This is Really Bugging Me...

I'd like to promise that this will be my last post about insects, but that would probably be unrealistic.  After all, there are so many of them and so few of us. In fact, the actual number of them isn't known, but there are reliable estimates* that there are some 10,000,000,000,000,000,000  (Ten Quintillion) currently alive; about 1 million species identified, and perhaps as many as another 30 million not yet discovered.

That's an awful lot of bugs.

So I guess it's understandable that creepy crawly hijinks appear frequently in this blog.  And it's also probably understandable that, given how many different kinds there are, I'd occasionally mis-identify one.  So I'm starting this item with an apology.  In an earlier post (In Fragrante Delicto)   I captured a close-up of what I described as "an enraged hornworm:"

Well, he was enraged alright, but he was no tomato hornworm.  I still don't know what this expressive critter is (apart from fat and destructive), but I can say with certainty, it's NOT a hornworm because after keeping my eye out for others of his ilk on the tomato plants all summer long, I finally saw the telltale damage that indicated the dreaded insect had arrived.

Tomato leaves stripped bare

Following the evidence trail of naked stems led to an uneaten leaf covered with shot-peen sized balls of caterpillar poop -- scatalogical evidence that directly above the deposits, camouflaged somewhere on the tomato stems, was the culprit.  A careful inspection revealed this bad boy:

The real deal tomato hornworm

It's hard in this close up to really appreciate how effective the camouflage is.  This particular specimen was BIG -- a good four inches long and a plump half inch across.  Unlike its evil non-twin, the horn is on the butt end, not the head end of the hornworm -- and if you poke it, unlike the false hornworm above, nothing interesting happens.  And these guys can EAT.  It seems that they can go from almost nothing to supersize in a day; they can certainly strip half a tomato plant in that time, so it's imperative that once you see the signs of damage you find these suckers and dispatch them with no mercy.

Here's another one, about to attack a defenseless tomato frond

The day I found the damage, I also discovered that Mother Nature has a truly perverse streak.  After picking off 3 that looked like the blimpos above, I came upon a truly amazing sight.  It was another of these hornworms, totally covered in what looked like miniature rice puffs. In all the years I've hunted hornworms, I've never seen anything remotely like this.

Mr Mulch, being more familiar with the insect world from years of tying his own flies, said that he thought they were parasites of some sort and that they might represent nature's way of dealing with these pests.  And he was absolutely correct!  I asked The Google for details and here's what I found: 

• A natural predator of the tomato hornworm is a tiny beneficial insect called the braconid wasp. This wasp lays its eggs inside the hornworm. As they hatch, they eat their way out, killing the hornworm in the process. It's a bit off-putting to see this creature on your plants, but you're better off letting him be and letting the wasps do their job. Once they hatch, they'll be enough braconid wasps to keep your garden hornworm free.

"A bit off-putting" is a bit of an understatement!  It's downright gross to find a ravenous caterpillar, revolting enough in its own right, festooned with mini Rice Krispies which are busy eating their host from the inside out!  And if this is Mother Nature's way of controlling the population of a garden nuisance, one wonders why, if this wasp lives only to kill hornworms, we couldn't have skipped both species entirely and given the tomato plants one less thing to deal with!

In the meantime, I now know that it's best to leave alone the hornworms with the parasites on them -- they'll get their just dessert in good time -- but I'm still going to remove them from the tomato plant because they certainly don't deserve a last meal.

Evicted tomato hornworm awaits his fate

And if anyone can tell me what the caterpillar is that I mis-identified originally as a tomato hornworm, I would really appreciate it!




*Attributed to Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. E.O. Wilson of Harvard

Dining Al Fresco

One thing you can count on in a garden: at any given moment, somebody is eating something you've grown.  Whether you can see it or not, there is either a critter or an insect chowing down -- or at least using your garden to prepare its next meal if it isn't chomping greenery right at that instant. 

