Anti-Hopper Flour Dusting, Does It Or Doesn't It Work?

Recently I went over a couple of methods of keeping away hoppers from my bush plant.  My first method was the dishsoap and water liquid solution which I came to the conclusion barely worked at all.  Then I had read somewhere about dusting the plants with baking flour, the flour acts as a glue and seals the hoppers' mouths shut after taking a bite out of a dusted leaf, cruel I know.  Well I dusted the bush bean leaf and it's been a couple of weeks since, so here is the result...

Dusting plants under hopper attack.... Works!  I was actually pretty amazed, I thought if the dishsoap and water liquid solution didn't work then everything else was helpless as well (I really don't know what gave me that idea in the first place).  After dusting, the bush bean was visited by two different hoppers in that same week of dusting but I haven't seen any since, what a relief!  Although, I am quite concerned that I am killing the cute little things, I'm hoping in their little insect world they're singing to each other passing the word around, "don't go near that bush bean, it'll kill you".

Read previous post Oh For Goodness Sake! Grasshoppers!

DIY: Cucumber And Bottle Cloche Are Good Friends

I planted two cucumber seeds on both sides of a wooden frame structure in the middle of the yard, the plan was to have the cucumbers climb the wooden beam and up the wooden structure to create height and beautiful green foliage around this otherwise old and rickety frame.  Within 5 days of planting the seeds the little cucumber seedlings with rather cute and rounded seed leaves popped up out of the ground, I immediately took to saving the seedlings from outside forces such as birds and slugs.  I sprinkled coffee ground around the seedlings and put a cover of strawberry baskets I had saved for such an occasion.  The very next day as I walked around the yard inspecting all the vegetables and fruit plants I am endeavoring to grow (something I do daily) I realized that one of the cucumber seedlings was gone, completely gone.  I stared at the ground where the seedling used to be and was confounded, there was no seedling at all, it was as if it had not existed, this was quite odd as usually there is some remanence of the plant left even if it has been attacked, but there was none at all.  I dug with my fingers where the seedling used to be and not even the root was found- very odd.  When I found that the seedling was missing I immediately thought the slugs had gotten to it but I never found slugs to be so thorough before.  Still, I do not know what it was that took that little cucumber seedling.  Naturally I replanted another right away but before doing so took the precaution and made a bottle cloche for the remaining cucumber seedling that had escaped this unfortunate happening.

My worry with the bottle cloche was that it would not allow enough air circulation resulting in some kind of unwanted growth due to moisture buildup, this was not the case however, instead I find that the cucumber seedling loves and thrives in the warmth and moisture the cloche allots it.  While waiting for my replanting seedling to germinate and sprout I took to a watchful eye on the lucky surviving seedling that I had covered with the bottle cloche, indeed the seedling grew larger and healthier looking, the seedling leaves growing rounder and sturdier, and has yet to be eaten by the mysterious thing that ate the first.  So when the replanted seedling finally sprouted four days later I immediately knew what I had to do to keep it protected, healthy and happy.

WHAT I NEEDED:
Scissors
Exacto knife (or any sharp knife to cut through a plastic bottle)
A plastic bottle (without the cap)

WHAT I NEEDED TO DO:

1. Carefully, using the exacto knife and scissors cut the bottle in half (towards the end of the cut the exacto knife was difficult to use to make the final slice and so I used the scissors to make the final cut).

2.  Place the cloche with cut-side down into the ground around the plant with the hole at top for air-circulation.

Anti-Grasshopper (Dishsoap & Water) Solution, Does It Work?

Over the past weekend I decided to regain control of the bush bean from the rampant baby hoppers that have been demolishing the leaves, quite literally too!  Boy do these little things have an appetite, half to a whole leaf can be gone over night!  As a way of defending the bush bean I mixed a solution of water and dish soap (2tbsp/1gal water) where I read somewhere was supposed to work.  I sprayed the leaves of the bush bean and gave it a couple of days to see what would happen, everyday that past I looked in on the bush bean carefully taking note if there were any new missing leaves or baby hoppers still hanging about.

As you can see from the picture below the hoppers didn't miraculously disappear but my leaves continuously did.  Okay, okay so I may be exaggerating a bit... in all honesty, the solution may have worked a little bit but not entirely and not nearly enough in my opinion, every day I find a new hoppers on my bush bean and I've noticed that they found the second bush bean as well, so here's to finding a new way!  I really didn't want to go to the extent of killing these little dudes (because they are kinda cute) but I'm afraid my choices are very limited and I'd rather have my bush beans than a yard full of hoppers.

