Longhorn Roundup

Eucalyptus Longhorned Borer

We found a very odd looking bug on our front walk the other night--I'd never seen anything like it.

Its two most noticeable characteristics were its two-toned body color and its extremely long antennae, which were even longer than its body.

The bug wasn't going anywhere, so I had time to take a couple of pictures of it.

Turns out it's a Eucalyptus Longhorned Borer, Phoracantha semipunctata or Phoracantha recurva, a beetle that attacks (guess what?) eucalyptus trees.

These beetles bore into the bark of eucalyptus trees and lay hundreds of eggs.  When the eggs hatch, the larvae create entire galleries of tunnels in the cambium layer of the bark and their activities can stress and eventually kill the eucalyptus tree.

We don't have any eucalyptus trees in our yard, but there are many of them in the neighborhood, including several out in the canyon behind of us.  We've never been very fond of them; if eucalyptus trees catch fire the oils in the leaves and bark tend to turn them into gigantic flaming bombs that can send embers shooting off to spread the fire.  Not a comforting thought, and dead euchs would burn even faster than live ones.

Knowing that we have a pest insect working on the trees out behind us to turn them into dead trees is even less comforting, so once we identified the bug, we made sure it was a dead bug.  Probably too late to stop any damage, though.

It's too bad that this bug is such a destructive pest because the black and gold or cream color scheme is really striking and very pretty.  I may have to try to make some beads with that color scheme.  I'm not doing antennae on them, though.

Potato Haiku

My brother, whose nickname in the Navy was "Spud Taters", was inspired by my recent posts about our potato harvest to create these two haiku:

So, Cindy Struck Spuds! 

And, Since Teeters Eat Taters, 

Felicity Ensues. 

Tubers hid, dormant

While bold Basil claimed the sun.

Surprise! A gift of gold!

More Potatoes

Yesterday we, and by "we" I mean Cindy and her sister Mary, harvested more potatoes, this time from the second grow bag.

Cindy planted these German Butterball yellow potato plants last January, then pretty much wrote them off later in the season when  the plants seemed to die back and some basil plants took hold in the bags.  So she was very surprised last week when she went to clean out the bags to discover that there were indeed potatoes in there.

We got over two pounds of potatoes out of the first bag, and about four and a half pounds out of this one.  Considering how much I love potatoes, that should last for about a week.  We had some for dinner last night and they were delicious.

Some of them will probably go back into the bags as seed potatoes for the next crop.

More Seasonal Color

Toyon

Other areas of the world have the seasonal reds and greens of Holly and Mistletoe berries and leaves at this time of year; San Diego gets the same colors with the leaves and berries of the Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) and Pyracantha (Pyracantha coccinea) shrubs.

The birds, especially Mocking Birds, love the berries from these two plants, and they are welcome to them.

Some gardeners like the Pyracantha for its ability to thrive in conditions of drought and neglect, but its nickname of Firethorn graphically describes why we're not too fond of this plant; its thorns make it difficult and painful to try to prune this plant.

Late Harvest

Cindy did some cleaning up in the garden recently and picked the first of our current lettuce crop and the last of the peppers and shallots.

I thought it made a very colorful seasonal display.

Potatoes!

Our Potato Crop

Cindy planted some seed potatoes in two grow bags almost a year ago, and they've been quietly growing away ever since.

We were initially afraid that the varmint that stole the False Sea Onion bulb last January would also go after the potatoes, but Cindy created some of her anti-varmint cages out of hardware cloth and electrical ties to protect the plants until they were big enough to fend for themselves.

Today she pulled out the plants in one of the bags, dug around and found that we really do have potatoes.  In fact, she pulled up two pounds of them, and that's just from one of the two grow bags.

Considering how fond I am of potatoes in almost every form, this is really good news.

Who's Home?

A New Varmint Hole

Cindy has been waging a fierce battle with gophers in the raised beds out behind the garage, so when she found this new hole in the planter beside the garage, her first conclusion was that the gophers had moved around to the side of the garage.

However, I'm thinking it's probably not gophers; the one we saw filching blades of grass up at Temecula a couple of weeks ago (see Black Friday, No Thanks) was very careful to fill the hole up behind him when he had enough vegetation, whereas this varmint has brazenly left the doorway wide open.

Also, the gophers left neat mounds along the course of their tunnels, while this critter just scattered the dirt from the hole all over the planter, burying several other plants.

So this varmint is probably our old nemesis, the California Ground Squirrel.

I'm just hoping they haven't completely undermined the garage by now.