About Me
Author: Sue
•12:34 PM



About Me

Let me start by telling you a little something about myself. I have been working on creating a "beautiful garden" for some time now. My first attempt was a flower garden in the town of Mariposa, Ca.
This was to be a dream garden just like I saw in books! I put in hundreds of hours of hard labor into preparing the soil, which was basically red clay and a lot of rocks. I even had my husband get me truckloads of dirt in his Toyota truck. 

Next came the actual planting of the flowers. What to plant, where to put them, seeds versus bulbs versus six packs of flowers already started. After careful consideration I chose six packs because I could see my magical garden transform before my very eyes into the garden I had always dreamed of! 

Then began my battle with the bugs, the deer, the gophers and the snails! The very next morning following this magical transformation I ran outside to see how all of my plants were doing and to my dismay alot of my plants had just disappeared! Then right before my eyes I saw one of them get sucked down into the ground and in an instant it was gone! I ran back to the nursery I got them from and they explained that i must have gophers. There was many ways to get rid of them I was told and before long I had tried them all and still I had gophers!


The plants that managed to survived met their doom from the cute deer we had on the property.

 The same deer that inspired us to buy this wonderful house in the woods! Why did I ever cry for Bambi? They came in droves and ate everything in site but the weeds! They left the weeds for me to gaze upon. I built 9 feet tall fences to keep them out. Ugly green plastic fences to imprison my plants so no one could enjoy them unless you cared to peer through the holes. Still the deer came through. They went under and over. They looked for weaknesses in the fence and I would awaken once again to a garden stripped bare by these poor little deer. Finally we moved away from Mariposa to a town called Merced, CA.; no deer but a whole lot of bugs. I got my dream garden and now all I had to do was take care of it and watch it grow. So no more gophers or deer but it is bug heaven! 



So now you know why I have created this site! I want a place to go where we can get answers to all our bug questions! With the help of all you folks out there I am hoping to put all the answers in one place. I have a dog and three cats so I have to be careful what chemicals I put down because my dog just goes behind me and injests everything he can find. I found out the hard way when he almost died from eating my snail bait!

| comments (0)
Aphids
Author: Sue
•11:46 AM

So I decided to start out with Aphids since it begins with the letter "A" and everyone has problems with Aphids!
So far I have discovered these "cures"

·         Inspect your plants every day! One little aphid can produce 80 in a week! Be sure to check the underside of leaves as well as the buds.

·         Spraying them off with water is a good way to knock them off your plants. You can use a hose attachment called the “Bug Blaster”.

·         Don’t use too much fertilizer aphids love all the new growth. Use slow release fertilizer.

·        Prune away the colonies when you see plants that are covered with aphids. Make sure you dispose the clippings away from your garden.

Home remedies for aphids.

 

Use dish soap and water.  Spray the leaves with a solution of 2 teaspoons of dish soap and a spray bottle of lukewarm water. Make sure to spray the underside of the leaves.

You can also add some vegetable oil to the mixture; 3 parts water, one part oil and a few drops of dish soap, this will clog the respiratory spiracles of aphids. Spray once a week, taking turns with the solutions.  Don’t spray on hot sunny days as the oil can magnify the sun and damage the leaves.

| comments (1)