What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Dahlia]

Several of our neighbours have companies in to spray their foundations each year, to control ants. I have often wondered if it is worth the expense, and the chemicals. We always use a homemade Borax solution at our place. The ants never completely go away, but using the Borax has been enough to keep the ants out of the house, and to manage large colonies.

Avoiding pesticide whenever humanly possible is always smart as using it often leads to health problems in the future!

 

[flowerbug]

Several of our neighbours have companies in to spray their foundations each year, to control ants. I have often wondered if it is worth the expense, and the chemicals. We always use a homemade Borax solution at our place. The ants never completely go away, but using the Borax has been enough to keep the ants out of the house, and to manage large colonies.

for two years we had some barrier pesticides that were used around the foundation border of the house to discourage ants and other bugs. it was used according to the label directions.

if you keep bugs away you'll also likely discourage frogs and we'd always had tree frogs around and on the house. sometimes they'd leave piles of froggy doo but i don't care about that at all. rain will wash it away...

sadly after the foundation spray application we did not see tree frogs or other frogs much and we also did not see many toads. i'm sure in combination with mosquito spraying and the ditches being kept running so there is often not enough standing water to have frogs and toads laying eggs or being able to grow tadpoles, so those all combined really did a number on our frog and toad populations. it took some years later before i saw frogs and toads again and even now while we don't have many we do still have some.

i would really like to make a specific wetland and pond area for frogs and toads but with all the raccoons and blue herons about i think it would be difficult to get them to have a nice looking home and also a safe enough one. i've not done it yet, i'm not sure if i ever will, but i do daydream about it at times just like i also day dream about having a tiny waterfall and a table with moss growing on it and ...

but back to ants. i have used ant baits (we had one in the ceiling inside the house that took about two weeks to get rid of - thousands of dead ants falling) to try to control certain hives and sometimes they've worked as advertized, both homemade and commercial formulas. this time the ants were very fixed on their pathways and would not deviate a bit. even after i forced them to walk over the bait...

today i put down some more caulk and filled in the gaps that remained and now i'm waiting as long as i can for it to dry before closing things back up for the night. i did not see a single live black ant today. i found a dead one in my bed last night which gave me a laugh as it probably was stuck on my arm or shirt or something...

really the best ant controls are to remove all possible sources of food and water and to seal up gaps they can exploit or any other favorable habitat. it mostly works here - it's just the once in a while things that can get interesting and present challenges.

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

Went out and harvested all big tomatoes even if they had a slight blush. I will let them Ripen inside the house and make sauce and can it. So many tomatoes! I dropped off a big box full at my neighbors house and she was happy to get them. I was happy to get rid of them

 

[digitS']

And, there are different kinds of ants and their populations may lag or increase from year to year.

We had ants in the house right through the Winter and well into Spring. They were the usual black ants that would show up. They didn't seem to be interested in getting into anything but water may have attracted them. Numbers? Oh, maybe 5 each week. Nothing to be too upset about but it was a curious thing during the winter cold and I did some looking around in the basement and such. But also, there were what appeared to be ants with wings at the same time. Once again, not many but during the same months. This was a fairly unusual situation.

Summer and there are these very small black ants and I don't see the larger ones. They are easily found on the house exterior walls but not inside. They aren't pissants and I don't recall seeing a version of the "usual" ants at such a very small size. The pissants are still likely to show up on the sidewalks in late Summer. Of course, if they were somewhere in the lawn, I'd not be likely to see them.

None of the Thatching ants have been in the yard in recent years. I think that I have the name right. They build mounds above their ground nests and will crawl up your leg and bite you if they find you standing too close to the nest. No carpenter ants either! Their presence is worrisome since they burrow into walls and damage wood. They went missing in 2022. No ants on plants herding aphids that I have seen. Aphids but not a lot.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

@digitS' ants with wings inside the house in the middle of winter is never really a great sign. i hope there's no repeat this winter.

we've had the carpenter ants inside the house at times but only a few scouts at a time and of course we'd get them as soon as we saw them, but they were also the reason why i really wanted to get rid of this nest this summer before it got cold again so i could get things sealed up better but also just have the source of the closest problem dealt with. there are carpenter ant nests all over the property but i try to remove the ones that are closest to the house.

i've heard the word pissants used before but always in reference to people and not actual ants. so yes, i learned something new today that there actually are some ant species which are called pissants because of the smell they cause from mixing pine tree and other forest detritus with their formic acid smell so it does actually smell like urine. can't say i've ever experienced those enough to have noticed that.

as a kid i did find out how ants tasted, but that was a whole different story.

