It's Easy Being Green

Tomato plants stripped nearly naked thanks to a marauding band of Horn Worms

This year’s garden is now in a major lull with the exception of the cacophony of Tomato Horn Worms chewing their way though our plants.  It’s true, if you stand still long enough during the warm daylight hours, you won’t hear a bird’s song or the wind rustling through the reeds next to our frog pond.  You will literally hear the mandibles of dozens of green striped Horn Worms chewing tomato plants into leafless totems hearkening for another shot at life.

We’ve done well this year with our garden crop and have seemingly trumped the output of other backyard vegetable patches in our area.  More than a dozen tomato plants spread throughout our square foot garden fared decently but hit a noticeable slowdown once a triple digit heat index took hold for several long weeks.

Recently cool temperatures both at night and during the day have spurred some rejuvenation in those warm weather plants that seemed all but tapped out for the season.  A new flush of tomatoes have set and are increasing in size with each passing day.  It’s as if the tomatoes, falling out of stride, know the season is marching on without them.  They’re giving it one last push to make their masters happy before the frost settles and brings an end to their six month-long efflorescent parade.

While we wait for the last gifts of the season to ripen on the vine, we’re involved in a twice daily fight to the death with those devilish Tomato Horn Worms.  I’ve started giving the tomatoes a caffeinated jolt, spraying with diluted coffee when the air is still.  According to some discussion in an issue of Organic Gardening magazine, the coffee’s acidity makes the tomato leaves unpalatable to the marauding Horn Worms and there does seem to be some truth to the claim.  Meanwhile you could almost make a twice daily trip to the garden and fatten your own gullet eating a meal of horn worms.  If only they tasted like the very tomatoes they nefariously eat.

While it is still cool in the mornings, you can often catch Horn Worms while they are very groggy. That is where they climb to the tip of the tomato plant to catch some rays.

While the morning air is still cool you can easily bust the curled caterpillars trying to catch the sun’s first warm rays of the day while clamped firmly to the ends of the tomato branches.  It’s there my nimble fingers navigate between the leaves to pull and finally pluck the caterpillar from its tomato buffet and firmly plant it in a bucket with its recently harvested brethren.  Then again by sunset, Homestead Hottie and I tread through the garden once more searching for the “ones that got away”.

A bucket of Tomato Horn Worms freshly picked and destined to become fish food

Once my bucket is full and before the sun totally slips below the horizon line, I toss the day’s pickings out into the middle of the frog pond.  That’s where, lying just below the still and stagnant water’s surface, a group of fish await the writhing tender green gooey morsels looking to fatten their bellies on my future meal. Standing alongside the reeds on the pond’s bank, I watch the Horn Worms disappear one by one into a boil of frenzied fish mouths.  Once the last one disappears beneath the water’s surface, I understand why revenge truly is as sweet as some say it is.

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It’s that time of year when the skunks start coming out of the woodwork and interacting with the friendly wildlife we call pets living in our yards.  T had a near heart attack the other night when she heard our dog going crazy outback and opened the door to the most pungent skunk spray smell ever.  We’re pretty used to the odor coming from Flagstaff, AZ.  We practically had a skunk wander by our bedroom window just about every night regardless of what house we were living in there.

T remarked that the odor was so bad her eyes were watering and she was almost certain the dog had been sprayed because of the way she was acting.  Co-workers told me to pickup lots of cans of tomato juice on the way home, with extra to make a Bloody Mary to enjoy during the bathing process.  While I’ve heard good things about the tomato juice, I’ve heard it takes several washes and wondered if there was anything better and not chemically based for getting rid of the smell.

That’s when I sent a good friend of mine back in Flagstaff a message to see what he’s used.  He had the unfortunate experience of having both his dogs sprayed and then they ran into the house, fumigating his two story abode with the smell of woodpussy.  He got back to me with his favorite and effective green skunk deodorizer recipe and here it is:

Green Skunk Wash Deodorizer Recipe

-  1 bottle of hydrogen peroxide

-  1/4 cup of baking soda

-  A few drops of liquid dish soap

Mix all ingredients together and get to washing!

