CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When I think of an 80-acre New York City apartment complex, I don't typically think of the ladybug as the dominant insect-in-residence. But the trend to use natural insecticides led one landlord to fight one bug with another.
The place was overrun with aphids -- estimates say there were 4.6 billion of them (but who counted?) -- so they bought 720,000 lady beetles (Hippodamia convergens) that used their sense of smell to hunt and devour the tiny pests.
The ladybugs came from Planet Natural in Bozeman, Mont., and they feed on 40 to 50 aphids per day, according to owner Eric Vinje. His company collects the beneficial critters in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and he says sales are up over the past few years. Barley suppliers for Anheuser-Busch bought 7 million!
You can buy 2,000 ladybugs for $23.50. One half-pint (about 4,500) covers 3,000 square feet (a 50- by 60-foot plot). Ladybugs arrive in a cloth bag ready for release.
If it is not convenient to make an immediate release, refrigerate the closed bag -- but do not refrigerate for more than a day or so; the longer they are refrigerated the higher the mortality will be.
To release the ladybugs, water your garden and shake them out close to the pest populations. With sufficient food available, the ladybugs will likely stay in the area.
The company (www.planetnatural.com) is taking orders to be shipped in the spring.
Glove dilemma
I need to start wearing gardening gloves. Every spring, I tear up my hands doing the garden cleanup, and then I think about getting some good gloves. Hubby has bought several different types -- leather, cloth, suede -- but I can't seem to find a pair I want to wear.
Since the biggest problem I have with garden gloves is that they get dirt on the inside, making them ineffective for keeping my hands clean, I'm going to try my friend Julie's solution. She buys them at Big Lots for less than a buck a pair and gets several pairs at a time, then just pitches them (without guilt) when they get nasty.
When researching gloves, I came across a pair by a company called Palm Flex. This testimonial for the gloves made me laugh, since the biggest foe my gloves must face is a multiflora rose:
"I bought a pair of the HexArmor Hercules gloves for snake handling down in the jungles of Panama. They stood up to multiple strikes from three different kinds of snakes, including the poisonous fer-de-lance. The only thing I noticed after my trip was that a couple of the small rubber dots covering the palm and thumb area came off from normal use. These dots add a resistant-friction angle to prevent a direct strike." -- Charles Jennings
Mr. Jennings, your life is truly more interesting than mine.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When I think of an 80-acre New York City apartment complex, I don't typically think of the ladybug as the dominant insect-in-residence. But the trend to use natural insecticides led one landlord to fight one bug with another.
The place was overrun with aphids -- estimates say there were 4.6 billion of them (but who counted?) -- so they bought 720,000 lady beetles (Hippodamia convergens) that used their sense of smell to hunt and devour the tiny pests.
The ladybugs came from Planet Natural in Bozeman, Mont., and they feed on 40 to 50 aphids per day, according to owner Eric Vinje. His company collects the beneficial critters in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and he says sales are up over the past few years. Barley suppliers for Anheuser-Busch bought 7 million!
You can buy 2,000 ladybugs for $23.50. One half-pint (about 4,500) covers 3,000 square feet (a 50- by 60-foot plot). Ladybugs arrive in a cloth bag ready for release.
If it is not convenient to make an immediate release, refrigerate the closed bag -- but do not refrigerate for more than a day or so; the longer they are refrigerated the higher the mortality will be.
To release the ladybugs, water your garden and shake them out close to the pest populations. With sufficient food available, the ladybugs will likely stay in the area.
The company (www.planetnatural.com) is taking orders to be shipped in the spring.
Glove dilemma
I need to start wearing gardening gloves. Every spring, I tear up my hands doing the garden cleanup, and then I think about getting some good gloves. Hubby has bought several different types -- leather, cloth, suede -- but I can't seem to find a pair I want to wear.
Since the biggest problem I have with garden gloves is that they get dirt on the inside, making them ineffective for keeping my hands clean, I'm going to try my friend Julie's solution. She buys them at Big Lots for less than a buck a pair and gets several pairs at a time, then just pitches them (without guilt) when they get nasty.
When researching gloves, I came across a pair by a company called Palm Flex. This testimonial for the gloves made me laugh, since the biggest foe my gloves must face is a multiflora rose:
"I bought a pair of the HexArmor Hercules gloves for snake handling down in the jungles of Panama. They stood up to multiple strikes from three different kinds of snakes, including the poisonous fer-de-lance. The only thing I noticed after my trip was that a couple of the small rubber dots covering the palm and thumb area came off from normal use. These dots add a resistant-friction angle to prevent a direct strike." -- Charles Jennings
Mr. Jennings, your life is truly more interesting than mine.
'The Seeds of Spring'
Just finished reading a charming book by Steve Bates called "The Seeds of Spring: Lessons from the Garden." Usually I'm not crazy about books that wax poetic about the parallels between gardening and life -- they come off trite or sappy. But this one has plenty of practical garden advice and an offbeat attitude to make it a good read.
The author/gardener spent 14 years as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, worked at Nations Business magazine and other publications. He's a good writer first, and then a good gardener, so the story flows well.
A chapter about the Chicken Empathy Museum and his passages about weed obsession had me in stitches.
Here's an excerpt from "The Seeds of Spring":
"Know Einstein's definition of 'insanity'? It's doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting a different result. Well, gardening must be the embodiment of insanity, because I'm doing the same thing over and over and hoping against hope that I'll get the upper hand someday. Because we humans were made to strive for the seemingly impossible, to reach for the stars, to curse the heavens when beaten back in our quests. We're not going to let a few weeds get the better of us, are we? Because we know what happens if we let them get the upper hand: Good plants die.
"There's a nearly foolproof process for determining what is a weed and what is not a weed. Pull it from the ground: If it fights you and refuses to come out without massive effort, it's a weed. If it comes out easily, it was a good plant. Sort of like the tests used in Salem, Massachusetts, to figure out who was a witch: If they tried to drown you and failed, you're a witch. If they submerged you and you drowned, you were not. Not good news for the innocent in either case, but you work with the tools you have.
"Even after incessant weeding, application of herbicides and a few thinly veiled threats against some offending plants in your garden you seem to get the upper hand, others appear or spread at warp speed right behind your back. Carried by wind, water, animals, FedEx delivery guys or who knows what, they find a way."
"The Seeds of Spring: Lessons from the Garden" (Create Space/Breaking Ground Books, 2010, $9.95) is available from Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle editions.
A nip for your flowers
Mary Helen Tully tells me that if you add a shot of gin to your paperwhites they will be more fragrant!
"True story ... I do it every year. Gin is a derivative of juniper berries, a cousin to paperwhites ..., so the story goes. I always put mine in a bowl in glass floral beads. This year I added sea shells and pearl ornaments. Add water and one shot of gin. Too much gin and they grow too tall and fall over. Cross my heart!"
Reach Sara Busse at sara.bu...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1249.
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