So we went to pick our sole surviving cauliflower today and the damn thing is infested with earwigs. I mean an entire nest of the suckers. I pulled up the entire plant, started shaking it and it started raining earwigs. We then dunked the cauliflower in a bucket of water and more creatures floated to the surface. By this time we’d pretty much lost our appetite for this particular cauliflower and decided that the chickens deserved a special treat. Yummy, earwigs and cauliflower. To a chicken this is fine dining.

Well the beetles are back. Just look at what they did in a day to my poor eggplant. This season is truly turning into a battle royale between me and nature’s pests. Unfortunately, the pests are winning most of the battles.

Japanese Beetle Trap and Bait
The following bait and trap method is to be used during the height of the Japanese Beetle season.

Ingredients:
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 mashed banana
1 pkg yeast

My garden is overrun with tiny grasshoppers! So far they have decimated my marigolds, kale, chard, raab and beans. Oh my poor beans, 45 plants and not a single one survived long enough to get it’s first set of leaves. I did try row covers last week before all seeds had all emerged but I fear that I merely trapped the little buggers in there with a feast.

We are now experimenting with garlic oil spray on kale and marigolds. We are also going to try a bean experiment. In the first part of our experiment we will re-seed half the row and spray the top of the soil with garlic oil in the hope that this will disperse the pests. After a few days we will then replace the row cover. I will start some seeds in the greenhouse and spray with garlic oil when I transplant. We will see if either of these methods proves effective.

Garlic Spray
Target insects: Aphids, cabbage loopers, grasshoppers, June bugs, leafhoppers, mites, squash bugs, slugs and whiteflies. May also help to repel rabbits! Never use oils sprays on Blue Spruce as it will remove the blue waxy coating on the needles! Because garlic contains naturally occurring sulfur it also acts as an antibacterial agent and fungus preventative.

To make: Combine 3 ounces of minced garlic cloves with 1 ounce of mineral oil. Let soak for 24 hours or longer. Strain.
Next mix 1 teaspoon of fish emulsion with 16 ounces of water. Add 1 tablespoon of castile soap to this.
Now slowly combine the fish emulsion water with the garlic oil. Kept in a sealed glass container this mixture will stay viable for several months. To use: Mix 2 tablespoons of garlic oil with 1 pint of water and spray.
When working with oil sprays you want to monitor the climate conditions so your plants won’t get phytotoxic burn. Use this simple equation: Take the current outdoor Fahrenheit temperature then add to this the percentage of humidity, if the total is more than 140 don’t spray.
Example: Temperature of 80 degrees plus humidity of 67 percent equals 147, don’t spray. You also do not want to spray when temps are above 80F.

Ahh the challenges of gardening. I sprayed everything with BTK this morning. I hate doing this because it is fatal to butterfly larvae but we have what’s become an annual infestation of winter moths larvae and canker worms. Not sure the BTK will be effective since it is from last year and may not have overwintered well in the garage. We shall see.