As it turns out, I got home and the dog did not get sprayed, thankfully.  It seemed as if the creature simply wandered through the yard and was quite smelly but never deposited it’s fragrance on my four-legged beast outback.  Do you have a good home remedy or green recipe for getting rid of a skunky smell?  Leave a comment with your recipe or email me and we’ll post it in a future article!

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We’ve all heard the concerns surrounding pollinators, especially bees, and the diminishing populations we’re seeing worldwide.  Now is the time to step up our fight to save these tiny creatures that do so much work to keep us alive!

A Monarch butterfly migrating through southwestern Indiana stops to sip some nectar from a purple thistle.

The North American Pollinator Protection Project has come up with 30 regional-specific guides discussing the pollinators found in your area and how best to attract them.  Each guide discusses native plants found in your area that bees, butterflies, beetles and birds use for food and nesting.  They also show you how to include those plants in your landscape to best provide shelter from predators and harsh weather.

To find the guide for your region, just head to the North American Pollinator Project website.

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This last week I ran across a desk that popped up on Freecycle.  I’ve been working off of a tiny desk that was barely big enough for my monitor and the keyboard since moving to Indiana last year.  The only challenge was the desk was about a 30 minute drive from the house so it was going to require some advance planning to find a morning I could sneak out early and pick it up.

Wild sunflowers bloom alongside one of the many gravel roads leading in and around Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area in northern Warrick County.

I chose Wednesday, a day when we don’t have much going on other than me going to work, and made plans with the Freecycler to come cart their old desk away.  I woke up early, loaded the car with recyclables to drop off on my way out of town, grabbed a free coffee at McDonald’s and then headed out.  I was supposed to call the Freecyclers just to warn them I was headed out so they would be ready for my arrival.

A typical grassy meadow borderd by forest and found throughout the Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife area

Needless to say, I wasn’t really surprised when nobody answered the phone and I didn’t get an immediate call back after leaving a message.  I wasn’t too concerned though since I needed to stop and drop off my recyclables before heading out to the desk.  After 10 minutes of sorting recyclables and getting them into their correct bins at the recycling center, I decided to drive around in the general area waiting for my return phone call.  It just didn’t make sense to drive all the way back home only to turn around and head back out that direction again.

Wildflowers of all different shapes and colors bloom in the grassy praires and even right alongside the guard rails on all of the gravel roads

Sometimes the magic of just driving around on the roads less-traveled is enough to keep me occupied.  I love seeing the land and discovering little hidden corners and hideaways.  As I was driving along on two-lane farm roads, I discovered a gravel road that veered off the pavement and up a hill.  I decided to meander up the road and check it out.    It ended up running into the nearby Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area, a network of prairies, woods and lakes that attract all sorts of local game.

Reflecting on their serene view, wildflowers bob and sway in the breeze at Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area

I parked the car and decided to turn my frustration at a flaky Freecycler into some good mind clearing fun.  I wandered down the gravel roads, checking all sorts of native wildflowers blooming just about everywhere you looked.  Since I”m a horticultural nut, I also spent some time collecting seed pods off of the different wildflowers so maybe next year I can grow some of my own and cultivate them.  The quiet and solitude of that 30 minutes was just what I need to rejuvenate my mind for the rest of the day.  The only man-made noise was from a plane passing overhead.  The rest was the breeze blowing through the reeds, fish jumping for bugs, insects and frogs chirping and whirring away and a heron swooping in over one of the lakes to setup his observation post, looking for his next meal.

Even dried flower pods are colorful. These ones are covered with bright orange and black beetles that look like cousins to the squash beetles that attacked my zuchinnis and cucumbers

I started out angry at yet another Freecycle Flake who says one thing and then does another but was able to turn the wheel down the road less-traveled and cleared my mind with nature.

A beautiful Monarch butterfly stops for a sip of nectar on one of probably thousands of purple thistles blooming in the area

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I’m not sure whether it’s the hot summer nights or the copious amounts of backyard barbecues happening about now but I sure have noticed both possums and raccoons out on the prowl late at night. In fact, I almost ran over two raccoons who were fully engaged in trash can debauchery when I was coming home the other night.