So... Second line of attack, dusting the bush beans with baking flour.  Apparently a good dusting of baking flour will kill the hoppers, when they try to eat the leaves covered with baking flour the flour acts as a glue in their mouth sealing their mouths shut, eventually they die of starvation (which is kind of sad I know) but here goes for the sake of saving the bush bean and finding out what works!

WHAT I NEEDED (and what you'll need too if you decide to give this a go):

1. 1/2-1 cup of baking flour (I used all purpose flour since that's all I had in the pantry, I figure flour is flour? - I hope)

2. Sifter (easier to dust with, I would have much rather preferred a smaller sifter but this is all I had, on the brighter side it'll cover more space in a short period of time).

Armed with my baking flour and my sifter of steel I traversed down and pass the creaky back patio and dusted with my all!... The bush bean.

At first there was a gust of wind and that didn't work out too well for me but gusts of wind in SoCal is pretty far and few inbetween, I only had to wait for a few seconds to go on with my dusting, and it only took me less than a minute.  I hope this works, we soon shall see so check-in for updates!  Until then, happy gardening!

Read the previous post, Oh For Goodness Sake! Grasshoppers!

Read the later post for results on baking flour dusting, Anti-Hopper Flour Dusting, Does It Or Doesn't It work?

Oh For Goodness Sake! Grasshoppers!

Little tiny baby grasshoppers can be cute as hell (as all most tiny things are) but they sure become a nuisance faster than you can go "aww, how cute".

What the heck is eating the bush beans?!  This was the question for the past two weeks or so, huge gaping holes and large missing parts of the leaves of the bush bean had me pondering up a storm, some leaves were completely demolished.  Then I saw these little green hopper dudes, like I said, cute as hell right?  I mean, just look how tiny he is in the picture below, but boy does he have an appetite. And in the back of mind, although I didn't want to outright admit it or perhaps it was more that I didn't want to come to terms with it, I knew this little hopper wasn't alone.  And I was right, I saw more little hopper dudes on my basil plant, that's when I realized I had to regain control.

I read somewhere on a gardening forum about a home remedy made of water and a little bit of dishsoap that can be sprayed on leaves being attacked by hoppers, apparently they don't like the taste of dishsoap very much, this is supposed to help thwart the hoppers from making a dinner out of your grows.

I bought a small spray bottle for $1.99 at a random store, filled it with a couple drops of soap (apparently the solution calls for 2tbsp of dishsoap per every 1 gal of water) so I figured a couple of drops would suffice for a spray bottle this small.  I filled the spray bottle with the solution and went right to spray mode.  I'm not quite sure if this will work, it seems to make logical sense that yes, the hoppers wouldn't like the taste of dishsoap, so I have my fingers crossed with the little hope that I can see it working.  In any case we soon shall see, so make sure to check in to read results!

Read the results, Anti-Grasshopper (Dishsoap & Water) Solution, Does It Work?

A Beer Bottle Trap For AA Slugs Don't Work

If you've been reading along with my endeavors to grow an organic vegetable & fruit garden you'll know that I planted bush beans and that along with growing bush beans I've found countless amounts of slugs that was helping themselves to the leaves of my bush bean seedlings.  I tried the bottle trap (laying a bottle down on the ground near the bush bean filled with just a bit of water), the idea is that the slugs which are attracted to moisture will get trapped in the bottle- this didn't work.  Upon finding the bottle trap not very helpful at all I instead sprinkled a little bit of coffee ground around the seedlings which worked like a charm.

Upon reading up on a small section regarding slugs in my book, Grow Great Grub by Gayla Trail, I realized that the bottle trap was actually supposed to be a beer bottle trap, not water but beer.  So then I edited my slug bottle trap by adding a little bit of beer into the bottle instead of water.  Two, three, and four days went by and still no slugs in the bottle.  Apparently the beer bottle trap doesn't work either!  Or maybe the slugs in my garden collectively go to AA, who knows.

While the bottle trap may have been fun to do had it resulted in trapped slugs drowning in a stupor of beer bliss I am not all too disheartened or frustrated for I found that the coffee ground works absolutely great.  I had my worries that too much nitrogen from the coffee ground would affect the bush bean but I've only had to sprinkle one round of coffee ground around the bush bean and no more, more than a week later since my first sprinkle and still no sign of slugs around the bush bean.

Read previous posts on saving the bush bean from slugs: 

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans, Part II: Coffee Grounds 

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans, Part III: Slugs! 

My Basil Leaves Are Burning!

