Red Flat Bark Beetle

This guy showed up on my steps this week and that bright color caught my eye right away.    It's a Red Flat Bark Beetle - Cucujus clavipes

Turns out they are a species with extreme freezing tolerance.   Which explains why it's one of the few bugs we've seen this spring. 

Except for the flies.   And those horrible Asian ladybugs.  Both of which will survive the next global apocalypse, I'm sure. 

Anyway, this red guy survives the cold by utilizing a series of antifreeze proteins in its body.   Cool! 

or rather....Cold!

Mantis Egg Sac

Lily noticed this in a cedar tree the last time we went for a walk.   I was lucky to have the camera with me because I am always on the lookout for these.

It's the egg sac of a praying mantis. 

They look like styrofoam and you can find them on trees, weeds, twigs, brush, etc.  

We have a few different kinds of mantids out here, but I think this sac is from the praying mantis - Mantis religiosa.

In the spring, they'll hatch out by the hundreds [I hope] and eat plenty of other bugs.

Someday I want to see the hatching....maybe next year?

Adult Activities

It's harder than I thought to identify exactly what kind of grasshoppers these are.    There are a lot of grasshoppers out there.

Who knew?  

Turns out they are Differential Grasshoppers [Melanoplus differentialis].  You can tell because of the yellow legs and the black chevrons on the upper leg.   Very distinctive.

I thought these guys were engaged in a little adult activity, but it turns out they were multitasking.

They were eating my lemon tree.   

I chased them off and told them to go get a room. Geez.

Click the pics for a closer view of these lemon leaves.   They're pretty cool. 

Twelve Spotted Lady Beetle

First of all, click the pic to blow it up.   This is one cute bug. 

Her first name is hilarious:  Coleomegilla maculata.  It always reminds me of gorillas - you know.. Magilla Gorilla.    Right?  Which is funny.   Because it's a tiny little bug.   Right?   Gorillas...bugs...

You're not laughing.

Whatever.   ....    Anyway.

These guys eat lots of bad bugs and bad bug eggs, so you want them in your garden.  

Walking Stick

Once in a great while one of these shows up here.

It's a walking stick.   [Of the family Phasmatodea].

I saw this one on our steps where it was easy to see and I kept my eye on it until someone could bring the camera.  Otherwise, I'd never have been able to see it in the grass.  

This one was about six inches long.  

Spotted Cucumber Beetle

They've taken over the world.

Seriously, I can't get rid of these guys.   I haven't figured out what their eggs look like or where they're coming from.   And nothing seems to slow them down.   Every time I go out there are more and more and when I try to sneak up on them they fly away.    They're especially in love with the squash plants.   Geez.  [Click pics to get a good look at this guy.]

This site has some great suggestions for getting them under control.   I'm going on the offensive next season.  

According to them, these beetles retreat and migrate according to the weather.   They'll head south when it gets cold. 

The problem last year is that it didn't get cold enough and they hung around.   Which means they've multiplied through several generations, which is why there are so darn many here now. 

Garden Pest: Flea Beetle

Our first garden pests have struck. 

I planted out my baby eggplant starts and they were immediately attacked by flea beetles.

They are tiny little black beetles - kinda pretty, actually, with that dark blue/black sheen.    They'll jump away when you disturb them, which is why they're called flea beetles.

They eat little holes in the leaves of everything in the nighshade and brassica family.    That's the tomato family and the cabbage family.

Those are really really big families.   And it is pretty much 90% of what's in the garden. 

Curses.

We're going to treat them with diatomaceous earth, which will hopefully make them leave.   And in the meantime, I'm going to hand pick them off.

Here's a tip for hand picking these little beasts:

Get a small container of water and put some dish soap in it.  Go stand by your plants - remember that your shadow will cause them to jump away so try to be subtle.   I realize that's really hard to do.

Dip your fingers in the water to get them good and wet, then slowly reach to the plant and pinch the beetle against the leaf.   Roll it off the leaf so you can pinch it between your fingers and then drop it in the water.   The soap breaks the surface tension of the water and makes it so they'll sink fast and not be able to stand on the water and jump out.    I hate it when that happens. 

You'll get surprising good at this in a short time. 

When you're done with the plants, go right back and do them again.   It doesn't take the beetles long to get back to the business of chewing up your plants, so it won't take you long to make a dent in their population.

Good luck!

P.S.    Since garden pests are a pretty big issue here, I've added a Garden Pest section on the Gardening page.    Click on the Gardening tab at the top of the page for a list of what we regularly battle and how we do it.

Guess that bug..

An insectivous challenge.