If you’re experiencing nightly raids on your trash cans, you can tell what kind of thief your dealing with by looking at the leftovers. Dogs knock cans over and rip into bags to get at the delights rotting away inside and they’ll strew the mess everywhere. Possums tend to leave a trail of half-eaten food as they picked through what they wanted and munch on it while walking away with their take.

Opossums will leave a trail of food behind them after making a raid on your garden or trash can.

The most cunning trash thief of them all is probably the raccoon. The smart nighttime prowlers can carefully let themselves into trash cans. They’re known to pick through the garbage, pick out what they want, clean it off and then dine on their new found smorgasbord.

Raccoons are smart and nimble. They can make well-thought out raids on your garbage.

So how can you go about protecting yourselves from those trash thieves without trapping them or poisoning them(both terrible options if you ask me)? If you have the money to buy yourself predator proof trash cans, that’s a fantastic way to go but one household chemical also apparently acts as a pretty good trash thief deterrent: ammonia. Just put a teaspoonful in your garbage can and maybe even some in the bag of trash before you tie it up. Also sprinkle some around the base of your trash cans. Those late night thieves will come across the ammonia and won’t be too excited about what might await them inside.

Let us know if you have any tips on how you’ve been able to ward off late night trash thieves or what your experience has been with the four-pawed, neighborhood crooks.

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It’s already coming up on mid-August but there is still plenty to do out in the yard. This week my Mammoth Sunflowers started blooming, so there is now an array of happy faces greeting us all around the back of the house. Many of them have reached 8 feet or taller and continue to grow even taller with each passing day.

One of our many Mammoth Sunflowers that started blooming this week has a special resident. If you look closely at the bottom of the bloom, you'll see a Praying Mantis waiting in the shadows.

Now that they’re blooming, I can start my bee survey. It’s all part of the Great Sunflower Project run by Gretchen LeBuhn at San Francisco State University. The project was started to help understand the challenges that one of our most important pollinators, bees, are now facing. After all, scientists say every third bite of food you take is the result of bees doing their good work.

A Bumblebee makes his way around the blooming sunflower, collecting pollen.

I set myself up in my lawn chair this morning, grabbed a cup of coffee and sat and observed one of my sunflowers for a few minutes to see how long it took for 5 bees to visit one bloom. The maximum wait time allowed by the study is 30 minutes but I didn’t even get close to that amount. As it turns out, just six minutes into my sunflower observation I had reached 5 bees visiting and happily pollinating.

That’s good news! Not only do the bees pollinate the flowers but also the bountiful harvest growing in our own backyard vegetable garden. I’m hoping just a few minutes spent helping their research will help develop some solutions to dwindling bee populations. While small, they’re so important to our life.

I’ve even considered doing some home beekeeping at some point in time. My yard is way to small to even think about it now but in the future when I have a few acres under my belt, I’m hoping I can get some hives going.

If you’re interested in learning more about The Great Sunflower Project or want to know how to conduct your own bee survey, just click that link and head to their website.

Happy pollinators hard at work on a Mammoth Sunflower

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We’ve had a lot of rain here in the Midwest this summer.  Because of that, there have been some continuously standing pools of stagnant water which of course, breed those pesky mosquitoes we so fondly hate when we’re outdoors.  Getting rid of the pests is very simple though and doesn’t require the harmful spraying of chemicals.

First, take a survey of your property.  Look for any type of container that could hold water (either from your sprinklers or from rainfall) and make sure you dump it out and store it upside down.  Water bowls for pets are a common breeding ground for mosquito larvae but if you dump it out ever day and re-fill it, you shouldn’t have a problem.  Make sure items like open-topped water barrels have a fine mesh screen on top that mosquitoes can’t penetrate.  Get rid of old tires laying around your property and fix any drainage issues you might have that are causing standing pools of water on your property.

Secondly, install a bat house either on your home, barn or some other outbuilding on your property.  A single bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in one night!  That’s a pretty amazing and effective control without the use of any type of chemical!

There is a duck pond behind our house but every night we hear bats chirping late into the night.  Consequently, we don’t have a mosquito problem when we go out and enjoy the cool night air on our back deck.

For more information on how to build an approved Bat House, head over to the Batcon website.

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