I began with three basil seedlings and one by one slowly they disappeared, leaf by leaf (literally)!  And now sadly I'm down to one basil seedling and by the looks of it it isn't going to be around much longer.  My initial thought was that the sun exposure was too much for these tender leaved little dudes, but I had planted them under a rather tall rose bush that would give them a bit of shade and a bit of shade is what they got.

I looked to my handy dandy growing book, flipped to the basil section,

"Keep the soil moderately moist, but allow it to dry out ever so slightly between watering.  If there is one thing basil doesn't like, it's sitting in cold, soggy soil.  Yet for a sun- and heat-loving plant, it is surprisingly temperamental about light.  It took me years to work out that too much midday sun can burn the leaves, especially when it comes to the soft and tender varieties."  - Gayla Trail, Easy Growing

My suspicions about too much sun burning off the leaves of my basil was somewhat confirmed, I find that when it comes to planting and growing it is often difficult to know exactly what it is that's killing your plant, there are just so many factors that come into play.  Is it the sun?  Is it over-watering?  Is it too moist?  Too dry?  The list goes on.

In efforts to save my last but sickly looking basil seedling I created a kind of biosphere to keep in the warmth while adding more shade.  I used an old plastic strawberry container, wrapped it in saran wrap, poked holes in the wrap for ventilation and placed it so that the basil seedling was enclosed in it.  It was definitely a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants idea and I'm not quite sure it'll work in my endeavors to keep the warmth around the basil but we'll see soon enough.  For added shade I threw over an old small bath rug on top of its cage.

Planting Tomatoes In A Tub

Tomato and I go way back, it was the only vegetable kind enough to let go of it's ego so that I could feel more confident in myself when it came to gardening.  Tomato was the only vegetable that survived out of many in my old apartment, it became quite bushy and strong and yielded many a great sweet red tomatoes.  So here I am again planting tomatoes but this time in my new garden and in an old bathtub no less!  This should be interesting.

It took a littles less than half my Sunday and this includes the time it took to pick up tomato seeds from Whole Foods and the organic ground soil from Home Depot.

When I finally had the tub in place I filled the bottom up with loose rocks that were small and medium in size for proper drainage, there is one large drain hole on one side of the tub but I figured better safe than sorry, I also took the time to prop up the tub just a bit on one side so that any excess water could run out through the drain hole on the other side of the tub, the dirt ground wasn't nearly as level as I would have liked it to be.

I filled the tub up with a mixture of sandy dirt and the organic ground soil, a mixture of roughly 1/2 and 1/2.  Once the tub was filled, I watered the soil down, planted my seeds (one on each side of the stick), 3 seeds per hole (a total of 6 seeds in 2 holes), misted the top layer and began thinking of security measures against birds, slugs and other creeping pests.

While at the gardening store I ran across a large roll called Bird Block which basically is a flexible plastic kind of netting, easy to cut with scissors and easy to fold.  I used this bird block netting to cover the top of the tub weighing it down on all four corners with bricks, so far it's worked really well and I do just love it, before the Bird Block I was using something very similar that was made of wire which made it infinitely much harder to handle.

One of the main reasons I planted the tomatoes in the tub is that it just makes it that much easier from keeping the growing plants away from ground pests, indeed I'm not expected to shield it from every kind of bug, that would just be impossible, but the more bugs and slugs I can keep away from it the better.

As you already know the tub has a drain hole on one side which meant that slugs (fastly becoming my nemesis) can still get into the tub soil, so as a precautionary measure (call me totally paranoid), I placed a brick next to the exposed hole which is located at the bottom of the tub near the ground, the water will still be able to drain but hopefully the slugs wont be able to find their way in.

In An Effort To Save The Bush Bean, Part III: Slugs

Can you spot the slugs?

Taunted by the fact that my first round of security measures (the bottle trap and plastic cup barrier) did not work, the thought that whatever was eating my bush bean leaves weighed heavily on my mind and even after sprinkling coffee ground around the newly sprouted bush bean leaves I had to go take a look once night fell and the air grew cold outside lest the coffee grounds did not work like the bottle trap and cup barrier, I just had to know what it was my bush beans were up against.

I snuck outside with a light, lo and behold what did I see?  Slugs, SLugs and more SLUGS!  Indeed there were many hungry slugs.  Would the coffee ground method work?  I had yet to know, the bottle trap method which I thought would surely work did not.  There was not much I could do but I went happily to bed simply knowing what it was I was up against, the battle was half won now.

It seems the plastic cup barrier worked in a way, most of the slugs seem to be outsides of the cup. Whether they were smart enough to bypass the barrier by passing under it is another question entirely.