It's been a while.

I thought you needed one.

Plus, these guys are really pretty.

I would wear them as earrings.

As long as they didn't wiggle.   That would be gross. 

Answer below the fold....

Organic Insecticide

I have a few trees and things that I generally keep outside in giant pots during the summer, but have to move in during the winter.  

I have a bay tree, a meyer lemon tree, a patchouli, a couple of rosemaries and a lemon verbena.   

They spend the winter in the studio, in front of the big windows.  We keep it 55 degrees most of the time, so we don't have to water things much.   

This year they have aphids.

Just kill me now.

I hate aphids.

Then I found scale.  

Scale is a soft bodied little creature that sucks the juice out of your plants.   They multiply readily and can really cause problems for plants.  


There are two ways to get rid of these pests. 

1.   Pick them off by hand.   Effective, but time consuming and not much fun.
2.   Spray them with something.   Much faster, but most insecticides are nasty.   

Then I read a post on Caleb Warnock's blog about making organic pest spray.   He'd had aphids in his greenhouse this year and tried it and it worked.

So I tried it and it worked.  

Here's what you do:

• 1 onion
• 1 whole head of garlic
• 2 Tablespoons ground cayenne pepper
• hot water
• quart jar and lid

Peel the onion and the garlic.  You don't have to do it well. Chop the onion into big pieces.   Throw the onion, garlic and pepper into a blender with a cup or so of water so it blends easily.   Puree it all. 

Put it in the quart jar and fill it up with extra hot water so you have a full quart.   Let it sit overnight.  

The next day, strain it through a towel into a spray bottle.    Spray it on your plants. 

Note:  There is enough pepper in there to make my hands warm and tingle-y if I get it on myself.   Don't get it in your eyes!!  Wear gloves when using the spray if you are sensitive to it.

Fruit Fly Trap

Confession:  We have a lot of bugs.    Partly because we live in the country where there are a lot of bugs.    And partly because sometimes we bring a bit of the country indoors. 

During canning and harvest season we get a lot of fruit flies.  

I've never been a big fan of fruit flies.   Partly because they're annoying.   And partly because in the 9th grade we had to raise them in biology class for a genetics experiment.  It had something to do with red eyes.   I think.   Anyway, the fruit flies often escaped and for several weeks the entire 9th grade area and the cafeteria suffered a pestilence of fruit flies.   Yuck. 

When I started making my own vinegar we got a few more fruit flies.   In the summer, when the vinegar warms up, we get more fruit flies.   When we bring in the latest garden produce and it sits on the counter for a day, we get more fruit flies.    Sometimes we suffer a pestilence of fruit flies.   

Yuck. 

I read somewhere about making a fruit fly trap with vinegar and water and soap.    So I tried it.  

And it works.   It really, really works.   

I have two now.   I keep one by the vinegar and one on the kitchen counter where we do food prep - that's the one in the pic.     If you blow up the pic, you'll see the little drowned fruit flies in the bottom of the jar.    My name is Robin E. and I'm a fly murderer.  


This is what you need to make your own fly execution chamber - just in time for Halloween:

• 8 oz jar  [Can be bigger or smaller.  This is America.  Use whatever jar you want.]
• 1/2 cup of water
• 2-3 Tablespoons cider vinegar 
• A few drops of dish soap

The vinegar draws the flies in.   The soap breaks the surface tension of the water, so when the flies touch the water to investigate, they fall in.   Genius.

It'll stay effective for a long time.   It doesn't smell unless you put in a lot of cider vinegar and you're sensitive to the vinegar smell.  

Mystery Caterpillar

K1 found this the other day.    We took the pics so we could identify it later.

There are a couple of good ways to ID a mystery caterpillar like this. 






 First, you need to make a list of what you know for sure:

• It's yellow
• It has black spikey lashes
• black face
• very hairy [probably a moth]

Then we went to http://www.discoverlife.org/20/q?guide=Caterpillars first.   They have a great ID site!   They use process of elimination and you can combine features to narrow things down.   Great pictures!   However, our caterpillar wasn't there.

We found some close matches, but there were significant differences.   So then we turned to Google and did a search for 'Hairy yellow caterpillar...' and lo and behold it popped up the rest of the phrase: 'hairy yellow caterpillar black spikes'.    

Perfect!   

We did the search and found this site: http://plantsnrocks.blogspot.com/2007/08/yellow-hairy-caterpillar-with-few-black.html   which had a pic of the same thing and had identified it as an American Dagger Moth.

