Leaf Hopper Nymph and Guest

I'm not 100% sure on this identification but I'm pretty sure this is a leaf hopper nymph of some variety. It was a cool little bugger that's for sure. Just a tiny spec of orange on the potato leaf.


As I was taking picture of the nymph a fly landed on the leaf and from the way it landed I thought it would go in for a kill. He helps give you more of a sense of scale for how small the nymph is.


I waited patiently with finger ready to shoot when he started to move off, so I snapped one more of the fly before he departed.

Aphid Mummies - Wasp Parasitized Aphids

Last year I didn't know what these large round and white aphids were. I thought that they might be aphids that were transforming into the flying variety and naively I removed them. They are aphids that have been parasitized by wasps. The wasps lay eggs in them and the wasp larva eventually come out to parasitize more aphids. Now that the wasps are out and active I've found I haven't had to work to control the aphids anymore as the large flying aphids are getting picked off before they can multiply. The short message is don't squish these!

Three Lined Potato Beetle - Lema daturaphila

If you live in New England and are a gardener, then there is a good chance you've been visited by one of these fellows. The three lined potato beetle first made an appearance in our garden on the ground cherries that volunteered by the side of our shed. These infested the plants and because of that I've been waging war against the ground cherries this year. That hasn't stopped them from making the jump over to other plants in the garden, and since I'm growing potatoes this year they have been their favorite target.


I spent the morning looking under the leaves of all of my potato plants for these little orange eggs. I removed close to a hundred of them in about a dozen eggs clusters. They scrape off the leaves easy enough and will pop if enough pressure is applied. Your hands will be orange until you wash them though, so it is not an approach for the squeamish.


I would have never noticed this guy except that it moved while I was examining the underside of the leaf it was on. I didn't know what it was at the time so it didn't get squished, but after identifying it as a three lined potato beetle larva they won't get a free pass in the future. I was really shocked to find out it wasn't something more exotic, it looks like it belongs in a coral reef not my garden.


I took this shot at the Macro's minimum focal length to try and get more detail. That pile of stuff on top of him is actually his own poop. They use it to discourage predators and to make gardeners think twice about picking them up and disposing of them. They've done a fair deal of damage, but nothing fatal, I'm going to keep controlling them through manual removal for now.

Glorious Sun Please Stay!

June 14th 2009

Today

The garden is doing well overall with the last two days having partial sun and warmer weather. The tomatoes are responding very well to the warmth and have been growing several inches a day. The Oregon Sugar Pod Peas at the front of the bed are massively productive and are definitely on my list for next year. The Alaska peas in the middle produced a large bowl of peas once shelled and may have another in them before they're done. The Mammoth Peas at the end of the row are amazingly tall, unproductive, and diseased. The green bean patch is an insane jungle, and the inter planted beans elsewhere in the garden are also doing very well. Watching the potatoes grow I can hardly wait to dig them up!

They shot up to the top of the tower and tumbled off it to the side. I think the combination of wet and aphids set them up for a bacterial or viral disease. I'm not sure if that reduced their ability to flower, but this variety has produced maybe one twentieth the peas the Oregon Peas have.

I haven't identified the exact problem, but I did end up pulling the tower this afternoon. I cut them off at the ground to make sure these were left behind...

I didn't innoculate my peas, but they all had the nitrogen fixing rhizobia nodules on them. Hopefully through rotation I'll avoid the problem bacteria/virus in the future. The other varieties have so far been unaffected.

Berry Time

The raspberries are starting to ripen. Even though they are more tart than I like, Gabe loves them. I guess he takes after his Dad when it comes to tart berries.

The strawberries, sadly, are being devoured by some critter. I suspect chipmunks.

One of our neighbors has mulberry trees, which have been covered in ripe fruit. If you aren't familliar with mulberries, they look like blackberries, but don't have the tang. Many folks find the flavor insipid. I prefer them to all but the most perfectly sun-ripened strawberry.

Gabe could eat mulberries until he pops, I think.

Speaking of mulberries, the bunnies (or some other critter) have helped themselves to the mulberry seedlings in Gabe's Garden, as well as my nasturtiums and violets. I may transplant the larger volunteer mulberry tree to where one of the chewed seedlings is, and then put a cage around it.

The nasturtiums are largely a lost cause, but the violets will recover.

Relieved, and Sad

The Conservation Agent got back to me about my wetland faux pas:



Michelle -

I talked to the Commission last Thursday (6-18) and they all thought that the best thing to do is just to let path and turtle/frog pond return to their natural state. Just let it be and do not try and keep it accessable. There will be no fine as long as you just stop trying to keep it up. If this is OK with you then we are all set - if not then we will have to discuss permitting options - but I do not think you will be able to get a permit to do what you did. It just is not a good idea to do things like that in wetlands.

Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you in the future. Your lot has a large area of wetlands behind it and if you want to do anything that envolves moving dirt or cutting of wetland veg. you will need a permit.

Take care,
(our friendly Conservation Agent)


I am deeply relieved not to be socked with thousands of dollars in fines, and I am deeply sad at having to let the path revert back to its original state. But I support the laws that protect our wetlands.

If possible, I do want to maintain a path up to the edge of the wetlands so that I can still get close enough to look at what lives there. I have continued the permitting discussion with the agent to find out what is permissable. The thought of living on the edge of such beauty - that I own - and not being able to see it has still got me in quite a funk.

Restoring a Flood Plain in Louisiana

I love good news!



"In the 1960s, a group of businessmen bought 16,000 acres of swampy bottomland along the Ouachita River in northern Louisiana and built miles of levee around it. They bulldozed its oak and cypress trees and, when the land dried out, turned it into a soybean farm.

"Now two brothers who grew up nearby are undoing all that work. In what experts are calling the biggest levee-busting operation ever in North America, the brothers plan to return the muddy river to its ancient floodplain, coaxing back plants and animals that flourished there when President Thomas Jefferson first had the land surveyed in 1804."