 

[Zeedman]

My ability to transfer photos was down for quite awhile, I'm trying to get caught up.

A few things in an herb corner:

Thai basil, just after a haircut (to make it extra bushy)

Lemon grass. I'll pot up one clump before the frost, to use as next year's starters.

Chinese chives. I've never eaten them; but saw them elsewhere covered in bees, so grew it for that purpose.

Obviously this bee has "bee_n" busy.

 

[flowerbug]

went out to bury a bucket of tomato scraps and while i had the trench ready i decided i could weed that garden some more (a trench is a nice spot for some weeds ) an hour later i'm just ready to take a break and Mom is finishing up with what she wanted to mow so i took over and did the rest as usual. when i get done with mowing i'm ready enough for a break, but with an extra hour of warm-up weeding i was extra ready.

 

[digitS']

Later out of bed this morning but it was good to have an extra hour + from usual. It's okay also because the foray to the garden was simply for harvesting and repairing sprinklers but didn't need extra water after the rain. Oh, and there was some lettuce plants to set out - probably won't be able to do anything.

The discussion in the "Coffee" thread about Seasons: Having only short hours of Winter daylight is a drag on getting things done, going anywhere or staying at home ... and staying. Hurrying around outdoors becomes risky during that season when there is snow & ice. We can foresee~expect~count-on the rash of news stories on road accidents that come with that first snowstorm. Things improves after that but not much.

I used to really enjoy the Autumn but that may have had to do with school and, I don't mean in my youngest years, but later. Now, I know that I will miss the gardening and what is going on outdoors. And, the loss of a harvest is already apparent. Lots of tomatoes (including some slicers for a change), peppers, eggplant, the corn is finished but that lettuce went in after I used a spading fork to take out some corn stumps. Cilantro is coming up at a full charge and the last planting of beans are kicking in at a good starting pace. Very few melons came off the vines and very few are left. Those secondary heads of Tiara cabbage are nearly all cut. We now have a bag of those softball size cabbage heads in the fridge - right at a 2-serving size for DW & me . A bucketful of Napoli carrots dug. They did better out there than in another garden, at least in size. I thought that they were a good replacement for Nantes Half-long but they are bigger. They had some problems with all the rocks but they aren't quite as silly for us to raise as the Sugarsnax were. Made some stops to leave a few things with friends -- this, after yesterday's run to deliver some zucchini bread while picking up sprinkler parts .

I may be sorry for wishing away 90+ (32=C) temperatures. Dog-gone-it. Tomorrow may be the last day for the 80's! Wow ... if that's true the Hot Summer of 2023 sure made a quick exit. A first frost in mid-September wouldn't be very unusual but it would be a surprise for this year.

 

[flowerbug]

picked four buckets of tomatoes and got those brought in and then went back out and picked beans until it got too hot to stay out any longer. there's plenty more beans to pick, chances of rain - too hot and humid. sorry beanos gonna have to wait until tomorrow morning...

 

[digitS']

The soil was more wet than expected so it was a half-time irrigation. That didn't start very early because of a late arrival. And ...

. about 5 gallons of green beans to pick. And ...

. a good 3 gallons of tomatoes. Mostly cherries but ...


The slicers kicked in, mostly Gary O Sena. Unfortunately, there were some splits ~ i guess ~ because of about 4 days of sprinkles. The few that were harvested before the rain didn’t have so much problem with 2 days/week overhead irrigation. Anyway, the need to find them in the sprawl and harvest at first blush is apparent. This was true with the Large Red Cherries Redux. Their improved qualities over times past lost a little glimmer in light of this. Yellow Jellybeans held up well. Others, just too puffed up with frequent rainwater, i guess.

Steve