Vanderbrew

I uploaded a few Garden Photos. The lettuce isn’t dealing very well with the heat and I’ve since yanked it all, but the cucumbers seem quite content. I still haven’t gotten any good closeup shots of the tomatoes, but they’re all still green anyway.

What do they have in common you may ask? I seem to be getting a lot of people finding my site by looking for solutions to problems they’re having with pests eating their garden produce - especially basil. So, in the interests of trying to provide you all with some good, useful information here’s what I’ve figured out.

Earwigs seem to do the most damage to the crops. Slugs just aren’t that bad and it seems that slugs are easier to control. Once it warms up a bit and dries out, the slug population really drops off - but I haven’t seen the same decline with earwigs.

I don’t want to use any chemicals in my garden so I have to find other ways to control the pests. The best solution I’ve found is this:

1. Wait until it’s a couple hours after dark.
2. Get a small container - I use an old 1 qt plastic yogurt container
3. Fill it 3/4 full of water
4. Put in 3-4 drops of dish soap
5. Get a good flashlight - preferably one you can set down and still have pointing at your plants
6. Go outside, examine your plants, pluck off the little buggers and drop them in the soapy water to drown

There are probably more effective things you can do, but the ones I’ve read about have to be done before they become a real problem by interrupting their lifecycle before spring starts and they begin devouring your garden.

Picking up slugs is a little disgusting at first, but it’s fairly straightforward and oddly satisfying once you get over the slimy/squishy aspect. Often they’ll curl up at the first contact and this can make them more difficult to pick up so move fast. The best advice is don’t hesitate. Just grab them and drop them in. Yes, your fingers will pick up a little layer of slime - deal with it - you’ll go in and wash your hands when you’re done.

Earwigs…oh man, I’m still not used to them. See, they’ve got this really fierce-looking pincer in the back and if you disturb them, they raise it up menacingly. The first place I recommend grabbing them is by the antennae. They may squirm a bit but you should be able to dump them into your soapy water before they get really good and annoying. The second place I recommend picking them up is on the pincer itself. It’s a little unnerving to feel it close between your fingers (parallel to your fingers) but I haven’t been pinched and from what I read, I don’t think it’s likely to happen.

One thing to be careful about earwigs is that they’re quick. They’ll scurry deeper into a plant faster than you would believe and then they’re much harder to get out. A fact in your favor though is that they’re surprisingly fragile beasts. I can kill them and sometimes split them in two with a strong flick. Just hold your index or middle finger with your thumb, line up and hit them in the middle of their body with your nail. If you’re pinning them against a hard surface like solid dirt or a rock, they’re pretty much dead. Otherwise there’s a chance that you’ll still kill them and worst case, they’re still off your plant.

Always keep in mind that the objective is to kill them. The objective is not to drop them in the soapy water - that just happens to be an effective way of killing them. If they’re scurrying (or sliming) their way across the ground or pavement, a good stomp with a sliding motion towards you and a twist at the end is just as effective and more efficient. Be careful that you don’t get so caught up in drowning the pests that you forget that you’re out there to kill them in whatever way you can.

Another thing - always make several rounds. Look in each bed or growing space you’ve got. Look on the patio, near the fence, along the walk. Now do it again. And again. I generally make three loops around my beds and I find something on almost every loop.

Don’t ignore a small slug just because it’s small. A small slug does damage too and he’s only a small slug today. Tomorrow he’ll be bigger. Next week he’ll mow down your parsley sprouts.

Look under the leaves, not just on top. Look at the dirt around your plants, not just on them. Look at the entire height of the plant, not just around the base. If you’ve got poles for beans or other vegetables, look at the poles. The other night I found an earwig about 3.5 feet up a pole supporting some pole beans.