We went back to the discoverlife site and plugged in the name:  American dagger moth.   They had the list, but no pics at all.   Maybe they'll want ours.  I'm going to try to find a way to submit photos to them.

More mystery caterpillars tomorrow!

Margined Blister Beetle

The next guest on our list of garden enemies is the margined blister beetle.

We've had this pest in our flower gardens before.   For years, they regularly ate our clematis virginiana down to sticks.  We finally dug up the clematis and hadn't seen the bug in a couple of years.   Then this year it showed up on some tomatoes and eggplant - eating the leaves to nubs.    The next day I noticed that the potato greens had been devoured.    We found dozens of these bugs in the straw around the plants.   They lay their eggs in the soil, so we have to wait for them to come up to get them. 

Rumor has it that these guys eat grasshopper eggs - which is great, except they will eat a plant to nothing, too.   Big problem. 

An even bigger problem is the fact that their bodies produce a toxin so powerful it will kill a horse and blister human skin.   Some varieties of blister bug are more powerful than others.

Truth told, I squashed dozens of these bare handed before I knew what they were.   No blisters.   I double checked the photo ID and there's no doubt what they are.   Either Eric and I got really lucky, or these just aren't as toxic as some of the others.

Handle with gloves!   But get them off your plants. 

These beetles leave a characteristic poop trail - messy wet black droppings.  That's how you'll notice them.   Look behind the leaves for the bug.  Careful picking off of these guys seems to control them.    Though we picked dozens off the potatoes the first day, there were only a few the second day and I haven't seen any since.  We're fighting them on the tomatoes now - more hiding places.    

Just drop the beetles in a bowl of hot soapy water to kill them.

Tobacco Hornworm

Hornworms are a sad fact of gardening life.    There's no avoiding them, so I just watch for them.

It takes constant vigilance!   

If you've got good eyes, you'll start seeing a single tiny, perfectly round, light colored egg on some of  your tomato leaves.   That's a hornworm egg.   Take it off now and destroy it.  You'll be glad later.

There are a few different kinds of hornworms that attack tomatoes in Indiana.   I get the tobacco hornworms.  That is a medium sized one in the pic above.   They get bigger.

A lot bigger.

And they don't like being removed from the plant.   They twist and squirt green goo at you.  They act really scary.

I have to remind myself that it doesn't want to eat me, it wants to eat my tomatoes, so I should just suck it up and get the blasted thing off.   They don't bite.

It's not always easy to spot these things.    They are perfectly camouflaged in a tomato plant.

It's much easier to see their poop - and to be perfectly honest, when I'm looking for these guys, I look for their poop.

This is the poop from that guy in the photo above.  It's medium sized hornworm poop.   The greener it is, the fresher it is.   The bigger it is, the bigger the hornworm that dropped it is.    [Warning:  there will be another poop quiz later.  You're excited, I know!  It's been ages since the last one.]

The law of gravity being what it is, once you find the poop, you can generally look straight up to find the source.   As the hornworms get bigger, they eat and move faster so sometimes you still have to search a bit.   A little patience is all it takes to find your culprit. 

Not everyone finds these as unwelcome as gardeners do.  My lovely friend Heidi loves them and collects them so they can become adults.

photo: www.ext.colost.edu

Unfortunately, she lives in another state. I told her that if she lived here, she could come over and get as many of them as she wanted and I'd giftwrap them for her.

And I would.    Gladly. 

Then she could raise adult tobacco hornworm moths like this one.

Since Heidi is not here to rescue and revere these beauties, I'll just keep picking them off and feeding them to the chickens.   The chickens love them.

Dragonflies

We have water here.   There are two creeks that run all year, one that runs most of the time and a couple of run off creeks.   It's lovely.  We have a lot of frogs and turtles and a lot of bugs.    Dragonflies are our favorites.

Here's a dragonfly gallery for you.    We don't know much about these guys and have been too lazy to look them up, so if you can identify them, let us know.


These dark ones with the single white spot on every wing are beautiful.

Then we get the gigantic ones with clear wings and fat gray bodies.

And we get the iridescent ones.   Green...

 and blue.

From the bottom, they look purple, but it's hard to get a pic of that.  They change color as they fly.

All photos K1, who has the patience of a saint.

Name that Critter

Actually this isn't a critter; it's a critter's egg sac.  While mowing this weekend on the first day of sunshine in six years, I found one.  It is not inhabited.  I think.   Anyway, it's back outside now, just in case.

This is the back:

and this is the bottom:

I love finding these!   They remind me of golden crispy sprayfoam and are unmistakable.  Nothing else looks like them. 

So, can you guess what hatches out of this?

Answer below the fold....