Awoke this morning, and went straight out into the yard to check out if those sluggish slugs had somehow hopped over the coffee ground and ate more bush bean leaves.  I looked at the leaves carefully and what did I find?  The coffee ground had indeed worked!  Like a charm too!  Not a new leaf touched or anymore eaten off the already harmed leaves, this gave great relief but now the question is... how long will the coffee ground last?  I do not plan to sprinkle any more any time soon for the extreme amounts of nitrogen in the coffee ground will do harm to the bush beans eventually.  Another method of trapping these slugs must be found out!  I must say that I am pretty pleased that I've planted most everything else in containers or pots placed half way into the ground, I am sure that it has saved those fortunate sprouts from sluggish tauntings *whew!

Read previous and later posts on saving the bush beans from slugs:

In An Effort To Save The Bush Bean

In An Effort To Save The Bush Bean, Part II: Coffee Grounds

A Beer Bottle Trap For AA Slugs Don't Work

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans, Part II: Coffee Grounds

Am I sad that I found my glass bottle empty of slugs in hopes to catch the culprit who have been munching on my new baby bush bean leaves?  Yes, just a little bit.  Life could have been that much easier simply knowing what it was but fate has planned it otherwise *sigh.

Here you can see where my bush bean leaves have been eaten.  The fact that the leaves have been eaten closer to the ground tells me they are not birds but something from the ground, hence my suspicions of those sluggish slugs!

So now for another round of security measures.  I don't quite know for sure whether or not it is slugs since I failed to catch any in my bottle trap, I suppose the slugs could have crawled from under the earth right near the bush bean and thus missed the bottle entirely, so here is to one last try!  Coffee ground.  

Slugs hate Coffee ground and should keep them at bay if I sprinkle just a bit around the bush bean, this would only be a temporary solution as I can't sprinkle acidic coffee ground everyday on bush bean grounds since too much nitrogen may do these growing babies harm as well, but instead will use  this method to try and figure out what the heck is eating those dainty little leaves.  If the leaves are not further nibbled on after sprinkling coffee ground then I'll be able to say with confidence "those damn slugs!"  And I do look forward to it :)

Read the results In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans, Part III: Slugs

Read previous and later posts on saving the bush beans from slugs:

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans

A Beer Bottle Trap For AA Slugs Don't Work

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans

In an effort to save my newly growing bush beans from whatever may be eating the leaves (my guess are those awful slugs for I do not think the birds can get through the cage I've put around these new plants) I have doubled security.

Slugs can't climb can they?  I'm hoping they cannot for I have built somewhat of a wall between those beautiful leaves and the outside world by cutting a plastic cup in half and enclosing those new stalks and leaves.  I cross my fingers and hope this works!  But this is only the first security I've put up around them.

The second security I've put down is a glass bottle filled with a bit of water, as slugs are attracted to moist and wetness I'm hoping to trap the slugs in this bottle, if indeed it is slugs that are helping themselves to my bush bean leaves.  I've read this trick in a book but have never tried it, I sure do hope I trap some slugs!  At least then I will know what it is that are taunting my poor babies.

So hopefully I'll be posting some bottled slugs next!

Read the results:

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans, Part II: Coffee Grounds

In An Effort To Save The Bush Beans, Part III: Slugs!

A Beer Bottle Trap For AA Slugs Don't Work

Planting Leafy Greens In Summer's Full Sun

Apparently "mixed lettuces thrive in mild weather with consistent moisture" and like to be kept in full sun during the Spring, however it may be too hot in full sun during the Summer- this is the information I got from the packet which my mixed baby green seeds came from, my immediate question was 1. What do they mean by mild weather?  And 2. How hot is hot for the mixed baby greens during Summer?  So while it seemed at first the packet gave helpful information it actually wasn't very helpful at all, just very general.

But it is Summer in good old Southern California and my best guess is that the full sun in California Summer is going to be too hot.  So I planted the mixed baby green seeds into an old sink, this makes it mobile, should I find that they are getting too much sun or not enough sun I can move the whole planter elsewhere, albeit a bit heavy.  While I have set the planter out in a space in my yard that gets full sun for at least half a day I have decided to err on the side of safety from burning the poor little babies and have shielded them with a window screen found in the yard, so while they are getting full sun they do have a bit of protection.

The old window screen has worked great so far with no problems, it is light enough to handle yet heavy enough to keep in place, the screen also keeps all the critters away especially the birdies that love to eat the seeds and also allows cool air to still pass through whilst doing all these other things.