Don’t just do it once or twice. Do it several times a week until you see a drop in the damage and your plants are flourishing. I was out there frequently when I was losing so much a few weeks ago. Now I just go out once a week or so and do general patrol to clean up the obvious ones and minimize the damage. I don’t think that you’ll ever really get rid of all of the damage to your plants and that’s not really my goal. I just want to reduce the damage so that I have something to harvest and cook with later in the season.

I find that listening to an audio book makes it a better experience. No one (at least, I don’t) wants to go out into their garden after dark to grab bugs off of their herbs and vegetables. Listening to a book (or music, if you want) makes the time pass and lets you focus on something else while you’re performing a task with pretty minimal attention and intelligence requirements.

So, good luck, bug hunters. I hope that this helps. Drop me a comment if you have further questions, feedback on how it went or suggestions on how to make it better.

So, I mentioned last night that I think that the garden is going ok, but I haven’t posted anything about it lately…

Well, I think I’ve got the bugs under control. We seem to have reached a happy equilibrium where they eat some, but not too much and everything is flourishing. I still kill earwigs every time I see them and hold a deep seated loathing/hatred thing for them, but, I’m confident that with constant vigilance I’ll reduce the population in the backyard to such a degree that the sightings will become so rare that the insects will fade from living memory and will exist only in the realm of myth and legend…

A man can dream, can’t he?

Anyway, here’s some shots of the garden so that you all can finally visualize what I’ve been talking about and investing time and effort in.

The cross-garden shot. The two wooden structures in the foreground are tomato “towers” and the one in the background is a cucumber support. Tomatoes, basil, broccoli and beet sprouts are in the close bed - lettuce in the far one.

The black herringbone skeleton in the foreground is my irrigation system. In the far bed you can see the garlic, lettuce and one of our grape plants.

Our nice row of garlic walks up the right side of the bed while the forest of lettuce looks on from behind (my attempt at bio-intensive methods) and the small shoots in front left are turnips. There are carrots between the turnips and lettuce but it’s hard to see them.

The cucumber support with a row of plants at its base. I built the support over the weekend am pretty happy with how it turned out. You can just barely see a dark green smudge beyond the sunlit lettuce - that’s one of our two bell pepper plants. The four bamboo poles behind the cucumbers are for the beans - two poles for the pole beans and two poles for the bush beans (where I didn’t read the package carefully enough to realize that they were bush, not pole beans…). The lattice in the back on the left is for the sweet peas.

Our back wall features sweet peas, then pole and bush beans. The other Flame grape is climbing the trellis and there are a few zucchini plants in front of it.

Basil! It’s hard to tell, but there are four plants here. The two on the outside are from the first batch I put out and they’re actually coming back from what I thought was a terminal case of “bug ravage”. The two in the middle were “extras” (is there such a thing when it comes to basil?) that I’d kept in the garage under lights because I wasn’t sure where to put them.

So, yeah, I’m pretty happy with how it’s all going. I started more seeds over the weekend to try to get the other variety of peppers and egg plants to come up. I also started herbs - oregano and parsley because I don’t think what I direct-seeded is coming up, rosemary because you need to wait until it’s warm enough and the seed starters are free, and basil because there’s no such thing as too much of it. I’m growing more marigolds because my direct seeded ones did pretty abysmally - most likely because I didn’t have irrigation setup at first and the soil got really dry for a few days.

Oh, and the bit that I’m proudest about? Every single vegetable/fruit you see in the pictures (apart from the grapes which we bought last year and the garlic which was grown from cloves) is grown from seed. No six packs, no 4 inch pots, nothing from the local nursery. Everything was ordered online in little seed envelopes and grown from that state.

Alas, the battle goes against me. I have just returned from the front and have dire news to report. It appears that we will almost definitely lose one basil plant and another may not last through the morning. I shook the poor seedling to scatter the blanket of earwigs that were covering it, then crushed as many as I could while they scurried for shelter. My weapon you ask? At first a rock and I crushed them against the soil. However, this packs the soil and I worry about disrupting the structure and making it even more difficult for the plants to grow, so I took a cue from a Shaftoe and “show[ed] some adaptability”. Did you know that earwigs are really pretty fragile? You can simply flick them and the force of your nail pushing them into the ground is enough to crush them. Oh, and their guts are green by flashlight.

