Since our garden will be producing soon, it is time to go to war with garden pests, that means getting out some gear and making sprays.
Here are some handy links to combat your pests:
Organic Pest Control: What Works, What Doesn’t
Natural Alternatives for the Garden
Hope this helps. Happy Gardening!
Please feel free to add any tips and tricks you use. 
I opened an e-mail from one of my sisters that had three pictures. What is this? was all that was written. I am no expert when it comes to flowers and shrubs, but I was pretty sure it was a lilac bush.
After double checking with mom, I e-mailed back that it was indeed a lilac.
A few minutes later I got a reply:
“Not the plant. The bug!”
<Insert blush here> I didn’t even notice it!
I don’t know how to make the image any larger than what she sent.
(Click on image for larger view)
Any ideas?
Remember our pumpkin post? We started out with three pumpkins, one fell off, leaving us with two wonderful pumpkins. We were looking forward to seeing how big they would get before Hallowe’en , even more to eating the seeds and trying out a few new recipes we had found.
Just look at what has happened to them:
We did not have a critter problem any other year. Mind you, we sprayed all our plants with cayenne and garlic and didn’t bother to do it this time around. It chewed into four of our tomatoes too! Why not just eat the whole thing instead of going plant to plant and take bites? My husband was so upset when he saw the first mangled pumpkins. We were so busy, we thought we had a few days to rig something up. How wrong.
Now it is after the cucumbers. This is war! I rushed out to the bulk food store and filled a bag with cayenne. Sniff that, you nasty beast! My husband took a more drastic approach. He cut the blackberry canes (the birds got the berries before we could) and placed them around the tomato plants. We might get a few people who say this is cruel but while it is using our garden for a litter box, they are known to carry disease, we decided it had to be done. He read to trap and release it into the wild would be worse as they are creatures that live in urban areas and to take them so far from their environment would surely be more unkind.
This is what my husband did to keep it out of our cucumbers. Thorn free. Not too pretty. We will have to see if it works.
A tree frog decided to hang out with us for a while. It looks as though, instead of hanging out, he is hanging on for dear life!
It fell out the umbrella when my husband opened it. I was glad to get a few pictures, he didn’t seem too bothered by it.
A few hours later he/she was off to better adventures and hasn’t been seen since. I hope we meet again some day.
His one front hand seems to have a bit of deformity. My husband has noticed bees and flies with odd growths this summer. I wonder what is going on.
