My three sisters garden is coming along. The corn is doing well, the beans have been eaten by insects, and I have a few melon and squash plants. I've started to spray the garden with a mixture of Ivory Liquid and corn oil, we'll see if that helps.
Here is a link to pictures of the garden,
Are you sure it's insects and not snails or slugs? My beans were ravaged by snails but iron phosphate has them under control now.
they aren't the cause, I know I have snails in the backyard because in the days when I had an outdoor cat I would find snails on his water dish.
I'll run down to Agway and see if they have any iron phosphate, thanks for the suggestion.
Don't you have to protect your blueberries from the critters, too?
This is the first year in a long time that *we* have actually enjoyed our blueberries rather than provide them to the local fauna food pantry.
We built a full enclosure around and over the bushes. Just angle iron and netting. Worked like a charm, although I have to say that we get birds, groundhogs, squirrels, raccoons, etc, and no deer in the backyard (back is fenced well), although a similar structure around the tulip beds up front did keep the deer from eating them.
We do get bears around here, though, and I assume none were attracted to the berries, as the enclosure would never have deterred bears.
Something ate all the melon plants this weekend and started nibbling on a few of the tomato plants, too. Even the groundhogs avoid the tomato plants. I need to set up a camera...or a shotgun, maybe.
Boron
I have a net enclosing the blueberry bushes.
the berries, as the enclosure would never have deterred bears.
I've been using coyote and fox urine this year. I usually have a groundhog problem but I haven't seen any since I started using the urine. This isn't proof that it works, it's possible that the groundhog was eaten by an actual coyote, they have become much more plentiful in recent years.
I hope your solution is working. My groundhogs only show up when there is enough in the garden to make their foraging worthwhile. They are similar to the story that used to be told about raccoons and crops.
Q:.When is corn ready to pick? A: One day before the raccoons think it is.
Boron
The groundhogs left the area when my dog showed up. Possums too. Never saw 1 deer when we spent the summer in VT, but we did see a black bear.
Dogs are great. (Yet I miss the wildlife.)
Kate
My dog is the size of a mop and way too small to frighten off anything.
I enjoy the wildlife, but I am the first garden next to a large wooded area and the critters use it as an all-you-can-eat truck stop in season.
Boron
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