Organic Cucumber Beetle Control

You know those small green and back beetles that look a little like an odd elongated ladybug?  I always squish them on sight!  When their numbers have gotten too large to squish them all, I take a big bowl of soapy water out in the early morning while it is still cool and damp and just after dark at night, and shake the infested plants over the bowl.  They fall in and drown! You might miss a few, but hopefully you'll get them next time around!  This is a little labor intensive but it does help immensely. 

Here are some other ideas I found on the Internet:

Aluminum foil:

Cover the ground under the plants with aluminum foil.  I have never tried this, but apparently they don’t like the bright reflective surface.  It also disrupts their life cycle.  Cucumber beetles lay their eggs in the soil near the stems of the plants, and the eggs hatch in the soil where the larva feed on the roots.  Spreading a little diatomaceous earth right at the base of the stems and soil and then covering the soil with foil ought to really help.   You might want to fold the foil pieces together where they join to make seams and use small rocks to hold them in place.   The foil may confuse pollinators, so I personally wouldn’t give this a try unless the beetles were a problem.

Yellow Sticky Traps:

Cucumber beetles are easily trapped in yellow sticky traps, which can be purchased or made from small pieces of wood or stiff plastic.  First  paint them bright yellow or orange--the color of squash blossoms is best.  Next cover with Tangle-Trap (available at nurseries and organic farm supply outlets). And then mount your sticky traps on stakes or hang them just above foliage level.   During the warm dry part of the day deploy your soapy water and shake the plants.  Some will fall into your soapy water and some will fly to the sticky traps.  The sticky traps will also catch cabbage moths and white fly.  However, they can also catch beneficial insects and pollinators, so best not to put them out unless the pests are getting to be a problem.  

Also, providing habitat for wasps, lizards, frogs, toads, and birds is supposed to help!

If you have tried any of these tips or if you have other organic cucumber beetle strategies, please feel free to tell us all about it in comments! 

I've Got Worms!

Here they are, fresh out of their shipping package and on their way to their new home!

One of the first things I did upon moving in to my new apartment was to save one of my smaller moving boxes to start a little worm bin.  I choose a box that a regular plastic grocery bag will easily line.  I filled the bag/box about 1/3 full of organic potting soil, and then I collected a handful of clay and loam rich soil to add to the potting soil.  (That was a gift from a gopher who makes his home along the local river.)

Worms need some fine mineral soil--they ingest it and it helps their digestion.  The clay particles they ingest also supper-charge the worm castings.  It seems that the clay-humus combination excreted by worms provides many plants with exactly what they need as far as nutrition is concerned, and also as far as the delivery method.  Clay also contains cation exchange sites--which hold on to the nutrients until the microorganisms involved with the soil nutrient cycle present them with something in exchange.

There are microorganisms in the soil whose sole business is to trade nutrients they obtain from cation exchange sites with plant root hairs.  What they get in the bargain are the carbohydrates that fuel their lives.  The only source of carbohydrates, of course, are plants.  They make them from sunlight and water using nutrients they exchange with microorganism in their root hairs.

In most natural environments here in North America, this all proceeds without the help of earthworms.  There are very few earthworms indigenous to North America and they inhabit very small environmental niches.  All most all the worms we encounter here were originally from Europe. And in fact, worms are not always a welcome part of natural environments. They can disrupt indigenous soil nutrient cycles and in some areas this is threatening native plant species and the organisms that depend on them.  Just something to think about before you toss out worms leftover from fishing or before you introduce worms to your garden if you live adjacent to natural areas that do not already harbor earthworms. 

Soil nutrient cycles can do what they need to do without earthworms, but where appropriate, worms supper-charge the process!  They do their best work right in the soil of your garden, rather than in a worm bin or box.  If you haven't already, check out my article on gardening with worms here: 

Let Worms do Your Work!   You might also want to check out my related photo album on facebook: 
The Compost Hole Method.

Alas,  having recently moved into an apartment, I am no longer in a position to bury my compostables on a regular basis. Not to worry though, I do have a community garden plot in the next town, I will still be gardening and tending soil!  The only worms available locally  are night crawlers, which I really enjoy in the garden, but I have never raised them in a box before, and I wanted to stick with something familiar.  So I ordered 1/2 pound of red compost worms on-line. 

