Grasshopper

Big Grasshopper

We found a huge grasshopper in the back yard the other day, just a few feet from the new raised bed where the tomatoes had just been planted.

The grasshopper was so well camouflaged that I almost stepped on it before I saw it.  Once I did see it, we had to figure out what to do about it.  We have a hard time killing any creature except mosquitoes and poisonous spiders, but when it comes to insects that eat plants at the rate grasshoppers eat tomatoes, we have to do something about it.

So we trapped the critter and carted it off to an undisclosed location and let it go.

We're probably the only people who practice "catch and release" with grasshoppers.

"Deploy Varmint Repelling Shields, Mr. Sulu!"

Varmint Repelling Shields

"Varmint Repelling Shields deployed, Captain!"

At least they've been deployed in the first of the two new raised beds.  The second bed will have to wait until tomorrow, and the much larger original raised bed is going to take a lot longer, but this bed has the newly transplanted TOMATOES!!!, so it took first priority.

The bottom part of each piece is hardware cloth and the top is plexiglass.  Unfortunately, these things don't photograph very well, so we left the brown protective paper on one sheet of the plexiglass to make it show up better for the picture.  Each panel is screwed to stakes that fit into PVC tubes strapped to the inside the bed.  Cindy has developed this system over the last ten or so years, refining it as needed.

Original Panels

The three remaining original panels can be seen in the background of this photo around three sides of the old raised bed.  The old panels consist of plexiglass attached to the stakes which were originally just stuck into the ground.  That got harder as time went on, so Cindy added the refinement of the PVC tubes, which can be seen in the corners of the new raised bed in the foreground.

The old panels were very effective at keeping the various tomato-eating varmints, such as ground squirrels, raccoons, skunks and neighborhood cats out of the vegetable beds, but they also cut down on the air flow to the plants.  Some of the plants seemed to get overheated, so we're hoping that they will do better with having more air circulate through the hardware cloth at the bottom.

MMMMMMMM, Cocoa Shell Mulch!

Cindy bought a bag of cocoa shell mulch yesterday.  I don't know how effective it is as mulch, but for somebody who's a chocoholic, it really smells wonderful.

I'm not sure where she intends to use it, but I suspect that spot will soon become my new favorite place in the garden.

Micro Farming

Harvesting Swiss Chard

Cindy is getting ready to plant her vegetable garden for this spring.  There are still some things growing that she planted last fall, including the Swiss Chard, radishes and some carrots that have grown large and lumpish, but that still taste pretty good.

We've decided that what she has is a micro-farm.  Not as exciting as a micro-brewery, perhaps, but probably a lot more nutritional value.

Right now she's nurturing her tomato and basil plants, raising them in the garage, but getting them accustomed to being outdoors during the days when the weather's nice.

We're currently working on revamping the varmint repelling shields around the raised beds.  Cindy attached  3 foot tall plexiglass panels to wooden stakes and installed them all the way around the original bed when she got tired of finding half-eaten tomatoes on the ground just before she was ready to pick them.  The panels worked very well at keeping the critters out of the vegetable beds, but the panels themselves made the interior of the beds too warm for some of the plants she wants to grow.  The tomatoes seemed to love the heat, but other plants thought they had their own private sauna.

The solution she came up with is to cut the plexiglass panels in half and attach hardware cloth to the lower part when she reassemble the panel.  That should increase the air flow through the bed, but still keep the squirrels from getting into the vegetable beds.

Unfortunately, that means cutting a whole lot of plastic.  And hardware cloth.  Always such fun.

Easter Egg Radishes

Easter Egg Radishes

Just in time for Easter, Cindy's Easter Egg Radishes are ready for harvesting.  I've never seen such things before.  It's such fun to have something this colorful on the plate.

She prepares them by tossing them in olive oil and salt, then roasts them at 400 degrees for twenty minutes, then brushes on melted butter, making them sweet and tender.  These are so much better than the bitter tasting radishes you get at the store.  Even I like them.

Just In Time

Cindy finally uprooted the Wild Cucumbers we had sprouted from the seeds some critter had stashed in one corner of the raised vegetable bed.

Wild Cucumber Uprooted

It looks like we were just in time; the root on this thing is enormous for the size of the plant.  It's pretty clear that the plant puts most of its energy into building the fibrous root before the leaves sprout, but once it gets the root going, the plant grows at an incredible rate.

Since we identified the plant, we've seen others growing up through a dead tree in the neighbor's yard, and also seen it climbing up our Lemonadeberry shrubs behind our hedge.  There must be a huge root somewhere out there in the canyon.

When Cindy mentioned this to some of her Master Gardener friends yesterday, they couldn't believe that we had intentionally sprouted seeds without knowing what the plant was.  Won't do that again, but at least we sprouted them in containers and kept it from establishing that root in the ground.

It's pretty clear that this plant could challenge both the Eugenia and the Thunbergia for world domination.

Ominous Signs From The Mystery Nuts

Mystery Nuts Finally Sprout

The mystery nuts that we discovered in the corner of one of the raised beds in February (see Whose Nuts?) have finally sprouted and are showing signs of being something we really don't want in the yard.

The leaves look like ivy leaves and the plant is starting to throw out tendrils that look like it's going to be a vine of some kind.  Neither of those characteristics is desirable, but I've never heard that ivy produced nuts.

Mystery Nuts

The nuts we found looked almost like acorns, but without the top cap that acorns have.  They were about the size and shape of pecans.  Nuts?  Seeds?  Whatever they were, they were quite pretty, but we're definitely not interested in anything that sends out vines like that.

Several years ago we had a wild California Cucumber vine crawl up out of the canyon and shoot along the fence on the north side of our backyard.  It grew incredibly fast and produced the characteristic spiny green fruit that vaguely resembles a cucumber.  (O. K., it's a large green fruit, but that's about as close as the resemblance gets to a real cucumber).  The fruit is actually the seed pod that contains the seeds. According to one source, rodents and Scrub Jays like to cache the seeds, although what use they make of the seeds is unknown, since all parts of the plant are reputed to be very bitter.  Tasting the fruit can apparently lead to numbness of the tongue and jaw.  My brother tasted one of the fruits on a biology field trip in high school and experienced the numbness.

The bad news is that the Marah macrocarpus species is also called "Man Root" because of the large underground tubers that keep the plant alive during the dry season.  One of the roots reportedly weighed over 400 pounds.  During the dry season the plant just goes dormant and waits for the next rainy season, when the vines emerge again and grow up and over trees, shrubs and fences to suck up as many nutrients as possible.

More identification is available at the UC Integrated Pest Management Website and it looks a whole like what we've got growing in those cups.  The ground squirrels are the most likely suspects to have cached the seeds, but with skunks, raccoons and Scrub Jays visiting the yard, it could have been any of them.

I'm thinking we need to pull these things up pronto--we know we've already got one of these plants living nearby and we certainly don't need any more of them.