The slug population is greatly diminished and I don’t think that they’re a problem anymore. Neither sowbugs nor pillbugs seem to be bothering the vegetables. No, it seems that the last enemy I must overcome are the earwigs. And, it’s essential that I do so before the marigolds and parsley (round two) begin to emerge.

Since my own weighty tomes haven’t offered up a satisfactory solution, it’s time to consult my advisor. The Magician Go Ogle. He has a great deal of knowledge and almost all of it is easily available. You just have to know how to ask and be able to sift the useful bits from the drivel.

My garden is not a peaceful, idyllic place where plants grow freely and produce bountiful herbs and vegetables for us to eat - it is a place where war is waged against a relentless and seemingly limitless foe. It is not a modern war fought from afar with chemicals or flame or hired mercenaries. It is an old war, fought hand to slime, one foe at a time. A war where traps are laid to ensnare the unwary, where captured foes are shown no mercy but are drowned in cups of beer and where the dead bodies of my foes will decompose in the compost bin, destined to fertilize the plants that they sought to consume. It was not I who began this war. I would rather it not be necessary at all. I am willing to sacrifice a few leaves here and there to keep the environment stable. However, I am not willing to sit back and watch while my entire crop is consumed, root, stem, leaf and fruit.

—

It began, as most things do, with a seed. Not a metaphorical seed, but a physical one. I planted turnips and onions, beets and parsely, lettuce and radishes. One morning, the turnips were all but gone. Almost every leaf eaten away and only the veins remaining, like a skeleton showing the shape of what was once a vibrant seedling.

“Curse those pests, I should do something about them.”

Ah, but the folly of the procrastinator. I’d like to think that it was generosity that stayed my hand.

“Well, maybe they just needed to make up a bit of a shortfall. It’s been pretty rainy lately and there’s probably a large population.”

I let things slide. I did some reading, but the best solution for dealing with slugs was manual. Pick them off and dispose of them. This was a distasteful solution so I continued to ignore the situation. I checked on the seedlings frequently. I fretted over the daily losses.

“Hmm…It looks like the turnips might be able to make a comeback. I think I see some new leaves. Oh, dear, weren’t there more beets than this yesterday? Speaking of yesterday, where are the parsley shoots that were coming up?”

One day, I realized. Everything was gone except for the lettuce mix and the ragged radishes who’s leaves looked like the tattered clothing of people trying to survive on the edge of everything and I realized. The beans and peas were chewed and chewed, some with an airy vein structure where there should have been a leaf and others with naught but a stump for a stem and I realized. This was not a garden, this was a war.

And yet, I did little. I made a brief attempt at fighting back. I went out at night, flashlight in hand and picked off the slugs and snails that I found, placing them in a bucket of water. I hoped that they’d drown, but they simply crawled out. I spent time pushing them back in with a stick, thinking maybe they just needed more time to succumb. Soon, very few were still moving so I put the bucket aside and retired to bed. In the morning, the bucket held almost no slugs. They had seemingly escaped after I left.

“Oh, well, I put the bucket down in a different part of the yard, maybe they won’t be back to bother the beans that I planted recently.”

Then, I planted the tomato seedlings that had been growing under lights in the garage. The next day there were a few holes in the leaves but it was nothing that couldn’t be overcome.

Soon after, I planted the basil, which had also been growing under lights. I checked the basil in the night after I’d planted it. Three hours after I’d planted it. Five plants. All showed damage. One was swarming with earwigs and had had two leaves eaten away. This was the straw. The camel’s back was broken. They had gone after the basil.