Much of this eating is a good thing; remember the bee part of the birds and bees -- pollination and all that.  And some of it is amusing to observe.  For example, squash blossoms make bees go mad.  They fall down into the pit at the bottom of the blossom, roll around for awhile, and emerge so drunk from pollen that all they can do is stumble around in a stupor for awhile before zigzagging off with all the grace of a C-130 Hercules cargo transport.

Pollen-laden Bee exiting the squash flower

They attack the cimicifuga with equal zeal, though they have to share that tasty treat with smaller flying insects as well.  Cimicifuga (which is really fun to say out loud) is also known as Bugbane -- though it would be better called Bugboon -- or Black Snakeroot, which is much too evil a name for such a pretty plant.  It's one of the few with really dark burgundy, almost mahogany leaves.  I've tried planting this multiple times, but the only place it's been happy is in a deep shade bed right alongside the house.

Cimicifuga in bloom

Untouched by the sun, it exuberantly sends up long lacy flower stalks that attract all sorts of flying insects, who share the pollen in a sometimes uneasy detente.  It's interesting that this plant is so attractive to insects, since for years it was ground up and used as an effective remedy for bedbugs. Nonetheless, once it blooms, it attracts so many buzzing things that it sounds as though the plant itself is alive.  Here's a close-up of the collected throng so deeply embedded in the individual flowerlets that they're hard to spot.  There are at least seven -- how many can you find (click on the photo to enlarge)?

Dinnertime amid the blossoms

And every so often, I find a more destructive insect, like this fellow, who had just finished polishing of some anemone leaves.  I did spare him -- just because he was such a cooperative poser -- but he'd better hope I don't see him again any time soon.

Attractive, but oh, so destructive

Insects aren't the only diners we see in the garden.  Squirrels abound in the oak trees, our rock walls are honeycombed with chipmunk homes, and both species view the flat ledge on top of the walls as their dining tables.  They are terrible housekeepers, however, and it's not at all unusual to find the remains of one of their nighttime repasts littering another wall in the morning.  One wonders if they're waiting for room service to remove the debris.

Remains of a late night snack

I don't often catch them in the act, but yesterday morning I did interrupt this little guy's breakfast.

Caught in the act, and gone a split second later

A second later and he was gone, leaving behind the remains of his breakfast.

Breakfast leftovers

He and all of his friends and relatives have spent the past couple of weeks feasting on the berries from our Kousa Dogwood which, after several barren years, bloomed profusely this spring and subsequently produced a plentiful crop of berry-like fruit.  

Kousa berries

Both chipmunks and squirrels love these little pinkish globes, and as a result, we're finding their crumbs carpeting all of our stone walls these days.  Apparently, the fruit is edible for humans as well, and can even be used to make wine.  Perhaps that explains why the chipmunks go so crazy for them -- and never clean up after themselves!  I have not yet tasted them, and I figure that if we leave all of these to the squirrels and chipmunks maybe they'll leave our other crops alone.  

Raspberries, for example: paws off!

Oh, and we also indulge in some al fresco dining ourselves, though in a much more civilized fashion.  After all, what's the point of growing all these veggies if we can't occasionally gorge ourselves?  So here was our dinner treat last night: summer tomatoes, late but still delicious.  Prepared with much more grace than that chipmunk displayed.  And, yes, we did clean up after ourselves.

Yellow Brandywine and Prudens Purple, garnished with scallions

Garden with Character(s)

We once grew an eggplant that was the spitting image of Richard Nixon.  Long, bulby jaw, with a ski slope protuberance that captured the precise line of his nose.  I wish I had kept a photo of it, but that was in pre-digital days.  However, each gardening season produces one or two truly bizarrely shaped vegetables.

I had gone digital by the year we had our "From Here to Eternity" carrots.  When I pulled them out of the ground, they were entwined in a clearly amorous embrace.  Just imagine these two on the beach, with surf lapping at their greens, and the ghosts of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr hovering above...

Can't you just hear the waves lapping at these two?

