. They were a plague here for several years but now seem abated. Maybe bats or birds are now finding them tasty or a wasp predator has moved in.

[George Shirley]

We've been here since December 2012 and seldom saw a stink bug until this summer. I've been thinking of some liquid soap too, used that before and it worked. Thanks for reminding me of it.

The pea patch also has some sort of tiny stinging bug too, I thought they were ants at first but they don't look like ants. They're about the size of the periods in this email, tried looking them up online but there seems to be a lot of tiny stinging bugs out there. We try to grow our grub organically so guess I will just keep squishing the dammed things.

[Frank]

I contended with chiggers but not sure they were on edible plants. In shorts I'd spray DEET on my legs when gardening.

Stink bugs are funny as they like warm crevices in the winter and then escape in the spring. I think they only have one generation in a moderate climate but more in warm areas. In the fall I could not put on a pair of gloves or shoes sitting in the garage as they might be full of them. Those that got into the house I'd vacuum up with a Dust Buster and after I got a lot I'd empty into a bucket of soapy water on the deck. Once found one floating in the water in my coffee pot and once during dinner munched one thinking it was a small piece of meat off my plate. Out in the fall hunting they would crawl down my shirt collar and I'd end up killing them and encounter the stink. Fortunately it does not last long.

[George Shirley]

I've never found one in any of the many homes we've had in the 56 years of marriage. We haven't had any since we moved here in 2012 until this spring, now we have lots of them. It's to bad Mockingbirds don't eat them as the mockers really love our figs.

If you kill them on your body while hunting it should hide your own scent. I can't imagine a critter that couldn't smell a stink bug. Had a dog many years ago who used to bite a stink bug and then start spitting and foaming at the mouth. Stupid dog never stopped biting the bugs until he got run over.

[Frank]

Wiki says stink bugs first showed up in 1998 in Allentown, PA and apparently been spreading since to the rest of the country.

Years ago I recalled the plague of the gypsy moth which was wrecking New England and caused lot of problems here in DE and PA denuding and killing trees. That subsided and you hear little about them today.

Similarly Japanese beetles which used to be a problem here appear subsided probably due to the virus that attacks them.

Too bad problems I have like crab grass or Japanese stilt grass have no natural enemies.

[songbird]

Frank wrote: ...

shade. :)

songbird

[Frank]

Partial shade is not enough. I think it was you that helped me identify it from my picture and area is mostly shade.

I had an area that shaded out grass near house so I planted ivy there. Depending how hungry deer are in the winter they sometimes come right up to the house and eat the ivy. In this case, they did and stilt grass got in and now competes with the ivy.

Garden center tells me the only remedy is premerg and not just once a year. Crabgrass is less of a problem because premerg works as do herbicides. Only ones that might work on stilt grass kill everything else.

[Davej]

I hate these damn things. They were messing up my string beans last year and harassing the squash. I've never seen them on tomatoes but I will try to watch for that. They seem to winter inside the frame of my sliding-glass door. I will try again to seal it.

[George Shirley]

If you see yellow spots on your tomatoes you have stink bugs.

We've never had any in our house, only see them during the summer. You must live where it gets cold, we seldom see a frost or freeze here in SE Texas.

I'm putting out small buckets under the tomatoes and the crowder peas, as they, to, have stink bugs but not as many as on the tomatoes. Strangely they don't seem to attack the black or yellow tomatoes, must have something to do with the color.

[songbird]

Frank wrote: ...

i think that must have been someone else. at least i don't recall ever id'ing grass...

smother it and after a year or two plant hostas in the mulch. they seem to do well every place i see them. we don't have much gardens in shady areas so none are planted here. Ma doesn't like them anyways (i don't know why...).

if i could get Ma to stop spraying edges the crabgrass problem would sort itself out. instead she sprays to kill off everything along the edges and then the crabgrass comes along and takes over. i refuse to do any weeding of the grass as i would much rather get rid of the little that is left and turn it all into gardens and mulched areas.

if i'm weeding and taking care of a space i want it to be either flowers, veggies, fruits or herbs.

about 5% of original lawn/grass is left. :) soon to be even less. i can get rid of one area and that takes care of a lot of weed/grass problems for the surrounding gardens...

songbird

[Frank]

Like hostas but heard someone on PBS garden show call it a deer hors d'oeuvre and found that they were right ;)

[songbird]

Frank wrote: ...

yep... when we first started planting perennial gardens without fences around them we found that even plants that deer aren't supposed to eat will still be sometimes nibbled on by young deer who don't know better. after a few dozen young deer nibbles some plants gave up.

songbird

[T]

Hi George,

Did you ever figure out a management method? I have an infestation of earwigs. They are mowing down everything that sprouts. (Pissed me off when I see them carrying away fresh sprout leaves.)

I have been spraying them with chrysanthemum by the hundreds, but there is inexhaustible supply. They are ruining my garden this year and we only have a tiny growing window in Northern Nevada.

I am going to fire up my weeds killer pump up canister with dish soap and Cayenne powder this evening. They like it damp. So, lets add a little soap to their bathing experience!

Trouble is, I kill 50 of them and a half hour later, I have to kill 50 more. They keep coming and coming and coming!

They now ignore garlic powder.

I made this beautiful sliced bed in the yard for Rose radishes. Took me about 2 hours of hacking and removing rocks to make about 5 foot by 1-1/2 wide by 1 deep.

Filled with vegi scraps from the table and weeds. Then peat moss and dirt I dug up, sans rocks. Planted three rows of radishes. And they sprouted beautifully. Now they are half gone and the patch is seething with earwigs.

AAAAHHHHHH!!!

-T

[George Shirley]

Nope, the small containers with an oil added caught a few but not enough. I went to the old fashioned method, rubber gloves, a face mask and squash the buggers with your fingers. Got quite a few but there were more there this afternoon. I guess I'm going to have to resort to pesticides.

I don't remember ever seeing an earwig around here, may have to Google them to see what they look like. One thing that helps us is we don't grow vegetables in dirt. Our medium is 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 composted cow manure. It gets dug out each season, more compost added, shake it all up on a tarp, back into the bed. In the meantime we add household compost to our compost barrel and, eventually, that gets mixed in too.

Ma Nature has a strange way of working with gardeners.

[T]

The better soil, the more these daemon spam love it. Seems to me that when they get exposed to chrysanthemum spray, after they are done freaking out, they dig themselves a hole in it. They only come out at night.

I read an article that to control them, attract birds. What a stupid comment considering earwigs only come out at night. What is going to eat them? Owls?

And diatomaceous earth. Also stupid, as it doesn't work after it gets wet. (It can mess your lungs up too.)

AAAAAHHHHHH !!!!!

I use your method on squash bug eggs. I squish them. They leave a mark on the top of the leaf they are under that I have learned to look for.

[songbird]

T wrote: ...

look up trap designs for them... seem to recall upside down pots on sticks full of straw or something like that. may be other designs that work.

...

they are around here, but the frogs, toads and snakes seem to keep them in line.

songbird