Before they arrived I made sure that their organic potting-soil-bedding was evenly moist, but not soggy.  Using a soil thermometer, I found a good spot for them in the apartment.  Sixty degrees Fahrenheit up to the high seventies is ideal.  Colder and they become sluggish, hotter and they suffer.  I found the perfect spot in my water heater closet!  Next I buried about a pint of kitchen waste in the potting soil and waited for my worms to arrive.  

Most people use shredded paper for worm bedding, and I do add some paper to my worm boxes if they start getting too damp.  However, I have found that my worms are happier, healthier, and more vigorous if their bedding is mostly chemical free natural materials, like organic potting soil and fallen leaves.  All paper has been through chemical processes and retains traces of these chemicals.  I have seen with my own eyes the difference between raising worms on paper bedding and on natural bedding.  I will stick with using a preponderance of natural material.

My current worms take about a week and a half to processes about a half a weeks worth of my kitchen waste.  I figure that eventually I will want about four times as many worms.  Living in a small apartment, this will take some creativity on my part . . .  but I am sure it can be done!

A word about smells.  A properly managed, maintained, and cared for worm box or bin has hardly any smell at all.  If I put my nose right down in the box, it has a very slight forest earth kind of scent.  If your worm box smells unpleasant, it may be too moist, too hot or cold, you may need a higher ratio of bedding to kitchen scraps, or you may need more worms or less scraps.  It is a learning process.  However there are lots of books and blogs and articles devoted to indoor "vermiposting."   Vermiposting is what composting with worms is called! Almost anyone can use this technique to recycle kitchen waste into supper-charged soil!

If you would like to leave tips, ask questions, or share useful web sites or books, please feel free to leave a comment.  I don't think Blogger will let you put a URL in comments, but you can give the names of useful websites and we can search them out!

Harvesting Roots for Herbal Medicine

I recently was asked about harvesting roots for medicine, the specific series of questions was about Echinacea, but the information will work for many other roots as well.

The best time to dig most roots is in the fall, after the flowers are done and the seeds are set.  You need to be very careful to avoid damaging the plants crown, which is the part of the plant found at the boundary between soil and air. From the crown upwards grow the green parts of the plant--the stems and leaves. From the crown downward grow the roots.  The crown itself contains the buds and tissues from which all new growth arises in many types of plants.  If you damage the crown the vigor of the plant will be damaged, it will be susceptible to disease and insect infestation. So the first thing to do is to squat down and identify where the crown of the plant is.

Once you are ready to dig, you should make your cuts in the soil at least 8 inches from the crown--which will provide you with 4 inch sections of usable roots. You can make the cuts even further out if you like.  Once you have dug up your plant, wash the roots well, being careful not to damage the crown. Remove roots to within 4 inches of the crown, wash them again, blot, and set them to dry on screens, or racks; out of direct sun but where there is good air circulation (so you don't get any mold). Do not bunch the roots together as they will need plenty of air circulation. They should be crisp dry before storing. To preserve the medicinal properties, for small roots it is best to store the roots whole, and then crush with a mortar and pestle right before use.  (For large thick roots, it is best to slice then thinly before drying so it is actually possible to crush them once dry.)  

Now, back to your plant.  The crown needs protected from full sun, and drying wind while removed from the ground.  Replant the crown as soon as possible after digging.  If the crown is big enough--you can use a sharp garden knife to divide it to make more plants--or to make more use of the larger roots.  If it was happy and pest free in the spot that you removed it from, mix some well rotted compost or manure into the hole, and replant where it came from.  A layer of mulch is almost always a good idea, as is some water, unless the soil is already saturated.  Don’t let the crown dry out over the next few months, and when spring comes, keep an extra eye on the plant.  It will not have an adequate root system for some time, so it will need some extra attention.  

Instead of digging up the whole plant you can make a cut at four inches and eight inches and remove a section of soil and roots leaving the plant in the ground. While this is less traumatic to the plant, be aware that anytime you disturb a plant’s roots you are interfere with its life and vigor, and there is a chance it will not survive. 

I always prefer to use the aerial, above ground, parts of herbs whenever possible, to best preserve the plants’ lives, especially if the population of the plant in question is low. If you are interested in harvesting from wild plants, I would suggest reading a section in my book "Sacred Smoke, The Ancient Art of Smudging for ModernTimes," on 'Gathering Plants for Smudge.' The information there can be equally applied to medicinal plants.  The book is available on request from most libraries and local book stores. 

Questions, comments, and tips are always welcome!