This year's weird veggies have been more gross than sexy.  But some years, that's what you get.  We had a zucchini that couldn't bear to part with its blossom.  Usually, the blossoms drop off to reveal a nice rounded, single-cheeked zucchini tush.  But in this case, the blossom clung on and on, until the zucchini simply incorporated the shape of its petals and turned them into a very convincing large scale model of a slug.  The only thing it was missing were the stumpy little antennae... and the slime trail slugs leave behind when they crawl away.

Best impersonation of a slug by a vegetable

The slug-chini was joined that day by a haunted carrot, which looked like it had two grouchy trolls trapped inside it...

Trolls trapped inside the carrot!

Happily, both of these tasted far better than they looked.  There's little that can't be improved with a bit of olive oil and a fair amount of garlic.


The flip side of this anthropomorphic produce is the occasional perfect specimen -- the eggplant that glistens with photogenic droplets of early morning dew...

Glorious Aubergine

... or the tomato that offers a tantalizing promise of ripeness in just a day or two...

Two more days of sun, then Yum!

... as long as we keep that voracious raccoon out of the garden!

Well, hello there!

Look who we found sloooooowly climbing down the path towards our driveway.

Close up of our visitor

This is a baby snapping turtle, and he has a very long way to go to get to the pond that's down the driveway, across the street, and through a patch of wooded brush with many obstacles in between.  

Now a turtle this small doesn't just appear out of thin air.  There must be a nest somewhere that his mom dug some weeks ago which just hatched.  I've looked everywhere and can't find it, however.  They're easy to spot when the female is actually laying the eggs.  When we first moved in, we often saw one or two in late spring, burrowing under the cotoneasters to make a cozy nest.  Like this:

Snapping turtle nesting in our cotoneasters 4 years ago

Once she finished her business, she'd make a slow march down the driveway back across the road to the pond where, presumably, she makes her home.  The treacherous part for her is when she crosses the road.  We always wanted to help, but snapping turtles are nasty in general, and even more so when they're nesting, so you want to stay away from them -- they have telescoping necks that can reach out, turn backwards and do some real damage to the hands helpfully holding her aloft so she can reach the other side.  Ingrate. 

So we would simply watch and make sure no cars were careening down the hill in front of the house while she trudged across.

Mom makes the long walk back after laying her eggs

But today's visitor was so tiny that we were able to scoop him up into an empty 6" pot, and Mr. Mulch transported him safely to the pond on the far side of the road, safe and sound.  

Our tiny visitor, with the sedum to give a sense of his extreme tinyness

I'm not expecting a thank you note.

A Tale of Two Crops

Most growing seasons deliver the best of times and the worst of times for different crops simultaneously.  This has been a banner year for beans, but a near total bust for the broccoli.  With all the rain we've had, I wouldn't have expected a great vegetable season to begin with.  And given the real tragedy that struck some of our upstate local farms -- one of our favorites, Bradley Farm, saw all 18 acres of its crops destroyed -- I have no intention of complaining about the vagaries of nature.

I do, however, find it intriguing to look at how differently the beans and broccoli have fared under exactly the same conditions, producing polar opposite outcomes: Gross and disgusting virtual crop failure versus a whole freezer full of frozen legumes to tide us over for the winter.

I'll tackle the bad news first.  The wet weather has proven to be the ideal breeding ground for our very own batch of not-really-but-certainly-looks-like caviar.  These are the eggs of those cute little white moths that visit the garden in mid-summer.  Or I should say, these are the gazillions of eggs that coat almost every nook and cranny of the otherwise robust broccoli stalks.  And since we really try to be as organic as possible, there's not a whole lot we can do other than try to rinse as many off as possible.  This has proven to be a less than effective remedy.

If only these were beluga instead of caterpillars-to-be!

That this goo is all over the plants is bad enough, but within days, whatever eggs remain safely hidden in the unreachable nooks and crannies turn into hundreds of voracious eating machines like this:

He has only just begun to eat

And within short order, the broccoli leaves are reduced to the vegetative equivalent of a lace antimacassar, more suited to draping over Grandma's sofa than providing nourishment for what was supposed to have been a delicious head of Romanescu.