You have to understand, I love pesto. I have tried more than a few different recipes to find the one that I consider the best. I grow my own basil just so that I can make this pesto. Thinking of some bug eating my basil and preventing me from enjoying the pesto in the future aroused an ire in me that little else I’d seen in the garden had. It was now time to fight back.

Fight back I have. Picking snails and slugs from the ground and from leaves. Drowning them in a cup of beer. Laying traps for earwigs and ambushing slugs with man-made shelters that will be easy to find and remove. I think that it’s working. The population is dwindling. Only time will tell, but I’m well on my way towards winning this war.

—

Let this be a lesson to all bugs everywhere onions, parsley, turnips, beets, it’s ok. I can withstand the loss. But, when you touch my basil, you cross a line. You perform an action with grave consequences and I will not relent in any way. I will not hold back. I will carry the fight to you, to your home, to your family. I will not stop until my garden is allowed to flourish with only the minor blemishes that are expected from a balanced ecosystem.

seeds planted
underground
little stores
energy
for growing

roots extend
searching
for water
for nutrients
for space

tiny shoots
break the earth
reaching
for the sky

first leaves
unfold in pairs
turning faces
towards the sun

true leaves
appear
giving shape
to what
will come

Just a quick note that Amber and I will be keeping a log of what goes on in our garden at http://garden.vanderpol.net/blog.

It’s mostly for us so we can compare notes from year to year, but y’all are welcome to see what we’re up to there.

“So, where you want me to load it?”

“In my truck right there.”

The guy gives it a dubious look, but I’m not worried. I’ve gotten a yard of compost before in Felton and it just barely fits so I figure he’s worried about the volume.

“Whatever will fit”, I say.

My first indication that he didn’t mean what I thought he meant is how the bed bounces on the springs as the soil cascades from the loader. It’s wet, sticks together and falls in clumps.

Hmm…I’ve never seen my truck bounce like that.

The guy running the loader manipulates his controls to shake more soil loose.

Oh, wow…how low is the bed going to sink?

I see the last of the soil fall into the bed and give the guy a thumbs up to indicate that it’s all in there. I flash a grin that I hope hides my inner concern.

Man…I hope this doesn’t break my truck.

Then, an irrational thought.

Hey, if the truck does break, maybe I can get that new one I’ve been eyeing!

He parks the loader then comes over to give me a hand leveling the dirt in the bed.

“Heavier than I thought it’d be”

With a chuckle, “Yeah.”

I get the load covered with a tarp and walk around the truck to check it all.

Oh…that tire’s a lot lower than I realized. I wonder how much this stuff weighs?

There’s normally a good 4-5 inches between the the tire and the wheel well. Now there’s an inch. Maybe.

I gingerly get in, start the truck and put it in gear. I creep slowly over the rutted yard and speed bumps and ease my way onto the road. Every rough spot makes me wince and hope I’m not going to feel a spring give way or tire blow out. Fortunately it’s all back roads to get home - no freeway driving required.

I made it home and got the truck unloaded without any problems, but I sure learned a few things:

1. Next time, get a third of a yard, not a full yard
2. Maybe there is a reason to get a more manlyheavier duty truck next time
3. Soil is heavier than compost

I took some time after work today to do some measuring in the back yard. We live in a condo so there’s not that much space available, but I think that I’ll be able to set aside around 90 square feet of space for the garden. This means that almost all of the space that’s not patio or deck (except for a small chunk for Emma to play in) will be dedicated to the garden. We won’t be able to grow everything we want in that space but Amber’s parents have generously offered us space in their backyard and we’ll put the squash there because they just take up too much space.

I’m going to try intercropping and other intensive gardening techniques that I’ve been reading about and am very interested in how well we’ll be able to do this year.

This evening I’ve spent a few hours on the Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply website and we ordered a bazillion seeds. Yeah, so it’s not that many, but when you buy 20+ packets and some of them have over 14,000 seeds (Oregano) it sure seems like a lot.