Broccoli Doily

We may yet see a head or two develop, but if we want to make a meal out of broccoli, we'll have to rely on our local farmer's market.  So much for the worst of this year's garden.

Now for the best of times:  Beans!  

We grow both Haricots Verts and Garden of Eden flat Italian beans.  The former are hard to find in markets when they're still young and tender; the latter are a particularly good variety for blanching, frenching, and freezing, and we usually grow enough to give us a dozen or so meals-worth through the depths of the winter.  This season, however, it seems as though the rain that spelled disaster for the broccoli has encouraged the beans to convert all that moisture into wave after wave of tasty legumes.  I can spend 30 minutes picking beans one day, to return the following day and find the same amount has enthusiastically swollen to ripeness overnight.  And they're tricky to pick -- in fact, the best way to do so is to think like a bean.  

You see, if you simply look at the bush, expecting the beans to volunteer themselves, you'll see one or two.  LIke this:

These beans are playing decoy for all the others hiding under the leaves

But to find the real motherlode, you have to imagine where you might hide, if you were on this particular vine -- and suddenly, a whole new trove will be revealed. 

Haricots Verts hiding

Garden of Eden playing coy

For me, picking beans is a grand game of hide and seek with Mother Nature.  I take an embarrassing amount of pride in being able to ferret out the best-camouflaged pods and fill my basket -- and subsequently freezer -- with as many beans as possible.  I admit that outwitting a brainless vine isn't exactly a major mental challenge, but it certainly beats missing beans at the peak of their ripeness only to discover them days later when they're the length of a yardstick, and as inedible as a box of rocks.  I much prefer them like this:

Garden of Eden beans captured!

And then like this:

Freezer ready: Haricots Verts blanched and bagged; Garden of Eden blanched and frenched

 

And then they're even better in the depths of winter when defrosted and sauteed in garlic and oil for a little taste of summer.  We'll just have to do without the broccoli this January.

Hurricane Hiatus

Once again I've let too much time elapse between posts, but this hiatus comes courtesy of Hurricane Irene.  We went 6 days without power, cable, or internet, as did most of the surrounding county.  And though we do have a generator that runs essentials such as our water pump and boiler so we have hot water and can flush the toilets, nearly a week of being totally disconnected did get rather old.

Happily, everything came back on line late yesterday and there's much to catch up on, so let's begin.

My last post was about a very unwelcome visitor who was snacking on our tomatoes. This past week, we had a far more benevolent guest -- one who appeared to be praying for the safe ripening of our beleaguered fruit.

Praying Mantis visiting the garden

We do appreciate his vigilance because our other more rapacious intruder seems to have survived both our best efforts and Irene's and has continued to make occasional forays to snatch unripe tomatoes untimely from their vines.  Grrr.

In happier news, the hibiscus that we planted last year have returned.  We planted them despite the firm belief that they were too tropical to survive our winters.  And then we had the winter of all winters last year which we fully expected to seal their fate.  But to our surprise and wonderment they have returned -- lushly -- to create a long-lasting display of dinner plate-sized hot pink firepower at the top of our hill.

Hibicus erupting at the top of the hill

The blossoms just keep coming

These are easily 12" across -- you could eat dinner off them!

Not to be outdone by this flamboyant display, the standard hydrangea and giant phlox that surround the hibiscus have also gone crazy.  Nothing like a little plant peer pressure to encourage excessive showiness!

Standard Hydrangea showing off

 

A flock of giant purple Phlox

Put this all together, and it makes climbing the stairs up the hill worthwhile -- each switchback of the steps reveals another surprising burst of color.  And once you get to the top, it's a lovely spot to relax with a cocktail and admire the view!

 

The climb up

The seating area at mid-point -- our favorite spot for a pre-dinner drink

The view from the seating area, including our favorite dinner spot on the patio

Thankfully, all of this survived the hurricane unscathed, for which we're all extremely grateful.  In fact, we're so grateful that we're off to crack some Prosecco so we can climb the hill and toast our good fortune.  I'm sure it's cocktail time somewhere.

Cheers!